The Nation 1926 : Vol 123

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I '\ »•» i •% ga Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/nation123julnewy

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The Nation A WEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO POLITICS, LITERATURE, SCIENCE DRAMA, MUSIC, ART INDUSTRY FOUNDED 1865 -■■■_ ■ VOLUME CXXIII JULY 7, 1926, TO DECEMBER 29, 1926 THE NATION, Inc. 20 VESEY STREET. NEW YORK

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4 2 INDEX TO VOLUME CXXIII JULY 7. 1926, TO DECEMBER 29, 1926 (Nos. 3183 The following letters are used to indicate the type of article: A Art C Correspondence D Drama Dt Driftway E Editorial Article EP Editorial Paragraph I International Relations, Documents IP International Relations, Foreign Presa IS International Relations. Signed Articles M Music P Poetry S Signed Article Book reviews and reviewers are indexed separately in the Book Review Section. A Abbott. Mather A. The new generation ; S 687 Abyssinia Appeals to the league ; IP 230 Appeals to the league. J. M. Kenworthy ; IS Great Britain and Italy compromise diffi- culties ; EP 268 A cavalcade into the mountains in Russia ; Dt. 346 Accidents Forty-three miners trapped underground ; EP 335 Adams, Samuel Hopkins ; E 628 Adolescence Twenty years of adolescence. M. Ifach- rach ; S 428 A.. D. P. Oregon — Staunchly conservative ; C 128 Advertising Sweet land of buncombe ; E 338 Advertising association Need of a bureau of standards; EP 466 Praise from President Coolidge. but ad- vertising methods misleading; EP 466 Aeronautics Airplanes and safety ; E 500 An air law for America. M. W. Royse ; S. 659 Effect of flying on evolution of languages ; Dt 6G6 Hopeful and profitable development: EP.. 186 Our airfleet a century ago. L. N. ; C... 69 Postmaster General New urges private en- terprise : EP 186 The shrinking globe; IP Ill Aiken, S. C, lynching; EP 388 Ainsworth, Clara Profits— Service? : C 129 Algeria France in Algeria and Tunisia. E. Knowl- ton; IS 303 Alien property. See Enemy property Allegash voters' political indifference ; Dt 13 Allen, Harbor I believe in free speech, but "; S.... 240 Allen, Robert S. Progressive Wisconsin wins and loses ; S. . 502 Alsberg, Henry G. Petlura : C 128 Amalgamated clothing workers Achievements through organization; EP.. 115 Undertake construction of apartment build- ings. J. Rorty ; S 323 American federation of labor Learns who its enemies are; EP 387 William Green's convention. B. Stolberg ; S 449 American legion Divided opinion with regard to reunion in Paris; EP 285 Education a la legion. U. Sinclair; C ... 348 American library association Raises question how important knowledge may be diffused among people; EP 389 American Methodist missionaries Demand admission of Asiatics to American citizenship : EP 141 Amerindian verse The road to the spring. M. Austin; S... 360 Anabtawy, Nazmie H. The French activities in Syria; IS 136 An American tragedy. P. Kearney (adapter) ; D 460 Anddle, J. K. Letter to Roger Baldwin on oath of allegiance ; E 551 Andersen, Hans Christian Two unpublished tales — Quack ; The copy clerk 57 Anderson, Paul Y. Exposes fraud in dissemination of news ; E 629 Andrews, Lincoln Clark Successful prohibition mission to England ; EP 159 Anonymous Mother's daughter 533 Tin- nmking of a militant . . The peacock's tail Why 1 earn my own In ing Anti-picketing injuncl Defied by multitudes of men and women ; EP . .139 Antiquity Refrigerated mammoths: E 628 Archaeology Prospecting for buried worlds. I. Treat; S ... 528 Arizona 'tin's river. G. W. 1'. Hunt; (' . ... 128 Delayed election newa. F. C. Lockwood : C 507 Arkansas Courtin' night in Arkansas. H. Wight ; C. 463 "Dry" [J. E. Martineau], P. C. Snod- grass ; C 217 Armaments Evading the Washington treaty. S. Bent; S 55 Failure of proposal to extend limitation of naval construction; EP 113 Fairness to Russia must precede reduction of European armies; EP 113 Armistice day President's address at Kansas City; EP... 619 The new generation. M. A. Abbott; S... 687 Army and Navy Jmirnal; EP 677 Art Brancusi. W. Pach ; S 666 Modern art: Genesis or Exodus? L. Lozo- wick : S 672 Hoy Van Auken Sheldon. P. Loving ; S. . 227 The background of art. G. Howe; C... 667 The plastic artist in America. R. M. Pear- son ; S 364 Words of cheer for worms. C. J. Du- ca.sse ; S 228 Asquith, Herbert Henry Mr. Asquith retires ; E 443 Asquith, Margot On usefulness of intimate memoirs: E... 628 "As swinish as the owners." J. L. ; C 403 Astronomy The size of the sky ; E 163 Athletics Severance of relations between Harvard and Princeton ; EP 520 Austin. Mary Mary Austin on alcohol. W. G. Clugston, H. M. Rosenthal, E. H. Whelan, S. D. B. Hyllebourne ; C 83 Not to you only. O Pythian; P 601 The road to the spring ; S 360 Automobile-liability insurance Massachusetts leads way ; E 392 B Bacon, Roger Friar Bacon ; E 656 Bachrach, Marion Twenty years of adolescence ; S 428 Baker. Mary Francis — Advt.; C 175 Baker, Newton Speaks bluntly about inter-allied debts ; EP 233 Baldwin, Roger N.. and others In Horthy's Hungary ; C 297 Balance sheet More assets and liabilities. M. A. Patter- son : C 560 Balance sheet of a crank; Dt 480 "Balfour principle," the; S 77 Balkans Mussolini's treaty with Albania rouses Jugoslavia : EP 653 Baltzell, Robert C. ; EP 160 Bankers The great free-trade manifesto; E 442 Barnhill, John Basil The ayes have it; C 128 Barrett. Clara Makes heroic effort to cross Channel; EP. 139 Barry, Tom The immortal thief. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 409 Bathing Bathing suit hailed as costume of the future ; EP 49 Baumer. Gertrud Writes on censorship bill before Reichstag ; E 682 Baumes, Caleb H. Crime and punishment ; E 313 Baumes law Judge Taylor tests its mandatory charac- ter; EP 496 Revolt among tht judges ; EP 574 Bausman, Frederick Indorses President Coolidge on war debts ; C 508 B.. n. G. More work for Cal ; C 640 Peals. Carleton Baron Banana in Puerto Barrios; S 241 gaining in Mexico; S 320 The Mexican church goes on .strike; S.... 145 The Nicaraguan farce; S 631 Bean, Louis II The agricultural recovery ; S 219 Beard. Charles A. The great American tradition: S 7 Beffel, John Nicholas The lost art of profanity ; S 270 Hell. Ilernard hidings The worm turns; C 247 Bell, Gertrude. Obituary : EP 69 Benavente y Martinez, Jacinto Saturday night. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 488 Bent. Silas Evading the Washington treaty; S 55 The Hall-Mills case in the newspapers: S.. 580 Berlark. Harris What about Florida ? ; C 453 Beyond the horizon. E. O'Neill; D 647 Billings, Jr., John Oil and the wheels of justice; S T5 Biography James Ralph, jack of all literary trades. R. F. Dibble; S 361 Who's what? ; E 238 Black boy. J. Tully and F. Dazey ; D 435 Blake, William Difference between bad and good artist; E 141 Blanshard, Paul Manhunting on the subway ; S 74 Blount. Michael A California liberal ; S 12 Board of superintendent* of New York city Are teachers muzzled ? ; E 523 Bogan, Louise Dark river ; P 359 Second song ; P 246 Bolivar, Simon The Bolivar centennial. E. E. Curtis; IS.. 182 Books Officially pure. J. T. Moutoux ; C 106 Borah. William E. Demands abolition of poison gas; EP 678 Denounces policy of force against China ; EP 547 Boston Journalist Silent Cal's silent partner ; S 424 Boston university Abolishes compulsory military training ; EP 520 Botany consolidated mills ; EP 679 Bothwell, Austin Real Indians in the real north ; C 37 Boulder dam and Ail-American canal Bill to make project a public development ; EP 2 Bourdet, Edouard The captive. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 409 Boxing Outcome of Dempsey-Tunney fight; EP.... 311 The fake of the century ; E 313 Boyd, Susie ; EP 95 Boyd, Thomas ; S 345 Braiisford, Henry N. ; EP 466 Brailsford, Henry N. An editor's farewell ; IP 518 Brandeis, Louis Passes seventieth birthday ; EP 620 Brandes, Georg ; E 261 Breckinridge, Desha ; EP 651 Brenner, Anita Idols behind altars; S 396 Bressler, Harry S. Cartoons 393,682 Briggs, George A. Beyond Ford's Utopia ; C 175 Brite. Mary D. Free speech (?) in Cincinnati; S 344 British commonwealth of nations Britannia still rules ; E 577 Report of inter-imperial relations commit- tee of imperial conference; 1 590, 648 Broadway. P. Dunning and G. Abbot ; D. . . . 330 Brodsky. B. ; S 323 Bronson, Jean Jacques ; E 72 Broun, Heywood Sermon on censorship ; EP 23 Brown, R. De Valera's position : C 222 Buck. Pearl S. The emotional nature of the Chinese; S. . 269 Buckner, Emory R. Outlines case against Daugherty and Mil- ler; EP 257 Buckner. Emory R. : EP 496 Bulgaria They starve in Bulgaria. A. Rochester; C. 59 Tsanko Bakaloff Tserkovsky. T. Geshkoff ; C 196 Bunnell, Milie Warning with regard to newspapers; EP.. 627 ,

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Vol. cxxiii] Index [July-Dec, 1926 Bureaucracy Stupid treatment of immigrants; EP 496 Bureau of naturalization The oath of allegiance: E.... SSI Bureau of standards; EP 466 Burns, Anthony Remember Anthony Burns. F. Landon ; C. 481 Busick, Charles 5 Threat of strike assembles flotilla at Han- kow ; EP 626 Truce in civil war : EP 465 Use of force denounced by Senator Borah : EP What every coolie knows; E. . . When patience is iconoclasm. L. M. C grave ; C 451 Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tso-Iin join hands : EP IS Christmas charity The annual Christmas side-shows. E. Lyons : S Christian churches of Detroit Cower when non-union employers cr:. their whips : EP Christmas puddin' : E 654 Church. C. C, Communism in marriage ; S 12 t Civic conduct A Hard dilemma. W. Hard; C Civic repertory theater (Eva Le Gallienne) ; P 4>S Clapper, Raymond Doheny and Fall face justice: S Doheny — a portrait in oil ; S Clemenceau, Georges Writes letter to Coolidge : EP 139 Cline. Charles After prison, thanks : C :'47 Clinton, De Witt Career contrasted with Governor Smith's : EP • ■■• 4 Clugston, W. G. Mary Austin on alcohol: C c Cohham. Sir Alan : Dt Colby, Elbridge Justice in Georgia : S College or country club? : E College journalism Commendable work of Yassar ,/oun Undergraduate Studies; EP 69 Collins, Chapin A political crisis in education: S 4tr> Colorado Ku klux klan routed in election: EP. . Communism ... 3 religion? L. Fischer: S Competition — 1926 model : E TO Concord, Massachusetts The old Concord tradition. C. L. de N mandie : C Condylis, Georges: EP 185 Conference of Dominion premiers in London Empire not collapsing, but geography and economics outweigh historical sentiment : EP 439 Conference of league of nations societies Lazarus. M. Kelsey : C .348 Congress of the United States portionment of congress seas: EP Conklin, Robert J. On the purity of readers: C 175 Contempt of court Lese majeste (case of George R. Dale : E ct leasing Barbarism to B. M. McO t

County-jail system. J. K. Jaffraj Cooking ;chem Porto Rican laborers in Arizona: EP 440 Coolidge, Calvin A canny chile. i.vin built: EP A third term for Coolidge?: S Calvin Coolidge. socialist: E. . r ! L. H. J. ; C. . board of mediation : EP 6S : from speech at Cambridge. July 3. S More work for Cal. D. G. B. : C. 640 tion. and th E . . 4?8 Henry H. G'.assie to tariff c ; E 261 Receptii Marie causes first alarm in several years : EP "^9 of the night ? : E . lers to senators from North Dakota : Ft' 625 Utterai luction "put gang in EP Utters - rded sentiments on armis- Vac 67 W I liam I Cathode tube controlling billions of e'.ec- EP 441 Hush L. electric de\ - river] : E. . . Corday, Mich 72 Corruption Use of money in elections: E 143 Cotton Cotton goes West. M. Stem : S 29 California Cotton JournaTt prophecy re- garding cotton. ... .30 Problem of how to deal with ruinous ef- fects of overproduction : EP 416 Cotton growers' associi- -zona Encounters difficulties in colonizing Porto Rican laborers; EP. .. 440 Cotton industry- Organization the great need : EP 115 Conditions in southern mills: EP 115 Countess Maritza. E. Kalman ; D 330 Uriels' association vs. Internationa) ladies' garment workers union: S 689 Coward, Noel This was a man. Criticism. J. W. Krutch : D 647 C raton. Ann Washington Bertha, the sewing-machine girl; S 689 Crawford. Nelson Antrim The New England farm comes back; S... 169 Crime and punishment ; E 313 Epicures in crime; E . 681 The problem of crime remains : E 98 Study and treatment of individual delin- quent ; E 98 C-is grave, Lloyd M. When patience is iconoclasm ; C 454 Crossley, Stella Real estate vs. human lives in Florida : S. 341 Florida cashes in her chips; S 11 1 rowther, Rodney Look-a-way, Dixieland ! : C 6-''l Cuba American intermeddling in island's affairs ; EP 22 Cummins, Albert B. Obituary; EP 113 Cummings. Edward. Obituary ; EP 627 Curti, M. The peace department. 1821 ; C 247 Curtis. Edward E. The Bolivar centennial : IS 182 Czecho-Slovakia Germans admitted to cabinet; EP 415 D D Abernon. Viscount Edgar Vincent Lays foundations of Locarno pacts; EP.. 336 Daisy Mayme. G. Kelly ; D 488 Dale. George R. Editor of Muncie, Indiana, Post-Democrat persecuted by klansmen ; EP 68 Lese majeste: E 142 Damned souls society ; EP 23 Damon. S. Foster Commentary on John x. 34 ; P 693 Epitaphs : P 274 Par.-. rosch. Walter Walter Damrosch retires ; E 681 Panehakoff. Vera Communism comes to the village; S 474 Darrow, Clarence; EP 678 Das. Msry K. A woman without a country': S 105 Daugherty, Harry M. Daugherty at the bar. E. Mels ; S 423 Emory R. Buckner will retry Daugherty and Miller ; EP 496 Failure of jury to convict; EP 415 Government's case against him; EP 257 Da> idson, Donald Martha and shadow ; P 148 Davis, Julia Johnson Bones; P 197 Davis, Owen Sandalwood. Criticism. J. W. Knitch ; D. 384 Dawes plan S. Parker Gilbert's report for second year; EP 626 Death-rate figures So-so figures. T. A. Larremore: C 297 De Brisay, Richard "Byng or King": issue in election; S.... 213 Dehs. Eugene Victor Eugene Victor Debs ; E 443 Decadence Decadent French — where are they?: EP... 283 river. L. Stallings and W. F. Harling ; D 409 Delacroix. Leon ; EP 336 . bert The French family commits murder; S... 665 Democratic experiment ; EP 1 v. Jack : EP 311 ey-Tunney prize-fight - education in California. F. L. Martin : C 402 War. inc. G. Williamson: C 403 ::rk Denmark and the free-trade conference. C. C. P'.att ; IS 202 irk (Lake* navv arsenal explosions usness of Dover Rotary Club ; EP 67 king may do no wrong ; E 71 le X rmandie, Charles L. old Concord tradition : C 129 song ; D 697 Deutsch, Babette Animula vagula ; P 359 De Valera, Eamonn De Valera's position. R. Brown; C 222 De Valera. Eamonn; S 120 Vdolfo Recognized as president, does bidding of masters : EP 548

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Ind ex [Vol. cxxiii Dibble, Roy Floyd James Ralph, jack of all literary trades: S. 361 Disarmament Is Germany disarmed ? L. Fischer : S . . . ■ 894 Secretary Kcllogg's Plattsburg speech; EP Ditto. J. R. The Garvey gospel : C Djerzinsky, Felix. Obituary; EP 96 Doheny, E. I.. E. L. Doheny. LL.D. T. Ruadh ; C 38 Doheny-Fall case Doheny and Fall face justice. R. Clap- per; S 62B Doheny — a portrait in oil. R. Clapper; S. 658 Government by crooks ? ; E 680 Suppression of Cleaves documents; EP.... 677 Navy department guilty ; EP Dole. Nathan Haskell The agonies of orthodoxy ; C S26 Dolsen. Jame.. II Foreign rule in Shanghai: IS 542 Drama ' winter in the theater ; E 98 Should actors be themselves? P. P.. Wads- worth ; C 453 "Singing jailbirds." U. Sinclair. E. Wil- kin -47 Taking life seriously ; E 318 Ducasse. C. J. \\ '.' -ds of cheer for worms ; S 228 Duke. James B. ; C ... 691 Dunn, Robert V> The red raids ; S 267 Dunning. P., and G. Al>l»>t Broadway. Criticism. J. W. Krutch : D.. 330 Eastman. Max Dagger ; P 483 Mas Eastman and Mr. Ochs's money; C. 640 Reveals Lenin's 'testament" ; EP 415 Eastward progress of western civilization ; EP 23 Ederle. Gertrude Wins her roadster; EP 139 Eddy, Sherwood Russia, the land of contradictions; IS. 349, 410 Edison. Thomas A. Starts first rumble in possible radio col- lapse: EP 337 EdlolT. E. E. How to have honest elections; C 222 Education A political crisis in education. C. Collins ; S 445 Attempt in Louisiana to rurtail freedom of education ; EP 48 Censoring textbooks in Texas; EP 95 College or country club? : E 288 Dismissal of J. E. Kirkpatrick by trus- tees of Olivet, college ; EP 3 Independence brings trouble for President Hall of Oregon State university; EP 96 Religion in the medical schools. S. Michels ; C 247 Remarks on. by Harry Emerson Fosdick ; EP 549 Should colleges be treadmills?; E 163 Test for admission to Loyola college of medicine; EP 113 The case against education [Hankin] ; E.. 26 The worm turns. R. I. Bell; C 247 What is a college president?; EP 3 Edward Albert, prince of Wales Sends £10 to Somersetshire coalfields dis- tress committee ; EP 235 Edwards, H. For Mr. Mellon to answer : C 402 Edwards. Major General Clarence R. Faith in the youth of America; EP 259 Ehrman, Chester S. Mary, guaranteed genuine : C 175 Elections — Great Britain Labor triumphs in municipal elections ; EP. 496 Elections — United States Delayed news from Arizona. V. C. Lock- wood ; C 507 Forecast of impending elections; E 418 How to have honest elections. E. E. Ed- loff ; C 222 Interpretation of primary elections; E... 260 Subterfuges in addition to expenditure of money in Pennsylvania; EP 652 The outcome in three states : S 502 Eliot, Charles W. Obituary ; EP 186 Eliot, Charles W. ; C 454 Eliot, Charles W. Eliot: iconoclast and builder. G. Frank; S. 293 Eliot, T. S., editor of New Criterion; EP 259 Emden, German cruiser ; E 469 "Encyclopaedia Britannica" Peace in the Encyclopaedia ; E 420 Return to great traditions of the work ; E 420 Enemy property Activities of Senator Moses; EP 625 Compromise bill passed in House; EP.... 678 Investors, beware! ; E 419 English, George W. Resigns on eve of impeachment proceed- ings; EP 495 Enticing dav-dreams as to where one would live; Dt 402 Escape from modern life — is there any ? ; Dt. 452 Escoffier, Auguste Reflections on American cooking; Dt.... 529 Esperanto as an aid in travel abroad; Dt 74 Europe America's crop of hate. O. G. Villard ; S. 126 ■ •mic reorganisation; EP 140 Prance and Germany, friends. 1. Treat Evans, t Miss ) Ernesl H..u old i • Will? : C Evans. Ernestine Potemkin ; D. Evolution Religion and evolution. B. Shadwell ; (' Ewer. W. N. Why was tin- British strike called oil'.'; S 9 F Fall-Doheny case. See Doheny-Fall case Falstatr. Jake The Cock ; P 85 Noah: P. Famous Names. Inc. Sweet land of buncombe; E 338 Fanny. W. Mack and l>. Belasco ; I) Farmers — Canada Alberta in control of farmers: EP lit Farmers United States Are farm-land speculators entitled to pity? B. C. Marsh: S 400 Are farm speculators entitled to pity? E. Henderson; (' .(HI Bilked again by Congress; EP l Haugen bill sent to ashheap ; EP.... 1 Price-fixing for the farmer. H. Shipstead ; S 101 The agricultural recovery. I,. H. Bean ; S. 219 The New England farm comes hack. N. A. Crawford : S 160 The tariff and the farmer. G. W. Norris ; S 192 Why New Englan 1 prospers. G. F. Weeks : C 207 Farrington, Frank; E 237 Fascism A nation gone mad ; E 499 In defense of fascism. V. Zorin ; C 588 Federal oil conservation board Waste in exploitation of oil wells; E. . . . 390 ein, Martin A Venezuelan speaks ; C 273 Mr. Bruce spills ; C 589 Fellowship of youth for peace Encounters hostility in Concord, Massachu- setts; EP 49 Herald reporter comments on Fred Mar- vin's speech ; EP 49 Ferguson, Governor Miriam Pardons six Mexican revolutionists; EP... 205 Ferril. Thomas Hornsby Bride ; P 76 Finance — F ran c e Caillaux's measures to save franc; EP... 2 Falling franc continues to worry politi- cians ; EP 48 How to stop the tumbling franc; EP 67 Finance — Great Britain Interesting items in the financing of a great iron and coal company; EP.... 389 Finck, Henry T. Critics and criticized ; E 444 Obituary ; EP 337 Fischer, Louis Communism ... a religion?; S 686 How America fools herself : S 166 Is Germany disarmed ? ; S 394 Nine years of bolshevism ; S 471 Flags What is a flag ? ; EP 259 Florida — Advt. M. F. Baker; C 175 Conscription of unemployed after hurri- cane: EP 310 Curious paradoxes in regard to Negroes ; EP 186 Florida again. Mrs. O. R. Lovejoy ; C... 482 Florida cashes in her chips. S. Crossley ; S 11 Hurricane makes all men kin; EP 283 Real estate vs. human lives. S. Crossley; S 341 What about Florida? H. Berlack ; C 453 Forgotten letters ; Dt 429 Ford, Henry Beyond Ford's Utopia. G. A. Briggs ; C. 175 Forward (Glasgow) : EP 389 Fosdick, Frank Sheldon ; EP 518 Fosdick. Harry Emerson Concerning end of true education; EP.... 549 Denounces war department in armistice speech ; EP 520 Fourteen points That armistice pledge. M. Hentschke ; C. 273 Fourth commonwealth conference, in session at the State University of Iowa 7 Fox. Dorothy Escaping Seventh street ; C 36 France Army to be cut and term of compulsory training reduced ; EP 519 Chamber of deputies declares sale of "paci- fiers" for babies illegal ; EP 115 Clemenceau's letter to Coolidge ; EP 139 Economic understanding with Germany ; EP 284 France and her politicians. O. G. Villard ; ■ S 395 Galaxy of ex-premiers in cabinet; EP.... 96 New books in France. R. Lalou ; S 533 Peace tendencies in France. A. Lowry ; IS 19 Poincare's efforts to restore finances of his country; EP 139 Tentative economic agreement with Ger- many becomes clearer ; EP 309 ' renoh activities in Syria. N. 11. Anabtnwy ; IS 136 The French family commits murder. R. 665 Refuses to Im- stampeded by Mussolini's thr. sts ; EP. . . , , , 284 Anatole When Boswdls fall out; K 72 Rothschild Further prosecution at hands of Virgin Islands authorities; EP. 574 rani,. Glenn Eliot: iconoclast and builder: S 293 raser. Lindley M Poor old Britain ; C 691 razier, E. Franklin Gai \ • 147 ri-e competition vs. organized induBtry Dear old private initiative. I . 390 ree press A battle of editors. F. Paul; S 346 Lese majeste (limitation of freedom through contempt cases]: E 142 peech Free speech ( ?) in Cincinnati. M. D. Brite ; S 344 "I believe in free speech, but ." H. Allen : S 240 Upheld by board of regents of university of Utah ; EP 651 ree trade A plea for free trade ; 1 461 Denmark and the free-trade conference. C. ('. Piatt; IS 202 Free traders convene. C. C. Piatt; C 14 The great free-trade manifesto; E 442 riedum. S. F. Another modern woman ; C 667 rothingham, Paul Revere. Obituary; EP 627 Gade. Mille ; EP 206 Gaffney, Margaret A. Catullus again ; C 151 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand If Gandhi were emperor ; E 209 Gannett, Uewis S. America's job in China ; S 211 Bolshevism in China ; S 171 China: the world's proletariat; S 122 I never liked missionaries ... ; S "9 Is China being Americanized?; S 31 Mongolia — a nomad republic; S 55 The edge of China ; S 26 Toward the Arctic ocean ; S ,,84 Garrison, Frank W. Laissez-faire ; C 84 ey, Marcus A mass leader. E. F. Frazier ; S 147 The Garvey gospel. J. R. Ditto; C 273 Gassner. John Waldhoru For a thief lynched ; P 107 Gathering of international financiers to consider French finance ; EP 67 Gay Paree ; D 567 Gedye. G. E. R. The real Hungary ; IS 674 General motors and General Andrews; EP.... 159 General motors corporation Distribution of fabulous profits; EP 159 Gentlemen prefer blondes. A. Loos and J. Emerson ; D 409 Georgia Justice in Georgia. E. Colby ; S 32 Germany Economic understanding with France; EP. 284 Enters the League of nations ; E 236 France and Germany, friends. I. Treat ; S. 688 Germany revisited. O. G. Villard; S 447 Give Germany her colonies. P. Snowden ; S 56 "Interallied control" ceases January 31, 1927; EP 653 Is Germany disarmed? L. Fischer; S.... 394 Minority cabinet forced out; EP 678 New understanding with France agreeable to Germany ; EP 309 Railway bonds, key to Franco-German reconciliation ; EP 336 Saving Germany for chewing gum. L. Wender ; C 106 Tentative economic agreement with France becomes clearer ; EP 309 Under second year of Dawes plan ; EP. . . 626 Geshkoff, Theodore Tsanko Bakaloff Tserkovsky ; C 196 Gilbert. A. B. Who killed the Nonpartisan league; C... 151 Gilbert, S. Parker Report ox second year of Dawes plan ; EP 626 GilFillan, S. C. Why profanity declines ; C 481 Gipsies Bury King at Trenton, N. J.; EP 285 Glassie, Henry H. ; E 261 Glass, Montague, and J. E. Goodman Potash and Perlmutter. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 279 Gleaves documents ; EP 677 Gleason, Arthur Glimpses of Arthur Gleason. H. H. Glea- son ; S 102, 149, 194 Land of the free ; S 243 Gleason, Helen Hayes Glimpses of Arthur Gleason; S..102, 149, 194 "Global" tonnage; EP 48

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Vol. cxxiii] Index [July-Dec, 1926 Glyn, Elinor Elinor Glyn's symposium t>ri love; E 5 Cod loves us. J. P. McEvoy; D 459 Gold. Michael Ai a workers' vacation camp; S 294 Where the battle is fought; C 37 •'Cold Rush" '•That lilm- : II' 306 Good fellow . I) -109 Goodrich, Arthur, and Rose A. Palmer Caponsacchi. Criticism. .1. W. Krutch ; I). .Ml Gordon, Irving "Professor Sam, militarist"; (' 272 Gordon, John Wesley [Left Wing Gordon]; E. 117 Cott -chalk. Laura Riding For all our sakes ; P 130 For one who will believe; I' 130 Could, Arthur U. ; EP 57U Government responsibility The king may do no wrong ; E 71 Gozzi, Carlo The princess Turandot. Criticism. ,1. W. Krutch ; D 567 Grand street follies. Criticism. .1. W. Krutch; 1) 63 Grammar Is grammar hunk? S. '1'. Byington ; C.... 59 Graves, Robert Pure death : I> 509 Robert Craves. E. Muir ; S 217 Croat Britain Pritannia still rules ; E 577 Comes to understanding with Italy in re- gard to Abyssinia : EI' 25S J. M. Kenworthy withdraws from lib and joins Labor party; EP 466 Private wars in China : EP 25S Croat Britain Colonies and dominions What is the British empire':' J. B. Hert- zog ; IS 44 Croat Britain Politics and government Britain's midsummer mood. .1. R. Mac- Donald ; S 168 Labor makes sweeping gains in municipal elections ; EP 496 Cre, Condylis replaces Paogalos , EP 185 Guam Women in Guam. M. S. Lea ; S 33 Guitrv, Sacha Mozart. Criticism. J. W. Krutch: D ... 647 Guthrie. William D. Argument against Mexico's anti-clerical legislation ; EP 626 Guy, .lust ice Charles I.. Makes own law in form of an injunc- tion : EP 439 11 Haggin, B. H. Music and common sense — I : M 621 Music .and the external world; M The emotional trend in performance; M.. ISO Haiti Significance of Louis Homo's visit: EP 22 Where American marines hold power. P. Thohy ; C 129 Haldeman-Julius, E. Adds Haldeman- Julius Quart* <ng list of publications ; EP 137 Hall, An. inda Benjamin Live epitaphs ; P 176 Hall. Covington Remarkahler yet : C 247 Hall-Stevens ca.se Acquittal of accused raises question of in- demnification ; EI* Hammerling, Louis N. : S |27 Hanbury Hankin says ; E Hand. Justice Learned Tribute to Louis lirandeis ; EP Hard. William A Hard dilemma ; C. ...... . Bill Hard translates Catullus: C 1) Hardy. Thomas A piece of literary intelligence no scoop ; EP : Hargrett, Lester Henry Timrod ; C . t" ', Harris. Frank Divine wrath . ( ' Harris. Julian : S Harris, Julian ; EP Harris, Louis I. Condemns habit of sha' Hartley. Governor Roland H. : S Hastings, P. Scotch mist. Criticism. J. W. Krutch: D Hauptmann. Gerhart Declines membership in German academv of poetry ; IS Hays. Will H. How old is Will? I Miss I E. Evans: C Heckscher, August Head as well as heart behind project abolishing slums : EP 4t"7 Solving the slums : C 182 Submits plan to eliminate city's slums: E. ''9 Hell. C. E. Stowe ; C Henderson. Edward Are farm speculators entitled to pity?; C. 481 Henry Ford's Utopia. S. Chase ; S 53 Hentschke. Max That armistice pledge ; C 273 Weplor. Hartley H. Ha likes us ; C 430 Herrmann. John, author of "What Happens" ; E 117 . . Mark L. Wants military training for girls as well as boys ; EP II Herzfeld, Max The story of philosophers ; C 347 Hertzog, .1. B. What is the British empire?: IS 4t Hindus A woman without a country. M. K. Das : Justice to Hindus. J. T. Sunderland: I ' The American past fas seen by lal torians] ; E Hobhouse, Emily. Obituary: EP Honorary degrees Degrees of honor : E 1 Hoover, Herbert Clark Rej iun- try ; EP -how- 's at tli ■ horse show : E Houdini, Harry lEric Weiss]. Obituary: EP Hourwich. Rebecca Three black women : S Housing The workers build their own. J. Rorty ; S 322 Howard. Sydney Ned McC ::cism. J. W. Krutch : D 697 Howe. Gurdon The background of art : C Howland. Miss Emily Honored on her hundredth birthday : EP Hsingchi Liu. Frank An army that liberates; C... 4"0 Hsung. H. S.. and four others The voice of Wanhsien : C Hubbard. Wynant I* My black brother Mafeking; S .. 315 h. P. W. The northern literary world : S Hughes. Lain American art or Negro art : C 151 Humphries. Rolfo Text for a bitter vision : P 359 Hungary In Horthv's Hunearv. R. N. Baldwin and others : C The real Hungary. C. E. R. Gedye : IS 674 Trial o s Rakosi and fifty-four other political prisoners : EP 140 Hunt. George W. P. Arizona's river. G. W. P. Hunt: C . 12? Hunter. Fred M. : EP 416 Hygiene Don't kiss! Don't shake! Don't breathe. J. I. ' C ... 640 Shake Hands !; E Hyllebourne, Stephen D. B. Mary Austin on alcohol ; C. ... 1 Ibsen. Henrik The master-builder. Criticism. J. W, Krutch : D Ice age Refrigerated mammo'hs : E If I was rich. W. A. McGuire: D 279 Illinois Corrupt use of money in Republican sena- torial primaries : EP 113 Money in political campaigns: EP 95 Remark: C. Hall ; C 247 The candidacy of Hugh S. Magill ; EP Votes for corruption. C. C. Nash. Jr.: - al thief. T. Barry: D .409 Imperial airways planes and safety ; E Imperialism Who's who in America. R. F. Pettigrew : St Petersl urg. Florida : EP India If Gandhi were ; E . 209 Revolt against the Ku klux klan : EP N Real Indiai real north. A well : C Prof •• Rinley pokes the pig; E 208 cloak, suit. :. mai 439 Extension of factory system to tropics; E 162 1: ire of England : EP n against break- nd the anti-picket- 161 113 rity of the few : to answer. H. Edwards: C 402 cress of philosophers ;e world war ; EP Interns. irment workers Imprisonment in Chirago for engaging in in 1924 : EP 68 Terms of settlement with "inside manu- facturers": EP 548 Ireland My adopted mother. H. W. Nevinson ; S Irving. Laurence The humble. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D. 460 Italy -rone mad ; E . . . 499 Compromises Abyssinian difficulties with Great Britain; EP . 258 Mussolini out-Bonaparts Napol, 48 Reestablishment of nine-hour dav in !: industry : EP 21 Victor Emmanuel opposes decree reestab- lishing death penalty: EP 440 J Julia K. Coui -tern: C 530 n land law; IP 544 f university students; EP . . 115 Japan in Manchuria; IP 490 ::aries demand admission of Asiatics to American citizenship; EP. 141 Okada's order to colleges and schools ; IS. 436 Return to feudalism. H. E. Wildes: IS.. 436 Rickshas supplanted by motor trucks : EP Weirdly mixed of medieval and modern ; EP 652 - -nism in Denver: democracy receives a queen ; Cartoon . 583 son's disciples — 1926 model. Harry S. Bressier : Cartoon 582 Leland Hamilton : EP 22 s, Leslie Nelson Vanguard : P 326 Jersey justice Severe blow dealt hy conduct of Hall-Mills murder trial; EP 141. 574 Wholesale arrests for violating a 179S law; EP 653 hrist Is Jesus a ru_"th ? : E 261 Jeweled tree. G. C. Pier : D 435 J.. L. H. Ceolidge for mayor : C 530 Johnson. James Weldon : EP 388 Paul Something eerie on the Erie: C 403 Jordan, Laurence Retreat ; P 152 Journalism. See Newspapers Juarez and Maximilian. F. Werfel : D 435 Jurisprudence Evolution in legal education: E 143 fe. Criticism.- J. W. Krutch; D 302 K Kahan. Israel Thank God for the Bronx ! : C 324 Ka'.mar.. E. Countess Maritza. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 330 Kane. Florence Bayard Professor Sam, militarist : C 297 ban, L. M. The propaganda war in China: IS 138 (adapter) An American tragedv. Criticism. J W. Krutch ; D 459 Harold t industry : IS 490 Frank Billings : EP 185 George Daisy Mayme. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 488 Mary Lazarus : C 348 Kemmerer. Edwin Walter : EP 336 Harrv The answer : P 322 Frank R. A third term for Coolidge? ; S 685 icky Lynchings of Negroes prevented, but un- just prosecutions continue; EP 310 Kenworthy. Joseph Montague Abyssinia appeals to the league: IS 280 •thy, Joseph Montague : EP 466 William S. ; EP 336 m, Omar ; C 560 d E. Listen : C 59 Carl ly St. Louis; C 530 ers zht of small girls to appear in knickers in Indiana and Kentucky schools; EP.417, 440 s of Columbus Inaugurates campaign of education on con- ditions in Mexico: EP 141 Knowlton, Elizabeth ce in Algeria and Tunisia; IS 303 ai. Alexandra Exclusion bv Secretary Kellogg; EP 495 Kovac. Paul ; S 450 . Leonid. Obituary : Dt 588 Krimsky, Joseph The socialization of medicine : S 398 Krishnamurti. modern Hindu mystic; EP 206 Krutch. Joseph Wood Alloy : D 384 A note on tragedy ; D 646 Broadway ; D 330 Four notes ; D 63

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Index [Vol. exxiii Ibsen restated ; D M IBS Ramheau enjoys herself ; D Nodding Homer ; U Something new in theaters; D lers ; D 589 Square of the Hypotenuse : D The easiest way ; L) 697 The lion turner ; 1) The mind of Werfel ; D The witch : I) Things in the saddle; D Who reads American books'.'; S Ku Mux klan Comment of Greensboro ( N. C.) Daily \. it*; EP. . Controls Indiana state government; EP Routed in Colorado election ; EP Kylsant. Owen Cosby Philippe World's greatest shipping operator; EP Labor — Great Britain British labor in transition. S. Nearing ; La Kollette. Robert Marion La Kollette — still alive: E 3 .•rial service in Washington; E. 3 Laissez-faire. F. W. Garrison; C 84 Lake Denmark. See Denmark (Lake) Lalou. Rene. New books in France; S The importance of Paul Valery ; S. . La Motte. Ellen W. Opium — up to date ; IS ■ -01 Land Japan's alien land law; IP Land of the free. A. Gleason : S 243 Landon, Fred Remember Anthony Burns; C 181 Lane. Winthrop D. Thomas Mott Osborne ; S 478 I.arremore. Thomas A. So-so figures : C 297 Lathrop. Mother Alphonso. Obituary; EP 69 Lawrence school ; S Lawrence, V. Sour grapes. Criticism. J. W. Kruteh ; I). 278 Lea. M Women in Guam; S 33 League of nations Abyssinia appeals to the league : IP 230 Abyssinia appeals to the league. J. M. Ken worthy ; IS 280 American reservations to world court ac- cepted with reservations; EP 309 An illuminating credit and debit balance : EP 17 Attitude towanl weak and powerful na- tions ; EP 47 Bad manners at Geneva [on part of Chi- nese delegate] ; E 312 Definition of "global" tonnage: EP 48 Eminent men demand abolition of com- pulsory military service ; EP 2:i1 Faithless toward Syrians in their strug- gles with the French : EP 17 Farce of American reservations to entering world court ; EP 114 Germany enters the league; E 236 Give Germany her colonics. P. Snowden ; S 56 Man-eaters on vacation. D. G. Mukerji ; C. 296 Unexpected desire to conciliate United States in Geneva; EP 233 Lefkowitz, Abraham Denied promotion ; E 523 Le Gallienne, Eva (Civic repertory theater) ; I). 488 I/ehman. B. H. Oliver Cromwell on prohibition: C 106 Lenglen, Suzanne Reflections on her decision to become a pro- fessional; Dt 150 Lenin's testament Revealed by Max Eastman : EP 415 Max Eastman and Mr. Ochs's money. M. Eastman ; C 640 Lennon. Thomas J. See A California liberal Lenox Hill players Omitted. M. P. Marcus : C 273 Leonard. Jonathan Norton When the oil gives out ; S 5.r>7 Leonard, William Ellery International debt, new style; C 560 Letherman, Lawrence : EP 283 Letter of a little girl worker, with comment : Dt 35 Let well enough alone. C. E. Stowe : C 84 Levebre, Andre ; S 665 Lewis, Alfred Baker Another kind of animal : C 482 Lewis, Judge Robert E. : EP 678 Lewis, Sinclair Mantrapped ; C 84 Lewisohn, Ludwig An unknown poet; S 363 Liberty The great American tradition. C. A. Beard ; S 7 Liberty's solution of French debt and Mexican problems; EP 161 Light-metal-compound experiments; S 55 Lion tamer. A. Savoir ; D 408 Literary criticism Divine wrath. F. Harris ; C 347 Mr. Kruteh and M. France. H. Mulvaney ; C 347 Liter i ion Couplets . I i iture Books and behavior . E Internationa] debt, new style V» E Leonard ; C Laurels for uvt.- : checks for youth i Midway in tl i New books iii France. R. Lalou : S Rediscovering Ihc Revelry and v. I The importance of Paul Valery R Lalou: S The ma E ... 141 The northern literal-) world. B W Huebsch . S in books '.' J. W. Kruteh ; s 1... J. \ « nish as the ownei "; C 103 Locke. America's first pac ; Lockwood. Frank C. I ed news from Arizona : C Look-a-way, Divi,- land! K. Crowther : C 691 V.. and J. Emerson Gentlemen prefer blondes. Criticism. .1 W. Kruteh ; I) 109 California High sign and low sign. K. S. Robin C Louisiana Bible crusaders' reactionary educational propaganda ; EP. . 18 Love "Can cultured people really love?"; E Lovejoy, Mrs. Owen R. Florida again : C 182 Loving, Pierre Roy Van Auken Sheldon; S 227 Lowman case South Carolina's shame; E. . 197 Lowry, Alfred Peace tendencies in France; IS 19 Lozowick, Louis Drawings : S 471 Modern art: Genesis or Exodus?; S 672 Luckner, Count Felix von The sea devil arrives : E 46!) Ludicrous lapses of translators ; Dt 507 Lufthansa Airplanes and safety ; E 500 Lynching Hideous fruit of lynching tree; EP 167 Old policy of doing nothing continues in South : EP 388 South Carolina's shame; E 497 Year's record demands agitation for fed- eral law : EP 519 Lyons, Eugene Class-prosecution— class-defense; C 404 The annual Christmas side-shows; S 6S I M MacDonald. J. Ramsay Britain's midsummer mood ; S 168 Mack. Willard. and David Belasco Fanny. Criticism. J. W. Kruteh; D. MacShane, Mulligan Mexico and the church ; C 222 MacSwiney, Mary ; S 120 Madeiros. Celestino F. ; EP 257 Mafeking My black brother Mafeking. W. D. Hub- bard ; S 315 Magill. Hugh S. ; EP 387 Maine Election scandal centering around Arthur R. Gould; EP 57:: Mammoths Refrigerated mammoths ; E 628 Manchuria Japan in Manchuria ; IP 190 Man from Toronto. Criticism. J. W. Kruteh ; D 63 Manson, Philip Whitewashing the shipping board; C 196 "Mantrap" Man trapped. S. Lewis : C 84 Manuscripts Formula for dealing with manuscripts ; Dt. 295 Maquenne. Leon-Gervais-Marie End of earth life predicated on series of experiments : EP 69 Marcus, Mitchell Padraic Omitted [Lenox Hill players] ; C 273 Marine cows and seagoing sheep and chickens ; Dt 610 Marriage Communism in marriage. C. C. Church ; S 121 Marsh, Benjamin C. Are farm-land speculators entitled to pity?: S 400 Marsh. Daniel L. Abolishes compulsory military training in Boston university; EP 520 Martin, Anne The women's peace congress at Dublin ; IS. 156 Martin, Frank L. Higher education in California ; C 402 Mary had a little lamb Mary, guaranteed genuine. C. S. Ehrman ; C 175 Masefield. John, and Wiers-Jenssen The witch. Criticism. J. W. Kruteh ; D. 623 mint of labor and indust | lar" workei Struggle for fn 11 Allen ; s Wati ••' bt ildi - Comptroller General John Raymond . EP mil. Hurt M. onvicta . S McEvoy, J. P. m .1. W Kruteh 1> 459 \ If I was rich. Criticism. J. W. Kruteh McNab. Tansy Afternoon of a queen : S 452 McPherson, Aimee Semple Aimee Semple McPherson. I>. W. Ryder; S .81 McReynolds, Janus Clark Characterizes supreme court decision "revolutionai y" ; E , 468 I Owen Comparal ive religion i ; P 248 Medicine ocialization of medicine. J. Krimsky : S Mellett, Donald R. Editor of Canton, Ohio, I)ail>i News lint El Mellon. Andrew Position on inter-allied debt problem; E. . 97 I 'I gar Daugherty at tie- bar; S 42:: Fate and the Ohio gang; S 17:'. Merry world review. Criticism. J. W. Kruteh; D Morton, Richard Testifies in case against Daugherty and MilK-r : EP 257 Mexico American effort to overthrow neighboring government ; EP 677 Calles is gaining in Mexico. C. Beats ; S. 320 Catholic church wrongs own members; EP. 160 Conflict between government and Roman Catholic church; E 116 Dispatch announcing revolts in Chihuahua and Durango ; F^P 548 Idols behind altars. A. Brenner; S 396 Knights of Columbus opposes President Calles ; EP 141 Mexico and the church. II. II. Regnet, S. J., A. J. Petty. M. MacShane; C 222 Mexico vs. the Roman church ; E 99 Miracles accomplished by prayer; EP.... 115 Putting Mexico in her place; E 116 Storm signals in Mexico ; E 576 The Mexican church goes on strike. C. Reals ; S 145 W. II. Guthrie's argument against anti- clerical legislation ; EP 626 Michel, Georges ; EP 259 Michels. S. Religion in the medical schools; C 247 Michelson, Clarina Passaic wants help ! ; C 508 Mikado," "The: E 313 Militarism Professor Sam, militarist ; E 187 Professor Sam, militarist. F. B. Kane; C. 297 "Professor Sam, militarist." I. Gordon ; C. 272 Military training Abolished in Boston university ; EP 520 Equivocal conduct of authorities of College of City of New York ; EP General Hersey wants girls to drill as well as boys ; EP 416 Student protests at college of city of New York bear fruit; EP 310 Miller, Thomas W. ; EP 115 Miller. Thomas W. ; S 423 Mims, Edwin Utters reasonable sentiments about the South ; EP 651 Molnar, Ferenc The play's the thing. Criticism. J. W. Kruteh ; D 540 Monet, Claude Claude Monet, 1840-1926. Obituary; E 655 Mongolia A nomad republic. L. S. Gannett; S 555 Mongolia's constitution ; 1 569 Toward the Arctic ocean. L. S. Gannett ; S 584 Moore, Virginia Race; P 431 Moorehead. W. K. Speak up!; C 640 Morley, John Remark on America's entering world war; S 422 Morrison, J. L. Don't kiss! Don't shake! Don't breathe; C. 640 Moss, Arthur H., founder of Quill; Dt 13 Moutoux, John T. Officially pure ; C 106 Movie theater Confessions of a movie reader. R. Sapin ; S 214 Mozart. S. Guitry; D 647 Muir. Edwin Robert Graves : S 217 Mukerji, Dhan Ghopal Man-eaters on vacation ; C 296 Mulle, Antoinette ; S 665

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Vol. cxxiii] Index [July-Dec, 1926 Mullins, Helene The saints on stained glass; P 422 Mulvunoy, H. Mr. Krutch and M. France; C 347 Music A few happy moments. II. Straus; S.... 6!l>'> oolidge. II. Straus; M 512 Music and common sensi — 1. B. II. Haggin ; S 621 Music and the external world. B. H. Haggin : M 382 The emotional trend in performance. B. H. Haggin : M 180 Mussolini. Benito Censorship an admission of weakness; EI' 415 Encounters opposition of Victor Emmanuel; Kl> 140 Fifth attempt at assassination of; EP.... 258 What cost Mussolini? O. G. Villard: S.. 503 N Nagel, Charles Chosen chairman of Business men's com- mission ; El' 574 Nakiii. I,. Pirandello ; 1) 539 Nash. Jr.. Cluster C. Illinois votes for corruption : S National association of manufacturers Demands revision downward of tax sched- ule; EP N. ional horse .show association of America. Ltd. Ghosts at the horse show ; E 57S Nationalism vs. patriotism Disguised as itself? S. T. Byington ; C... 153 National lawn tennis association Admits white members only ; EP Naughty Riquette. H. B. Smith; D 302 Navy league Ua-is an America strong enough to gain respect for its ideals ; EP 1 1 G Near East Persia and Turkey form an alliance. IP Nearing, Scott British labor in transiti n ; IS 331 Wins right to speak before university of Utah ; EP Nisi McCobb's daughter. S. Howard: I) 697 Negroes. .See also Lynching Negroes American art or Negro art? L. Hughes: (' let Conference of N. A. A. C. P.: EP ! Escaping Seventh street. D. Fox; C. 36 Fewer lynchings but continuing unjust prosecutions in Kentucky; EP 310 Fight again.: disfranchisement; EP l : a mass leader. E. F. Frazier ; S. 1 ;17 elation, by Scripps-H EP 627 against The Nation; EP Independence maintain' EP SS Manufacturing news : v. Outspoken Wytheville EP Survey Graphic's issue on Womai EP The fake of the century : E The ereatest newspaper in the world : E. 2S7 The Hall-Mills case in the newspapers. S Bent : S The immigrant press at election time. A Parry : S 426 Treatment by prominent papers of chem- ist's milk analysis ; EP 467 Valentino and yellow journalism; E 207 World's splendid service in Sacco-Vanzetti case ; EP New York as a target And what about Europe? B. Shadwell ; C New York bar association Protests against misrepresenting adminis- tration of criminal law ; EP New York (city) Gratifying results of tiny garden plot: EP !77 I. R. T. sues sixty-two strikers for dam- ages ; EP 1S6 Issues of subway strike: EP 22 Manhunting on the subway. P. Blanshard : S 74 New York Southern society sponsors criti- cism of South ; EP 651 Recent outbreak in the Tombs; EP 496 Skyscraper 110 stories in height: EP Striking workers encounter violence at hands of police; EP The buncombe of bigness ; E New York (state* For sale — 48.000,000 horses: E 24 Governor Smith fights and triumphs in water-power fight; EP 440. 625 Mud-slinging election campaign: EP.. 440 Water-power commission plans to away power resources of St. Lawrence river : E P 625 New Zealand New Zealand's family dole. T. Walsh; IS Nicaragua Big brother or big bully : E Dollar diplomacy uppermost in dealings with Latin America : EP President Diaz profits from association with United States state department: EP... t">_ Recognition refused President Chamorro ; E The Nicaraguan farce. C. Beals : S.. .. 631 United States refuses to recognize Cha- morro: EP Niebuhr. Reinhold : EP Night in Paris: D 460 Niles. Abbe Rediscovering the spirituals: S . 5;>s Nitgedaiget At a workers' vacation camp. M. Gi N.. L. Our airfleet a century ago : C N.. L. O. South Tyrol again: IS.. 229 Nobel prize Laurels for age: checks for youth: E. No foolin'. Criticism. J. W. Krutch: D ... 63 Noonan. A. M. The eucharistic congress ; C. ..... , Nordmeyer. H. W. : C Norman. Charles Chant of the old men in :h Noah. J. Falstaff 473 Not to you only. O Pythian. M. Austin : S. 601 Now the sky. M. Van Doren 405 Pure death. R. Graves 509 Race. V. Moore 431 Retreat. L. Jordan 152 Second song. L. Bogan 246 Silence. H. S. White 401 Smoke goes up slowly. E. Siegel 193 Text for a bitter vision. R. Humphries.. 359 The answer. H. Kemp 322 The Cock. J. Falstaff 35 The river. J. Rorty 359 The saints on stained glass. H. Mullins. . 422 The seventh veil. G. Sterling 455 Vanguard. L. N. Jennings 326 What will she do with seven fat years. C Calkins 668

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N Index [Vol. cxxiii Words for a young woman who wanted to die. J . Rorty Poetry A little poetry ; E 391 An unknown poet. L. Lewisohn ; S The Nation's poetry prize Ill, 487, 611 638, 666. 618. 646, 672. 696 The road to the spring. M. Austin; S.... 360 Poison gas Abolition of its use before senate: EP Destroys plague of locusta in Crimea; F,P 206 Is disapproval baaed on sentiment or knowledge ; EP 206 Poland Attempt to get along without Diet thwarted by foreign intervention ; BP Disturbing upper Silesian elections; BP Pilsudaki's warning ; IP Wins semi-permanent sent on league coun- cil ; EP 284 Political prisoners After prison, thanks. C. (.'line ; C 3 17 Portuguese West Africa Where slavery still rules ; IP 263 Post office The ayes have it. J. B. Barnhill : C 128 Potash and Perlmutter. M. Glass and J. E. Goodman : D 279 1'oemkin. Criticism. E. Evans; D 252 " l'otemkin" How old is Will? (Miss) E. Evans Poyntz. Juliet Stuart ; S C.'.iO Prairie The house on the prairie ; E 287 Praise He likes us. H. H. Hepler: C ISO Indispensability dispensed. Chi-Chen Wang ; 482 Listen. W. E. King; C Pretshold, Karl Fred 11. Moore ; C 403 Princess Turandot. C. Gozzi : D 567 Prison beauty. (Mrs.i O. Widmayer: C 403 Private Bersot's trousers : II' 64 Private property Supreme court renders revolutionary de- cision : E 419 That glorious word — damn. Y. S. ; C. The lost art of profanity. J. N. BetTel ; S. 270 Why profanity declines. S. C. GilFillan ; C 4S1 Profits— Service? C. Ains worth : C 12'J Prohibition Criticism of political methods of Anti- Saloon league : EP 573 Defeat by senate of "under-cover men" appropriation ; EP 078 Much ado about a very little : E I Not a dead issue ; E 497 Oliver Cromwell on prohibition. B. H. Lehman : C 106 Paradoxical results in case of growers of wine grapes : EP 389 Reed-King-La Follette committee subjects anti-saloon league in Pennsylvania to in- quisition ; EP 4 Sops up interest like a sponge; EP 335 I l>s and downs of wets and drys ; EP.... 2 Public health Sickness largely preventable; EP 389 I'ubtic Lcdqcr, Philadelphia Fearful lest it hurt Roman catholic feel- ings; EP 117 The cardinals on Sunday. E. H. Whelan ; C 50S Public utilities Who can value utilities ? ; EP 678 Publishing houses, new John Day Company ; E 578 Vanguard Press ; E 578 Purity On the purity of readers. R. J. Conklin ; C 175 Officially pure. J. T. Moutoux ; C 106 Pygmalion. G. B. Shaw ; D 566 Queen High. L. Schwab and R. G. do Sylva : D 302 Queen Marie Afternoon of a queen. Tansy McNab : S . 452 How she is welcomed ; EP 417 Marie's Rumania ; E 470 Democracy receives a queen; Cartoon... . 583 R Race antagonism Conflict between white and yellow in Oak- land ; EP 416 Rai. L. Lajpat ; IP 332 Railroads Bribery of press charged ; EP 417 President Coolidge stacks cards against labor: EP 68 Rakosi, Matthias : EP 140 Rangel, General Jose M. ; EP 205 Ransdell, Hollace Disaster loves workers ; S 450 Ravenswood, Henry J. Pay that debt in maple sugar; C 175 Record, Augustus P. ; EP 387 Reflections on "The Inside Secrets of Photo- play Writing" ; Dt 127 Regnet, S. J.. Henry 11. Mexico and the church ; (' Religion Is Jesus a myth ? ; E 261 • ■• officers association Demands action against organizatio: working for peace; EP 116 or recreation ; B . "Revelry"; E Ripley, William /. . pokes the pig ; K Robinson, Bevier Who's who in Wisconsin ; S . 220 Robinson, Karl Si High sign and low sign ; C 403 Rochester, Anna The nationalists take Wuchang . S They starve in Bulgaria . I Rogers, Henry Wade. I EP . ISC, Roman catholic church Annulment of Marlborough- Vandcrbilt mar- riage by Rota ; EP Eucharistic congress in Chicago; EP.. Mexico vs. the Roman church ; E 99 Pursues unchristian policy in Mexico: EP. . 160 The eucharistic congress. A. M. Noonan ; C . . . . 348 Rorty. .lames The river : P . 359 The workers build their own; S 322 Words for a young woman who wanted to die . P 223 Rosenthal. II. M. Mary Austin on alcohol; C 83 Ross, Mary; EP 653 Rothermere. Viscount [Harold Sidney Harms- wort hi Observations on Europe's debt to America; EP 140 Royse, M. W An air law for America ; S 659 Ruadh. Tarn E. L. Doheny, LL.D. : C 38 Rubber The smell of rubber ; E 71 Rubber industry' Financial condition of prominent com- panies; EP 285 Tender concern for it of President and Secretary Hoover; EP 285 Russia A cavalcade into the mountains; Dt 346 Communism ... a religion'.' L Fischer: S 686 Communism comes to the village. V. Dan- chakoff ; S 471 Continuing rule of bolsheviki and progress in past six years; EP 465 Continuing untenable sensational news from Moscow: EP 160 Differences in ranks of communist party ; EP 234 Hydroelectric development on Dnieper river; E 311 Increase of wages in the USSR; IP.... 492 Nine years of Bolshevism. L. Fischer: S. 471 Opposition in the Soviet Union [Stalin's report, and speeches by Kamenev, Trot- zky, and Stalinl ; IP 698 Railways which make a profit: EP 68 Russia, the land of contradictions. S. Eddy; IS 349, 410 Seizure of power bv bolsheviki nine years ago; EP 165 Sochi dreams. M. Tyler : S 171 Soviet industry. H. Kellock : IS 490 Speak up! W. K. Moorehead : C...... 640 Statement of opposition in Communist party ; EP 415 The USSR and the Chinese Eastern rail- way. G. Chicherin ; IS 491 "What we saw in Russia" [report of Danish trade unionists] : IS 91 Zinoviev ousted from political bureau of Communist Party ; EP 9f, Ryder. David Warren Aimee Semple McPherson : S 81 Sacco-Vanzetti case Application for new trial; EP 257 Boston Herald reverses position; EP 495 Class-prosecution — class-defense. E. Lvons ; C 404 Demand for congressional investigation ; EP 548 Demand for new trial impregnable; EP. . 283 Fred H. Moore. K. Pretshold; C 403 Implication of federal department of jus- tice ; EP 283 Judge Thayer refuses new trial; EP 439 New light on an old story- T. O'Connor ; S 263 One hundred members of Paris bar ask for release of Sacco and Vanzetti ; EP... 495 Paving the way. A. Warner; S 266 The red raids. R. W. Dunn; S 267 Sandalwood. O. Davis ; D 384 Sapin, Ruth Confessions of a movie reader ; S 214 Sapir. Edward Music brings griefs ; P 85 Sargent, John Garibaldi ; EP 283 Saturday night. J. Benavente y Martinez: D. 488 Savoir, Alfred The lion tamer. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D 408 Scandi navia The northern literary world. B. W. Hueosch . S r,32 Schuyler. George S. Negroes and arl Schwab. I... and II 0, de Sylva Queen High. Criticism. J. W. KruU-h ; I). 302 SchwarUbard, Sholem [assassin of Petlura] . I Science Television miik<-s possible intrusion on pri- vacy ; EP 679 Scotch mist ga .|i 'Sea Devil" ; E ti.'i Sesquicentennial fourth of July; EP 1 Shadwell, Bertrand And whnt aboul Europe?; C Religion and e\ Shapley, Harlow; E 163 Shaw. George Bernard Awarded Nobel prize in literature; EP. . 520 Pygmalion. Criticism. J. W. Krutch ; D The importance of being a socialist; E.. 209 Three score and ten ; EP Sherman. Stuart Stuart Sherman. Obituary ; E 188 Shipping Royal mail steamship company buys the White star line ; EP 575 Shipstcad. Henrik In caucus with himself ; EP 649 Price-fixing for the farmer: S 101 Shohan. J. B. After oil ; C 691 Siebert, Baron Benno von. Obituary; EP r,9 Siegel. Eli Smoke goes up slowly ; P 193 Sinclair, Upton Education a la legion ; C 348 "Singing jailbirds" ; C 247 Slavery Where slavery still rules ; IP 263 Slums Cleaning up the slums; E 419 Solving the slums. A. Heckscher ; C 482 Solving the slums. W. !•'. Suender ; C... 641) Smith, H. B. Naughty Riquette. Criticism. J. W. Krutch; D 302 Smith, Jesse Pivot in trial of Harry Daugherty ; EP... 285 Snodgrass, Paul C. "Dry" [J. E. Martineau] ; C 247 Snowden, Philip America should cancel the war debts; S.. 104 Give Germany her colonies ; S 56 The key to European peace ; S 216 Sochi dreams. M. Tyler ; S 477 Socialism and life The importance of being a socialist; E.. 209 Socialist party Another kind of animal. A. B. Lewis: C. 482 Something eerie on the Erie. P. Jones; C... 403 Sorel, Mme Cecile ; D 697 Sour grapes. V. Lawrence ; D 278 Sousa, John Philip Reflections on Sousa's refusal to retire as bandmaster ; Dt 559 South Africa Undergoes a war of flags ; EP 259 South America Professor Sam, militarist; E 187 Speyer, Leonora Further commandment ; P 39 Squall ; D 567 Strikes — Great Britain American coal breaks British strike; EP... 335 An invitation to revolution [through the ob- stinacy of coal-owners] ; E 51 Churches throw weight to miners' side; EP 68 Coal miners face defeat ; EP 235 Coal strike in its twentieth week; EP 284 Coal strike reaches unhappy end; EP 466 Great suffering in consequence of coal strike and lockout ; EP 159 Proposals by government's heads in coal strike ; EP 284 Refutation of spokesman for coal owners on unprofitableness of industry; EP 389 Starvation and surrender; E 339 The unimportance of railways. W. Taylor; 84 Why was the British strike called off? W. N. Ewer; S 9 Strikes — United States Bertha, the sewing-machine girl. A. W. Craton ; S 689 Breaking strike of Indianapolis street-car men by Judge Baltzell : EP 160 Constitutionalism in industry; EP 206 Disaster loves workers. Hollace Ransdell ; S 450 Exposure of charge that Passaic strike is engineered by Communist Party; EP.... 114 Final lawless effort to crush Passaic strike ; EP 310 Garment workers settle with "inside manu- facturers" ; EP 548 I. R. T. sues strikers for damages; EP 186 Manhunting on the subway. P. Blanshard ; S 74 Mill-owners refuse to deal with A. F. of L. ; EP 185 Notable victory of cap-makers ; EP 206 Passaic strikers admitted to United textile workers of America ; EP 160 Passaic wants help I C. Michelson ; C-... 508 Problem of ladies' garment workers on strike ; EP 22 Questionable policy of Textile Worker in Passaic strike ; EP 23

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Vol. cxxiii] Index [July-Dec, 1926 Settlemenl of Passaic textile workers' strike; EP 679 So-called citizens' committee prolongs unci intensifies trouble at Passaic; EP Ill Solidarity of labor behind Passaic strikers: EP 2 Statement of Governor Smith's advisory commission ; EP 22 Strikers as various ,-ls pickles; EP 161 .lui won strike for textile workers ; EP 679 Tricks to break Passaic strike; EP Violent labor outburst in Rhode Island nulls ; EP. 235 •\Vhii. -collar strike" in Chicago successful; EP HI Stallings, Laurence, and W. F. Harling Deep river. Criticism. .1. VV. Krutch ; IK. 40s Stanton, Elizabeth Cady On the conservatism of women: lit Slii Inn;. George. Obituary ; EP Sterling, George 'I'h.- seventh veil .1' ■ 455 Stern. Max ( lotion goes v, est ; S. -'-' St. Louis, Missouri Saintly St. Louis. C. Kizkage ; C Stolberg, Benjamin William Green's convention; S 449 Stone, Claude I lown with everything ; C Stowe, Charles Edward Hell; C Let well enough alone ; (' S4 Straus, Henrietta A few happy moments ; S Mrs. Coolidge; M 512 Straus. Wilma Marx From a Richmond garden ; C. . . . 325 Strawn, Silas Disregarded by China ; E 522 Suender, W. Frederick Solving the slums ; C 640 Sun Chuang-fong Announces salt revenues will be needed for military campaign ; E Sunderland, .1. T. Justice to Hindus : C 296 Suzzallo, Henry A political crisis in education. C. Collins; S S.. V. That glorious word — damn ; C Syria The French activities in Syria. N. H. Anabtawy ; IS ... 136 Syril, Mile Jenny ; 1) 697 Tabert, Martin ; S 479 Tacna-Arica Promising solution of wra een Chile and Peru; EI' 626 Taxation Income-tax "rebate" . EP. Treason! C. R. Butler. Taylor. Judge Franklin; EP 196 Taylor. William The unimportance of railways I in the Brit- ish coal strike | ; C 8 ! Teapot Dome Opinion reversing decision of lower and favoring government's case; F.I' Tenth annual Negro tennis tournament One hundred players contend for Rh cup ; EP 161 Texas Still a lone star state ; EP Thayer. Judge Webster; EP 439 The humble. L. Irving: D... -160 The spirit of '76 ; Dt They all want something ; I).. 135 This was a man. N. Coward ; D Thoby. Perceval Where American marines hold power : C 129 Thompson. Carmi H.-haves like American gentleman in Zam- boanga : FP 205 Mo-is independence demon- the Philippines; EP. Mission to save the Philippines for rub e ; i Thompson. William Goodrich Demands new trial of Sac. E P Three sisters. A. Chekho\ . 1' Timrod, Henry Henry Timrod. I.. Harr Towse, J. Rank Fate and the Ohio gang. E. Mels ; S . 173 Government by crooks? ; E 6S0 How to vote; E Long service in congress ; E ■Iidge. the election, and the future : E National program for power development : E .... . . 24 Old-fashioned tariff reform not enough : EP 21 Postmaster general's striking report: EP . 652 get us into war with Mexico : E >n between tariff and graft in na- tional politics : EP 67 Revelry and whispers : E silent partner. Boston Jour- : S 42! ran. what of the night?: E 2S6 in enables exec of accounts : EP 167 The Pennsylvania patriot's duty: elect a democrat. G. W. Norris : S 2S The pel : E 260 • as revolutionary: F. 46S The vie tling America in polit EP 1'weedledee : E 41S nment of con? EP 1 of an awakening wesUand : EP. 21 V. says to Pennsylvania: F. 50 Who's who in B. Robins :ird Whitewashing the shipping board.. P. Man- C 196 The tariff and the farmer. G. W. N S expediency : EP The strikers to member- EP -: in Rhc 1 EP United workers' c association The workers 1 wn. J. Roi N ws decree E Letters upon Miss Emilv Howland: EP- 548 .-.1 of regents of university upholds Nearing . EP V Vacation camp* At a workers vacation camp. M. Gold; P. 294 Valentino. Rudolph Valei ;malism: E 207 Valentine obituary literature; Dt .. 221 VaJery Paul : S .597 Van Doren. Mark 326. S' - .".41. 666 Now the 405 Van Dusen. C. B. : F 387 van Loon. Hendr Cartoons 6. 100. 119. 144. 165. 2. 630. 657. Vegetables A study ;r. the history of vegetables; Dt 246 Vehicle of the world teacher Krishnamurti : EP ... . 206 Vener . Mr. Brv.,-. -.stein : C Venezuelan labor union A Venezuelan spea Vernon. M. w. Criticism. J. W. Krutch: D.... 385 Vierkoetter, Ernst : EP 206 Vill3rd. Oswald Garrison America's crop of hate: S 126 ■ -a. overlord of Europe : S . 421 France and her politic 395 Germany revisit,., S 447 What cost Mussolini?: S . 503 Vivas. Eliseo The critic's answer : S. . . . . 600 Vlido. George. Obituary: EP. ... . 285 W P. Beaumont Should actors be themselves ? : C 453 Waldinger. E An unknown poet. L. Lewisohn : S 363 WaLsh. T. New Zealand's family dole ; IS 516 War di America should cancel the war debts. P. vden : S 104 How- America fools herself. L. Fischer: S. 166 Judge Bausman judges. F. Bausman ; C. 508 Observations by Newton Baker: EP 233 Observations by Viscount Rothermere : EP. 140 Pay that debt in maple sugar. H. J. Ravenswood ; C 175 Poor old Britain. L. M. Fraser : C 691 Putting America in a hole — the lesson of the debts. J. Carter: S 77 Those debts ; E 97 Warner. Arthur Paving the way : S 266 Washington. George The image and the man. I. Schoolboy and swain : II. Gunpowder and petticoats ; III. Ahorse. W. E. Woodward ; S.290, 317, 342 Watchung community pie association Discourse on pies ; Dt 690 Water power commission of New York Invites Frontier corporation to make bids; EP Weeks. G. F. Why New England prospers : C 297 Woisbord. Albert Spurious breach-of-promise case: EP 310 .:. Albert : EP 185 George Herbert Publication of "The World of William Clissold" : EP 235 Wender. Liesbeth Saving Germany from chewing gum; C... 106 W'erfel. Franz Juarez and Maximilian. Criticism. J. W. Krutch : D. . . 435 George P. California's new governor : S 502 Weyand. Fred J. : EP Js:; Whelan. Edward H. Mary Austin on alcohol ; C 82 The cardinals on Sunday : C 508 "Whispering gallery" : E 628 ter, Robert Progress ? ; C 481 "White-collar" workers How much money do they receive?: EP.. 679 Hal Saur. Dream of the corn ; P 298 ice; P 401 Hal Saunders : E 26 White. Walter Reports to Governor McLeod on Lowman case ; E 197 Widmayer, (Mrs.i O. Prison beauty : C 403 Hilliard •tin' night in Arkansas : C 453 Delos F. ; EP 678 Harry Emerson Japan returns to feudalism : IS 436 Wilkinson, Fallen --ing jailbirds" : C 247 -. Colonel Charles A. Obituary: EP.. 69 s. Evan; EP 38» ns, George Washington: EP 574 mson, Guy- War, inc. : C 403 - -town institute of politics Discussion of international affairs in atmos- phere of academic tea : EP. r 161 Wilson. William B. Counted out in Philadelphia: EP 652 Wine grapes Prosperity of growers in California; EP. . 389

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)8] Ind e\ [Vol. cxxiii Wisconsin Progressive Wisconsin wins and loses. It Ulen . s >'t who in Wisconsin. If. Robinson . S. '-"JO Witch. J. Masefield and Wiers-Jenssen . 1> 623 Women Another modern woman. S. F. ! C 601 Comparative achievement* in politics; EP. 95 Mother's daughter. Anonymous The making of a militant. Anonymous The peacock's tail. Anonymous Why I earn my own living. Anonymous ten and politics Conservatism of women : Dt. . . S3 Women a interna jue for peace and freedom The women's peace congress at Dublin. A. Martin ; IS 166 Woods. J. B. C. How many miles to culture"; C Something in a name: C Wood. Leonard General Wood plays Mussolini ; E . 551 Woodward. \\ I li«\>rge Washington — the image and the man. I. Schoolboy and swam: II. Gun- powder and petticoats: 111. Ah S 290, SI :. 342 World alliance for international friendship through the churches Favors calling conference to outlaw war ; EP 520 World migration congress Color and world migration : 11' 332 Wright. R. Charlton; EP 661 Yellow. M. Vernon; D .38:. Yiddishe cooperative heimgeselshaf! Constructs an apartment building. J. Rorty ; S 323 Young men's Christian association M. C. A.T; E . .... 1SS Withdraws invitation to American federa- tion of labor to address its members : EI' 3S7 Z Zangwill. Israel Israel Zangwill. Obituary : E 117 Zeigler miners' case ; E 237 Zinoviev. Gregory ; EP 96 Zorin. Victor In defense of fascism : C . . 588 Zotti. Frank : S 427 Zulus Three black women. R. Hourwich : S . ... 505 BOOK REVIEWS Books are indexed under author and title. and in some cases und. r subject. The following explanatory letters are used in the index : B Book review AN Brief annotation R Reviewer A Abbott. Edith Historical aspects of the immigration prob- lem ; B 250 Abbott. Wilbur Cortez, J. Jusserand, C. W. Colby, and J. S. Bassett Writing of history ; AN 408 Acoma, the sky city. W. T. Sedgwick; AN.... 155 Adams, James Truslow New England in the republic ; B 379 Addresses. S-K. A. Sze : AN 538 Adler, Mortimer J. : R 298, 606 Aegean civilization. G. Glotz ; B 61 After the ball : forty years of melody. C. K. Harris: AN 155 Aldington. Richard Voltaire ; AN 134 Alexander's feast. J. Dryden ; AN 155 Alexander, Hartley Burr L'Art et la philosophie des Indiens de l'Amerique du nord ; B 455 Alexander, Hartley : R 42 Alvord, Clarence Walworth : R 379. 485 American foreign investments. R. W. Dunn ; B. 108 Americana 1926. H. L. Mencken, editor; AN.. 619 American spirit in architecture. T. F. Hamlin ; B 223 American spirit in letters. S. T. Williams; B. 223 American year book. A. B. Hart and W. M. Schuyler, editors ; AN 199 Ananikian, Mardiros, H. Mythology of all races. Vol. VII: Ar- menian ; B 88 Ancient inhabitants of the Canary islands. E. A. Hooten ; B 133 Anderson, Sherwood, notebook ; AN 155 Andrews, Roy Chapman On the trail of ancient man: B 484 I>u Hose Heyward . B Animula vagula. L. Bacon . B Annuls of the American a. and social science New values in child welfare: AN it*. 1'. Reid . AN Arceval. Julio S. de M Sacred giraffe. Beii ond volume of the posthumous works of Julio Arce- val ; 1! Arcturus adventure \\ Art in painting \ \\ i.so Art of thought. G. Wallas ; II Ashury. Herbert Up from Methodism . B Ashley. Percy ope from It IT Ash. Sholom. R itor Kiddush hashem . ); Attributes of god. 1.. R Farnell ; It Auslander, Joseph eye ; IS Austin. Stephen K.. life of. E. C. Barker. AN. 199 Austrulia. western. J. S Battye ; \N Awakening of China. .1 11 Pols,!,; AN nu P. Pah. Julius Richnrd Dehmel. Die geschichte cincs .AN Shakespeare, wesen und werke . AN round of English literature. H. J. C. Grierson ; H . .... 644 Leonard mula vagula ; It 271 Baili y, John Walt Whitman; AN 156 Pa',., r. Philip Noel League of nations at work ; AN 538 Baldwin, Frances Elizabeth Sumptuary legislation and personal regula- tion i I; AN 199 Barbellion, W. N. 1>. R. H. Hellyar ; AN 458 Barker, Eugene C. Life of Stephen F. Austin; AN 199 Barnes. Albert C. Art in painting; AN 1*0 Barnes, Harry Elmer Repression of crime; B 133 Genesis of the world war ; B 198 Barnes. Harry Elmer; R 131. 177, 223 Barres. Jean-Baptiste Memoirs of a Napoleonic officer; B 15 Barrett. Sir William, and R. M. Barrett Christian science. An examination of the religion of health ; B 153 BashkirtselT. Marie. M. J. Serrano, translator; B 85 Basset t. John Spencer Southern plantation overseer as revealed in his letters ; AN 227 Bassett. John Spencer, J. Jusserand, W. C. Abbott, and C. W. Colby Writing of history; AN 408 Bates, Ernest Sutherland; R 132, 152, 670 Battye, J. S. Western Australia. A history from its dis- covery to the inauguration of the com- monwealth : AN 301 Baudran, Baron : R 535 Bausman, Frederick Que Franeia explique ; AN 135 Bausman, Frederick ; R 198 Bausman, Frederick Facing Europe ; B 564 Beebe, William Arcturus adventure : B 225 Beer, M. Social struggles and modern socialism : AN. 408 Bell. Lisle : R 89. 199 Belloc. Hilaire Miniatures of French history; AN 610 Benedict, Ruth ; R 87 Benet, Laura ; R 457 Benn, Ernest J. P. If I were a labour leader : AN 381 Benson, Stella Goodbye, stranger ; AN 696 Beyond the milky way. G. E. Hale; AN 458 Bipolar theory of living process. G. W. Crile. A. F. Rowland, editor ; B 371 Black Haiti. B. Niles ; AN 110 Black, Jack You can't win; B 605 Black, John, translator Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni ; AN 620 Blake, William, letters to Thomas But's ; AN.. 180 Blake, William, prophetic writings. D. J. Sloss and J. P. R. Wallis, editors; B 176 Blanchard, Frederic T. Fielding the novelist ; B 483 Blanshard, Paul : R 612 Blues: an anthology. W. C. Handy, editor. A. Niles. introduction ; AN 155 Boas. Franz ; R 644 Bodenheim, Maxwell Ninth avenue ; AN 696 Bolsche, Wilhelm Love-life in nature; B 606 Bolitho, William Murder for profit ; AN 458 Bond, Drew ; R 276 Book 1 ists Loeb classical library ; Broadway transla- tions ; Selections, collections, and reprints; AN 458 ",H'k ounl II I. edi- I wine P M shand . It irmand. Hart,. v D'Au de Maupassant . It Madelnine, I Mi' , i ■ a Kenneth Hoy's Mfc of Itanium II \\ p, Bradford, Gamaliel Darwin . \ N Brandt Hell i nburg, Erich \ on ,im welt i. i Herman I German-English dictionary; AN . \:>r, . Dorothy ; R . . 152 Brillat-Savarin, Joan Anthelme Physiology of taste; AN Britannia J. Thomson : AN Brittle heaven. B. Deutsch ; AN Broadway translations; AN. Pro.lv. Alter ; R Broken earth. M. Hindus; B ..... [52 I.I. Louis Early autumn ; I! gi.i Canon J. A. R. der in fact and fiction; AN 4r,,s Broun, Heywood Can.lle follows his nose ; AN is Brown.-. Ix'wis This believing world ; B 299 Brown. Ford K Life of William Godwin; I! 249 Brown. Roll, i I Dean Briggs ; AN 199 Brown. William Montgomery My heresy ; B 552 Brown, W. Norman ; R 62 Bryan, William Jennings, memoirs of; I!... 41 Buchholz. H. E. U. S. : A second study in democracy: B. . 374 Buchholz. H. E. ; R 510 Bulfinch, Charles. C. A. Place; B 60 Bunin, Ivan Mitya's love ; B 612 Burgess. R. L. ; R ,', 605 Burns. Walter Noble Saga of Billy the Kid; B .10 Buxton. L. H. Dudley Peoples of Asia ; B 61 By the city of the long sand. A. T. Hobart: AN 199 Calderon de la Rarca, Pedro. Dr. M. V. Depta ; AN Calleott, Wilfrid Hardy Church and state in Mexico, 1X22-1857; B.. 615 Calverton, V. F. Sox expression in literature; B 69,] Canfield, Dorothy Her son's wife ; B 249 Cardington. Lord Thomson of Smaranda. A compilation in three parts ; „ . B ■ 198 Carrere, Jean Pope ; B 250 Carroll, E. Malcolm Origins of the whig party; AN 4:! Carroll, Lewis Further nonsense, verse and prose; AN... 511 Carson, Gerald ; R Case, Shirley Jackson; R 179, :)so Cassel, Gustav Fundamental thoughts in economics: AN.. 227 Castro, Americo El pensamiento de Cervantes ; B 535 Gather. Willa My mortal enemy ; B 484 Causes and their champions. M. A. DeW. Howe ; AN 619 Century of stupendous progress — 1825-1025. J. McCabe ; AN 4,08 Chamberlain, George Agnew Man alone ; AN 18 Chase, Cleveland B. ; R 695 Chase. Stuart ; R 563 Cheney, Horace B., and G. Warren Romance of design ; AN ISO Chiffons de papier. A. Ebray ; B 535 Christian science. Sir W. Barrett, and R. M. Barrett ; B 153 Chronicle of Cler-iendy. A. Machen ; AN 434 Church and state in Mexico. W. H. Calleott : B 614 City of the saered well. T. A. Willard ; B.... 42 Clarke, Sir Edward Benjamin Disraeli ; B 607 Clark, Jane Perry ; R 250 Clark. John Maurice Social control of business ; B 197 Clarkson, J. D. ; R 154 Clean up. M. L. Luther; AN 610 Cobden-Sanderson : journals ; B 455 Colby, Charles W., J. Jusserand, W. C. Abbott, and J. S. Bassett Writing of history ; AN 408 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. H. I'A. Fausset ; B. 405 Collins, William Persian eclogues, 1742 ; AN 155

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Vol. cxxiii] Ind Daly. Reginald Aldworth Our mobile earth ; AN 4sb Dark of the moon. S. Teas dale ; B 608 Darwin. G. Bradford; AN 619 Das [ranzosische gelbbuch von 1914. A. von Wegerer ; AN 539 Davis. Elmer Friends of Mr. Sweeney: AN Zol Dean Briggs. R. C. Brown ; AN 199 Debits and credits. R. Kipling; 1! »0J Dehmel. Richard. J. Bab; AN 538 de Koven, Mrs. Reginald Musician and his wife; 1> 457 Delaporte, L. Mesopotamia. The Babylonian and Assyrian civilization ; B 6' Democratic way of life. T. V. Smith; B.... 694 Depta. Dr. Max Victor Pedro Caideron de la Barca ; AN Deutsch, Babette Brittle heaven ; AN.. 434 Deutsch. Babette; R I'9 Dewing, E. B. My son John ; B 45i Dibble. R. F. ; R -JO Dibble. K. F. Mohammed : B . 4o6 Dickinson, G. Lowes International anarchy, 1904-1914; B 39 Dictionary of modern English usage. H. W. Fowler; AN Die malerei der eiszeit. II. Kiihn ; B 536 Die Rheinp ser Napoleons III. H. Oncken ; B 537 Disraeli, Benjamin. Sir E. Clarke; B 607 Disraeli an.l Gladstone. D. C. Somervell; B.. 607 , Bellamy Essays in biography; AN .. 110 Dublin, Alfred Reise in Polen ; AN Dollar diplomacy. S. N nan : B -108 Dolsen, James H. i : AN .110 Don. gal woi i anus ; AN R 604, 612 ■„ Paul II. ; R 10S Dowd, Jerome Ann rican 668 Drvilen. John Alexander's feast : or the power of musiqi VN ..... . Duclaux. Mary I A. Mary F Life of Racine; AN 110 Dunn. Robert \V. B . 10S Duplay, Maurice Our VN ■ 434 Durant, Will Story of ■ B n. I.. Bromfield ; B B. 274 Ucide Chiffons de papier ; B. . . i. M. M. \N 40S Eddison. E. K. . B Worm Ou 87 Educat ica. T. J port by; AN Education ii Lussia. S. Nearing; AN 90 Elder brother. A Elephants and ethl G. E. Smith; Eliot, Charlotte Savonarola: a dramatic poem; AN 155 Elliot, Margaret M., and D. Hartley Life and work of the people of England. A pictorial record from contemporary sources. Fifteenth century. Sixteenth century ; AN El pensamiento de Cervantes. A. Castro; B.. 535 Elser, Frank B. Keen desire : AN End of laissez faire. J. M. Keynes ; B 248 England. W. R. Inge ; B 602 English madrigal. E. H. Fellowes ; AN 110 Enquiry concerning political justice. W. God- win. R. A. Preston, editor ; AN Epic of industry. M. Keir ; B 223 Essays in biography; 1680-1726. B. Dobree : AN Essays on nationalism. C. J. H. Hayes: B Ethical movement, fiftieth anniversary of; AN lf9 Europe and the east. N. D. Harris: AN. Europe from Waterloo to Sarajevo. P. Ashl B 17 Eva and the derelict boat. F. Molnar ; B. . . . 199 Eve walks in her garden. L. A. Garnett ; AN 61? Evolution of anatomy. C. Singer: B... 17 Evolution of the horse. F. B. Loomis : B Excavations. C. Van Vechten : AN.. Fabre-Luce. Alfred. C. Vesey. trans la Limitations of victory ; B Facing Europe. F. Bailsman : B Factors in American history. A. F. Pollard ; B Fadiman, Clifton P. : R ^7. Fairchild. Henry 1 Melting-pot mistake; B 16 Fallodon papers. Viscount Grey: B 644 Far end. M. Sinclair : B 432 Farnell. Lewis Richard Attributes of god; B Farquharson, A. S. L.. editor Statement and inference: B.. . 670 Fathers of the revolution. P. Guedalla : B .. 485 Fausset. Hugh I'Al Samuel Taylor Coleridge; B 405 Fay. Bernard L'Espri; revolutionnaire en France et aux E:ats-Unis a la fin du XVIIIe siecle ; B.. 15 Fay, Sidney B. ; R 483 Fellowes. Edmund H. English madrigal : AN . . 110 Fenton, Carroll Lane : R . 536 Ferguson. Charles W. ; R Fiddler in Marly. R. Nathan: AN... Fielding the novelist, F. T. Blai .483 Fight of a book for the world. YV. S. Ken: B Fillmore folk tales. W. Harper: AN.. First wounds. J. Varney ; AN Fisher. Irving Prohibition at its worst : B Fischer, Louis Oil imperialism : B Fischer. Louis ; R Fix bayonets! J. W. Thomason ; AN Fleg. Edmond, editor, and M. Samuel, translator Jewish a' \ N Flight. W. White ; B fish. G. Ii B . J. Lite of Sail.; Paul. The man apostle; B Folk beliefs of the southern Negro. N. N Puckett ; B Ford, lord " Mirror Forma. W. 1'. G. Harding; AN Foundl Ruma Four Palache: AN Four > scent. R. de N M. I. \N Ii - . H. W. Englis Fox. Dh '. France. Ana M. Le Goff. 1 . 1 '■ Frank. Grace: K . - B N. Mer VN Hi - S Del Free N C. G. Woodson ; AN C. G. Woodson : AN Free thou :es. J. A. H 1 '• '■ E. Davis : AN ■d flag. P. N. K B 152 James : R 250. 300 Fugger news-letters. V. von Klarwill. editor . L S. R. Byrne, translator; B 250 Fundamental thoughts in economies. G. Cas- sel: AN 227 Further nonsense, verse and prose. L. Carroll ; AN 5ii G Gadgil. D. R. Industrial evolution of India in recent times . AN 301 '• Magic flight : Jewish tales and legends ; AN 511 Gale. Zona : R 372 Gandle follows his r.cse. H. Broun : AN 18 Gann. Thomas Mystery cities : B 42 Gannett. Lewis S. : R 132, 225. 484 Gardiner. Stephen, and the Tudor reaction. J. A. Mailer; B 300 Garland. Hamlin Trail-makers of the middle border ; AN .... 696 Garnett. Louise Ayres Eve walks in her garden : AN 619 Garrick, Vaiery. Picture folk -tales ; AN 511 Gassner. John Waldhorn : R 644 Gay. John To a lady on her passion for old China. ' : AN 155 Geer. W alter Nai n and Marie Louise: the fall of the empire : B 15 Geise-. Karl F. : R 16 of the world war. H. E. Barnes: B. . 198 Geneva opium conference. S-K. A. Sze ; AN... 539 Theodate An immigrant in Japan: AN 199 Georgian stories. 1925 : AN 18 German-English dictionary'. H. C. G. Brandt; AN 134 Gibbs. Anthony Elder brother : AN 487 Gibbs. A. Hamilton Labels : AN 646 Glanville. E- Hunter : AN 511 Glotz. George Aegean civilization ; B 61 Godwin. William, life of. F. K. Brown; B... 249 Godwin, William. R. A. Preston, editor An enquiry concerning political justice; AN 301 Gogol. J. Lavrin : AN 134 Goguel, Maurice. F. Stephens, translator Jesus the Nazarene. Myth or history: B.. 179 Going-to-the-stars. V. Lindsay: B 274 Golden day. L. Mumford ; B 601 Goldenweiser. Alexander ; R 226 ' g. Louis Sicilian noon : AN 276 Goldoni. Carlo, memoirs of. J. Black, trans- lator : AN 620 Goldring. Douelas Cuckoo : AN 18 >w, Ellen Romantic comedians : B 456 Goodbye, strancer. S. Benson; AN 696 Gorman. Herbert S. Victorian American : Henrv Wadsworth Longfellow : B 693 Gosse. Sir Edmund, and W. A. Craigie, collec- tors Oxford book of Scandinavian Terse; AN.. 301 chalk, Laura Riding, translator Anatole France at home; B 131 ?.. : R 88 C.rabbe. P. Friedrich ; AN 538 Graffe. Dorothy : R 224 Graham. Abbie Merchant of dreams : AN 110 Grattan, C. Hartley; R 62 ("treat American ass. Autobiography. Anony- mous : AN 619 Great god Brown: Fountain : Moon of the Caribees. E. O'Neill ; AN 110 Fit zh ugh Peary, the man who refused to fail; AN.. 276 Greig, Gavin, collector; A. Keith, editor Last leaves of traditional ballads and bal- lad airs : AN 135 Grenier. A. Roman spirit in religion, thought and art ; B . 407 n, Mary StU] Writings and life of George Meredith; B. 406 Grey, viscount of Fallodon ion papers : B 644 ■son, H. J. C. Background of English literature ; B 641 Gruening, Ernest : R 41 Guedal Fathers of the revolution ; B 485 Guide to the printed materials for English social and economic history. J. B. Will- iams: B 486 Guillaume. Paul, and T. Munro Primitive negro sculpture : B . 370 Guiney. Grace, editor Letters of Louise Imogen Guiney; B... ... 377 .. Louise Imogen, letters of. G. Guiney, editor; B 377 William, editor .lions from the correspondence of Horace Walpole : B 431 Selections from the correspondence of William Cowper ; B 431

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Not Index [Vol. C'XXlll Haggin. B. H. ; R Hale. George Kllery Beyond the milky way: AN Hall. G. Stanley. L. Pruette ; B Hamlin. Talbot Faulkner American spirit in architecture ; B Hamlin. Talbot Faulkner; R Hamly. W. C. editor. A. Niles, introduction Blues : An anthology : AN Hanford. James Holly Milton handbook ; AN Hanstein. Otfrid von. A. Barwell. translator World of the Incas. A socialistic state of the past : AN Harding. W. P. G. ._„.,, Formative period of the federal reserve system : AN Hnntinge. Kt. Hon. Sir Arthur of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, fourth earl of Carnarvon: AN... Harmer John. H. Wulpole ; B Harper. Wilhcmina Fillmore folk tales : AN Harrell. Isaac S. Loyalism in Virginia. Chapters in the eco- nomic history of the revolution: AN.. Harris. Charles K. After the ball: forty years of melody; AN Harris. Norman Dwight Europe and the east ; AN Harrow. Benjamin : R Hart. Albert Bushnell. and W. M. Schuyler. editors American year book. A record of events and progress for the year L926 ; AN.... Hartley. Dorothy, and M. M. Elliot Life and work of the people of England. A pictorial record from contemporary sources. Fifteenth century. Sixteenth century : AN Hayes. Carlton J. H. Essays on nationalism : B Hearn. Lafcadio A. Mordell, editor Occidental gleanings ; AN Heart of Emerson's journals. B. Perry, editor : B Heart of black Papua. M. M. Taylor; AN.... Heathcote, Caleb, gentleman colonist. D. R. Fox; AN ■ H. D." Palimpsest : B Hellas. G. Brandes : B Hellyar. Richmond H. \V N. P. Barbellion : AN Hemingway. Ernest Sun also rises ; B Torrents of spring ; B Henderson. Ernest F. : R 537. Her son's wife. D. Canfield ; B • • Herbert, life of Henry Howard Molyneux. Sir A. Hardinge : AN Herrick, Cheesman A. White servitude in Pennsylvania: inden- tured and redemption labor in colony and commonwealth : AN Herskovits. Melville rJ. ; R 133, 199. HertL. Friedrich Rasse und kultur ; B Heyward. Du Bose Angel ; B Hindus. Maurice Broken earth ; B Historian and historical evidence. A. Johnson: B Historical aspects of the immigration problem. E. Abbott; B ■•■.•■, History of economic progress in the United States. W. W. Jennings ; AN History of English literature. Two volumes. E. Legouis and L. Cazamian. H. D. Irvine, translator ; B History of the United States since the civil war. E. P. Oberholzer ; B History of Russia- Sir B. Pares; B Hobart, Alice Tisdale By the city of the long sand ; AN Hobson, J. A. Free thought in the social sciences; B. .. . Incentives in the new industrial order; B. Hobson, J. A.; R 3™, Holding, Elizabeth Sanxay Shoals of honour ; AN Holmes, John Hay nes ; R 562, Holloway, Emory Whitman: an interpretation in narrative; B Hooten, Earnest A. . , , Ancient inhabitants of the Canary islands ; B Horses now and long ago. L. S. Mitchell; B.. Howe, M. A. DeWolfe Causes and their champions ; AN How natives think. L. Levy-Bruhl ; B Hubbard, Elbert, of East Aurora. F. Shay ; Hughes, Rupert George Washington, 1732-1762; B Hunter. E. Glanville ; AN ....... Hunting and adventure in the Arctic. F. Nan- sen ; AN ■ • ■ • Hutchison, Keith; R 198, 250. 602, 275 823 60 l.'.r. 13 134 566 •Ml 61S 276 17 199 158 r,7s is 368 200 668 163 458 642 89 564 249 184 is 668 644 485 152 223 250 134 109 : 10 154 1 99 sr, 86 .,07 18 con 1 33 562 6 1 9 133 106 131 511 I Ich suehe die Wahrheit. B Imperial Rome. M. P. Nilsson ards. translator ; AN Wilhelm, Kronprinz ; ' ' G. C. Rich- '.Mi 693 131 180 Immigrant in Japan. T Geoffrej AN 200 Incentives in the new industrial order. J \ Hobson ; B If I ».-r,. ■ |„bor leader K J P Benn \n! 3S1 India in 1924-25. I,. F. R. Williams . I! Industrial evolution of India in recent tint D K Gadeil; \\ . ■ ry Rev W. R. England ; It Inner harbor. W. Snow ; AN . . . it of the perfect book, w l! 166 Inside the Moscow art theater 0. M. Sayler ; v» 110 International Anarchy, 1904-1914. G, I.. Dick- inson ; B :v.i International relations as viewed from Geneva W E. Rappard : AN is 5. E. E. Cummings : H Izvolsky and the world war. F. Stieve ; B J Jagcndorf. M Pantomimes for the children's theater: AN 511 Japanese fairy book. Y. T. Ozaki ; translator: VN 611 Jastrow. Joseph: R 16, 433 Jazz. P. Whiteman ; It 275 Jefferson. A. J. Nock ; B 485 Jennings. H. S. ; R 374 Jennings. W. W. History of economic progress in the United States : AN 1 35 Jesus the Nazarene. Myth or history? M. Goguel. I'". Stephens, translator; I!.. .. 179 Jewish anthology. E. Fleg. editor, and M. Samuel, translator; AN IS Johnson. Allen Historian and historical evidence; B 223 Johnson. Guy B., and H. W. Odum Negro workaday songs ; B 223 Johns. Orick Wild plum ; B 27-1 Johnstone, James Study of the oceans ; AN 110 Jones. Thomas Jesse, report by Education in East Africa : AN 199 Jusserand. Jean. W. C. Abbott. C. W. Colby, and J. S. Basset t Writing of history ; AN 408 Keen desire. F. B. Elser ; AN 487 Keir. Malcolm Epic of industry : B 223 Keith. Alexander, editor. G. Greig, collector Last leaves of traditional ballads and bal- lad airs ; AN 135 Kennedy, William Sloane Fight of a book for the world : B 611 Keynes. John Maynard End of laissez faire ; B 248 Keyserling, count Herman, editor Book of marriage : B 608 Kiddush ha-shem : Epic of 1648. S. Ash. R. I^>arsi. translator ; B 670 King of the golden river. J. Ruskin ; AN. .. . 511 Kipling, Rudyard Debits and credits ; B 509 Klarwill, Victor von, editor. L. S. R. Byrne, translator Fugger news-letters : 1568-1605, second se- ries : B 250 Klyce, Scudder Sins of science ; AN 251 Knight, M. M. Economic history of Europe to the end of the middle aces ; AN 408 Kopald Sylvia ; R 225 Krassnoff. General P. N. From double eagle to red flag : B 152 Kretschmer, E. Physique and character ; B 16 Krutch, Joseph Wood; R..107, 131, 299, 370. 432. 484. 536, 603, 669 Kiihn, Herbert Die malerei der eiszeit ; B 536 Kunst der massenbeeinflussung in den Vpreinig- ten Staaten von Amerika. F. Schoene- mann ; AN 43 Labels. A. H. Gibbs ; AN 646 Langer. William L. ; R 87 L'Art et la philosophie des Indiens de l'Ameri- que du nord. H. B. Alexander; B 455 Laski, Harold J. : R 603 Last essays. J. Conrad ; AN 381 Last leaves of traditional ballads and ballad airs. G. Greig, collector, and A. Keith, editor ; AN 135 Lavrin. Janko Gogol; AN 135 Lawrence. William Memories of a happy life ; B 606 League of nations at work. P. N. Baker : AN 538 Learsi. Rufus, and S. Ash Kiddush ha-shem ; B 670 Lee, Muna, translator Four years beneath the crescent; AN.... 408 Le Goff, Marcel, L. R. Gottschalk, translator Anatole France at home; B 131 I. Emlls and L. Cazaminn ; H. D. Irvine. vi literature. Vol. I : The middli nascent 1660) .It i09 Lerch, Eui Romaln Holland und die erneuerung der gesiniHiru- ; AN L'Espi onnalreen France ■•! aux F.tatH- Unii a la fin du XVIlIe siccle. B. Fay ... . 15 Letter* to Judd. an American workingman. I'. Sinclair ; AN. . 301 Bruhl, I,u. 1 How natives think; It 433 Le Walter Scott Normand. Ilarbey D'Aure- villy 11 B01 deaux ; AN . 588 Lewis, W. S . editor A selection from the letters of Horace Wal- pole : II 431 Lewis. Wyndham Tarr; B 299 Library list of children's books 619 Lichauco, Marcial P., and M. Storey Conquest of the Philippines by the United States ; 1898-1925 ; B .407 Life and work of the English people. D. Hart- ley, nnd M. M. Elliot ; AN 458 Life of Saint Paul. F. J. Foakes-Jackson ; B.. 179 Light princess. G. MacDonald ; AN 611 Limitations of victory. A. Fabre-Lucc, C. Vesey, translator ; B 87 Lindsay, Vachel Going-to-the-stars ; B 274 Locke, Alain ; R no Loeb classical library ; AN 458 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. H. S. Gorman ; B 693 Loomis. Frederic B. Evolution of the horse ; B 562 Lovelace. Richard, poems of. C. H. Wilkin- son, editor ; B 176 Love-life in nature. W. Bolsche ; B 606 Love, Robertus Rise and fall of Jesse James ; B 40 Lowell, Amy East wind ; B 274 Lowie. Robert H. ; R 456 Loyalism in Virginia. I. S. Harrell; AN 619 Luce. Rolxrt Congress : an explanation ; B 607 Ludwig. Emil Wilhelm der zweite : B 534 Luther. Mark Loe Clean up ; AN 621 M McCabe. Joseph 1825-1925 — a century of stupendous prog ress ; AN MacDonald, George Light princess ; AN MacDonald, William; R 63, Machen, Arthur Chronicle of Clemendy ; AN Maclver. R. M. Modern state ; B MacKaye, Percy Tall tales of the Kentucky mountains MacManus, Seumas Donegal wonder book ; AN 511 Macnaghten. Hugh, translator Odes of Horace ; AN Macy, John ; R Maeterlinck, Mukerji, and others What is civilization 7 ; B. . . . Magic flight. Y. Gaer ; AN 130. 275. 407. 408 511 607 434 603 AN 155 458 377 154 511 Making of the modern mind. J. H. Randall; B 510 18 178 608 301 457 176 Man alone. G. A. Chamberlain ; AN Mape: the world of illusion. A. Maurois ; B . Marshall, Lenore G. ; R 485, Mason, Alpheus T. Organized labor and the law; AN Mason, Daniel Gregory ; R Mason, William, satirical poems of, H. Wal- pole, notes, P. Toynbee. editor: B Massachusetts historical society Winthrop papers, Vol. I. 1498-1628; AN.. Masson-Oursel, Paul, F. G. Crookshank. intro- duction Comparative philosophy ; AN Maupassant, Guy de. E. Boyd: B Maupassant. Guy de. life work and evil fate of, R. H. Sherrard; B Maurois. Andre Mape: the world of illusion; B Maya architecture. G. O. Totten : B May, J. Lewis, translator, and N. Segur Conversations vith Anatole France; B. . . . McConnell. Weston J. Social cleavages in Texas. A study of the proposed division of the state; AN 227 Melting-pot mistake. H. P. Fairchild ; B Melville, Herman. J. Freeman; AN Memories of a happy life. W. Lawrence; B.. Menace of nationalism in education. J. F. Scott; B Men and horses. R. Santee : AN Mencken, H. L. ; R 177, Mencken, H. L., editor Americana 1926; AN Mencken, H. L. Prejudices : fifth series : B 603 Notes on democracy ; B 603 Mental tests. F. N. Freeman : AN 671 4^ 671 669 669 17:-: 12 131 16 155 606 510 155 374 621 Merchant of dreams. Meredith. George. J. A. Graham; AN 110 B. Priestley ; AN. 155

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Vol. cxxiii] Index [July-Dec, 1926 Meredith, George. J. B. Pri.stloy; li 406 Meredith. George, writings and life of. M. S. Gretton ; li 406 Morriman, Roger Bigelow Rise of the Spanish empire in the old world and in the new. Vol. Ill: The emperor; n 108 Mesopotamia. L. Delaporte ; R 61 Million and one nights. T. Ramsay ; B 604 Milne. A. A. Winnie-the-pooh ; AN 511 Milton handbook. J. H. Hanford ; AN 458 Memoirs of a Napoleonic officer. J-H. Barres : 1! 15 Miniatures of French history. H. Belloe ; AN.. 619 Minnigerode, Meade Some American ladies: seven informal biog- raphies ; AN 43 Mirror to France. F. M. Ford ; IS 225 Mirsky, prince D. S. Contemporary Russian literature; 1881-1925; AN ISO Pushkin; AN 135 Mitchell, Lucy Sprague Horses now and lone; ago : B 562 Mitya's love. I. Bunin : M. Boyd, translator; B. 'U2 Modern state. R. M. Maclver ; B 603 Mohammed. R. F. Dibble ; B 456 Molnar, Franz Eva and the derelict boat ; B 199 Moore, Charles Family life of George Washington; B 431 Moore, Virginia Not poppy ; AN 135 Mordell, Albert, editor, and L. Hearn Occidental gleanings : AN 18 Mordell. Albert, editor Notorious literary attacks ; AN 155 Mr. and Mrs. Haddock in Paris, France. D. O. Stewart; AN 434 Mr. Shaw and "The Maid." J. M. Robertson ; AN 110 Muir. Edwin Transition ; B 609 Muller. James Arthur Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor reaction : 1! 300 Mumford, L 4 1 Muzzey, David Saville ; R 15, 41 My Apprenticeship. B. Webb: B 85 My heresy. W. M. Brown ; B 562 My mortal enemy. W. Cather ; B My own story. F. Older ; B 605 My son John. E. B. Dewing : B 457 Mystery cities. T. Gann ; B 42 Mythology of all races. M. H. Ananikian : B S8 N Nansen, Fridtjof Hunting and adventure in the Arctic; AN.. 90 Napoleon and Marie Louise. W. Geer ; B 15 Nathan. Robert Fiddler in Barly ; AN... .696 Nearing. Scott Education in Soviet Russia; AN 90 Nearing, Scott and J. Freeman Dollar diplomacy ; B .108 Needham. Wilbur; R ... 695 NetT. Emery; R 486 Negro in American life. J. Dowd : B 66S Negro orators and their orations. C. G. Wood- son ; B 110 Negro workaday songs. H. W. Odum and G. B. Johnson ; B. . . 223 Neuroses of the nations. C. E. Playne ; B 177 New Baltic si.r.es and their future. O. Rutter: AN ... New England in the Republic. J. T. Adams: B 379 New values in child welfare. Annals American academy of political science ; AN. 1 35 Nicolson. Harold Swinburne: AN 155 Niles. Blair Black Haiti : AN Niles, Abbe : R Nilsson. M. P.. G. C. Richards, translator Imperial Rome : AN Ninth avenue. M. Bodenheim : AN Ninth wave. C. Van Doien ; AN Nock. Albert Jay Jefferson; B 4S5 Nogales, Rafael de. M. Lee, tran^ Four years beneath the crescent; AN 408 Notes on democracy. H. L. Mencken : B Notorious literary attacks. A. Mordell, edi' r; AN 155 Not poppy. V. Moore : AN 135 Noyes. Alexander Dana War period of American finance; B. 276 Noyes, Edward S., editor Letters of Tobias Smollett. M.D. : B 671 Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxon History of the United States since the civil war; B 130 Occidental gleanings. L. Hearn, A. Mordell, editor ; AN IS Odes of Horace. H. Macnaghten, translator ; AN 458 Odum. Howard W. and G. B. Johnson Negro workaday songs : B Odum, Howard W. and D. W. Willard System of public welfare ; AN 135 Ogden. Robert Morns Psychology and education ; B Oil imperialism. L. Fischer ; B 132 Older. Fremont My own story ; B 605 Oncken. Hermann Die Rheinpolitik kaiser Napoleons III von 1863 bis 1870 und der ursprung des krieges von 1870-1871 ;• B O'Neill. Eugene Great god Brown ; Fountain ; Moor. Caribees : and six other plays of the sea ; AN .110 On the road with Wellington. A. L. F. Schau- mann : B 15 On the trail of ancient man. R. C. Andrews : B 4<4 Orcutt, William Dana In quest of the perfect book : B 455 Organized labor and the law. A. T. Mason : AN 30! Origins of the whig party. E. M. Carroll ; AN 53 Our doctors. M. Duplay ; AN 434 Our mobile earth. R. A. Daly : AN 458 Owsley. Frank Lawrence State rights in the Confederacy ; AN 227 Oxford book of English prose. Sir A. Quiller- Couch. editor: AN 110 Oxford book of Scandinavian verse. Sir E. Gosse and W. A. Craigie, collectors; AN. 302 Oyved. Moysheh Vision and jewels ; B 644 Ozaki. Yei Theodora Japanese fairy book : AN 511 Packard, Sidney R. : R 615 Painted room. M. Wilson ; AN 621 Palache, John Garber Four novelists of the old regime; AN 40S Palimpsest. "H. D." ; B 66S Pan-Euprope. R. M. Coudenhove-Kalergi ; B.. 275 Pantomi: ics for the children's theater. M. Jagendorf ; AN 511 Pares. Sir Bernard History of Russia : B 15; Parsons. Alice Beal ; R 154, 433. 60S. 614 Peary, the man wh refused to fail. F. Green : AN 277 Peoples of Asia. L. H. D. Buxton ; B 61 Pepys. Samuel, private correspondence and mis- cellaneous papers of. J. R. Tanner, edi- tor:; B 60 Perry. Bliss, editor Heart of Emerson's journals : B 368 Persian eclogues. W. Collins : AN 155 Petrarca. Francesco. His life and correspond- ence. E. H. R. T3tham : B 300 Philippines, conquest of. M. Storey, and M. P. Lichauco : B 407 Physique and character. E. Kretschmer ; B... 16 Physiology of taste. J. A. Brillat-Savarin ; AN 382 Pickthall. Marmaduke Valley of the kings : B 695 Pioneers of the French Revolution. M. Roustan. F. Why te. translator ; B SS Place. Charles A. Charies Bulfinch. architect and citizen: B.. 60 Plague pamphlets of Thomas Dekker. F. P. W - n, editor : AN 22T Playne. C. E. Neuroses of the nations ; B 177 Political consequences of the reformation. R. H. Murrav ; B 87 Pollard. A. F. Factors in American history ; B 63 Pope. J. Carrere : B 250 Pope. L. Strachev : AN... . .. 487 A. E. tMrs. E. R. Doddsl Romannc theory of poetry: an oxamins- of Croce's aesthetic; AN ISO Powys, l.U w Verdict of Bridlegoose ; B 39 Prejudices: fifth series. H. L. Mencken: B .... 603 Preston, R:. editor, and W. Go.: An enquiry concerning political justice: AN 301 Preston, Raymond A. ; R 249 Price. Lucien : R 406 Priestley. J. B. •ge Meredith : AN 155 B 406 Primitive negro sculpture. T. Munro. and P. Guillaume : B 370 at its worst. I. Fisher; B 611 in the United States. D. L. Colvin ; B 641 Pruette. Lorine G. Stanley Hall. A biography of mind; B. . 62 Lorine : R 133 J. M. P. Smith, translator; AN 458 Psychoanalysis to:- normal people. G. Coster; AN 459 .•.cation. R. M. Ogden; B.... 132 -. New bell ' beliefs of the southern Negro- B Pushkin. D. S. Mirsky; AN 223 135 Que Francis explioue. F. Bausman : AN 135 Quiller- . Htor Oxford book of English prose: AN 110 Quinn. John, collection of paintings, water col- ors, drawings, and sculpture; AN IS B Racine, life of. M. Duclaux : AN no Ramsay. T< r.d or.e nights: the history of the motion picture; B 604 Randall. J. H. Making of the modern mind ; B 510 Rappard. William E. International relations as viewed from Ge- neva: AN 538 Rasse und KuPur. F. Hertz ; B 644 Ratcliffe. S. K. : R 85 Readings in trade unionism. D. J. Saposs. and B. T. Saposs: B 225 Reese. Lizette Woodworth. selected poems of ; AN 155 Reid. Forrest Apostate : AN 621 Reise in Polen. A. Doblin : AN 538 Relation of nature to man in aboriginal Amer- ica. C. Wissler : B 199 Religion and the rise of capitalism. R. H. Tawney : B 563 Repression of crime. H. E. Barnes : B 133 Richards. G. C. translator, and M. P. Nilsson Imperial Rome : AN 180 Richards. I. A. Science and poetry : AN 487 Riley. Woodbridge : R 153, 299 Rinaker, Clarissa, and J. Zeitlin Types of poetry : AN 458 Riptiy. J. Fred. United States and Mexico. 1821-1924 ; B. . . 41 Rise and fall of Jesse James. R. Love : B 40 Rise of the Spanish empire in the old world and in the new. R. B. Merriman : B 108 Roberts. Elizabeth Madox Time of man : B 224 Robertson, field-marshal Sir William Soldiers and statesmen : B 693 Robertson. J. M. Mr. Shaw and "The maid" : AN 110 Robertson. William Spence : R 108 Rockow, Lewis : R 87, 694 Rogers, Cameron Macnificen- idler. The story of Walt Whit- man : AN 180 Rogers. Robert W. : R 61 Rolland. Romain. und die erneuerung der gesin- nung. E. Lerch : AN 538 Romance of design. G. Wawen, and H. B. Cheney : AN 180 Roman spirit in religion, thought, and art. A. Grenier : B 407 Romantic comedians. E. Glasgow; B 456 Romantic theory- of poetry. A. E. Powell; AN. 180 Harvey W. Boy's life of Barnum : AN 511 Roselieb. Hans Spanische wanderungen ; AN 538 R. P. A. Annual and ethical review ; AN 135 Ross. Mary : R 249, 456, 565 Rostvotzett. M. Social and economic history' of the Roman empire. Vol. I : Social and economic de- velopment : B 368 Rowland. Amy F.. editor, and G. W. Crile Bipolar theory of living processes ; B 374 Roustan. M., F. Whyte. translator Pioneers of the French Revolution ; B 88 Ruskin. John King of the golden river ; AN 511 Rutter, Owen New Baltic states and their future; AN. .. . 200 Sabbatical year. G. Shively ; AN 646 Sacred giraffe. J. Arceval ; S. de Madariaga, editor: B 89 Sacred tree. Ladv Murasaky. A. Waley. trans- lator ; AN 180 Saga of Billy the Kid. W. N. Burns : B 40 Smaranda. Lord T. of Cardington ; B 198 Samuel. Maurice, translator, E. Fleg, editor, Jewish anthology ; AN 18 Sanctuary: Sanctuary: D. L. Sharp; AN 434 Sandburg. Carl, selected poems of. R. West, editor : AN 487 Santee. Ross Men and horses ; AN 155 Saposs. Bertha Tigay. and D. J. Saposs Readings in trade unionism ; B 225 Saposs, David J. Left wing unionism ; B 225 Readings in trade unionism; B 225 Saville. Marshall H. Wood-carver's art in ancient Mexico: AN.. 276 Savonarola. C. Eliot ; AN 155 Sayler. Oliver M. Inside the Moscow art theater : AN 110

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Index | Vol. cxxiii Schaumann. August Ludolf Friedrich On the road with Wellington; li 16 Shoals of honour. E. S. Holding: AN 18 Schapiro, J. Salwyn; R ;> Schoenemann, Friedrich Kunst der mussenbeeinflussung in den Ver- einigten Staaten von Amerika ; AN 43 Schuyler. William M. and A. B. Hurt, editors. American year book. A record f events and progress for the year 1926 : AN 200 Science and poetry. I. A. Richards : AN. 181 Scott. Jonathan French Menace of nationalism in education ; B Sedgwick, Henry Dwight Cortes the conqueror ; B. . Spain: a short history of its politics, litera- ture and urt from earliest times to the present ; H Sedgwick, Mrs William T. Acoma. the sky city. Study in Pueblo In- dian history and civilization; AN I6G Segur, Nicolas, J. L. May, translator Conversations with Anatole Fiance; I! . 131 Seligman, Edwin R. A. Studies in public finance; AN 270 Selincourt, Ernest de Wordsworth's Prelude ; B 176 Serrano, Mury J., translator Marie Bashkirtsoff. The journal of a young artist. 1860-1884 ; B Sex expression in literature. V. F. Calverton : It 694 Shakespeare, wesen und werke. J. Bab; AN Shand. P. Morton Book of wine : B 177 Sharp. Dallas I Sanctuary ! Sanctuary ! ; AN 134 Shnw. George Bernard Translations and tomfooleries; AN Shepard. Walter James ; R 86 Slurard. Robert Harborough Life, work and evil fate of Guy de Mau- passant : B 669 Shively. George Sabbatical year ; AN 646 Sicilian noon. L. Golding ; AN -77 Sinclair, May Far end; B 432 Sinclair, Upton Letters to Judd. an American workingman ; AN 301 Singer. Charles Evolution and anatomy ; B 17 Sins of science. S. Klyce ; AN 251 Skazki. I. Zeitlin ; AN 511 Sloss. D. J. and J. P. R. Wallis, editors William Blake's prophetic writings ; B 176 Smertenko. Clara M. ; R 153 Smirnoff, Karin Strindberg's fiirsta hustru ; AN 134 Smith. G. Elliot Elephants and ethnologists ; B 42 Smith. J. M. Powis. translator Psalms ; AN 458 Smith. Thomas Vernon Democratic way of life ; B 694 Smollett, Tobias, letters of. E. S. Noyes, edi- tor; B 671 Snow, Wilbert Inner harbor. More Maine coast poems ; AN 487 Social and economic history of the Roman em- pire. M. Rostvotzeff ; B 308 Social cleavages in Texas. W. J. McConnell ; AN 227 Social control of business. J. M. Clark ; B 191 Social struggles and modern socialism. M. Beer ; AN 408 Soldiers and statesmen. W. Robertson : B 693 Some American ladies. M. Minnigerode ; AN.. 43 Somervell. D. C. Disraeli and Gladstone ; B 607 Son of the Bowery. C. Stelzle ; B 565 Southern plantation overseer as revealed in his letters. J. S. Basselt ; AN 227 Spain: A Short history of its politics, litera- ture, and art. H. D. Sedgwick : B 10S Spanische wanderungen. H. Roselieb ; AN 538 Spiritual values in adult education. B. A. Yeaxles : AN 277 Statement and inference. J. C. Wilson. A. S. L. Farquharson, editor; B 670 State rights in the Confederacy. F. L. Owsley ; AN 227 Stein, Leonard Syria; AN 538 Stelzle. Charles Son of the Bowery ; B 565 Stephens. Frederick, translator, and M. Goguel Jesus the Nazarene. Myth or history ; B. . . 179 Stewart, Donald Ogden Mr. and Mrs. Haddock in Paris. France : AN 434 Stieve, Friedrich Izvolsky and the world war ; B 483 Storey, Moorfield, and M. P. Lichauco Conquest of the Philippines by the United States ; 1898-1925 ; B 407 Story of Durham. W. K. Boyd ; AN 252 Story of philosophy. W. Durant; B 298 Story of the Catholic church. C. Wright; AN. . 619 Strachey, Lytton Pope. The Leslie lecture for 1925; AN.... 487 Strangers. D. Van Doren ; B 433 Street, Ada and Julian Tides ; AN 696 Strindberg's forsta hustru. K. Smirnoff; AN... 134 Studies in public finance. E. R. A. Seligman ; AN 276 Study of the oceans. J. Johnstone ; AN 110 Styrbiorn the strong. E. R. Eddison ; B 605 Summer storm. F. Swlnnerton ; B 186 Sumptuary legislation and personal regulation in England. F. E. Baldwin: \N 199 Sun also ri.si's. E. Hemingwa) B Survey of international affairs, 1924 \ .1 Toynbee; VN Swinburne. 11 Nicolson ; AN.. Swinnerton, Frank Summer storm ; It 1,. Stein ; AN System of public welfare. H. W odum. and li W. Willard; AN 136 Sao-Ke Alfred Addi esses : AN Geneva opium conference: statements of the Chinese delegation . \N Tall talcs of the Kentucky mountains. T. Mar- Kayo; AN 166 Tanner. J. R.. editor Private correspondence and miscellaneous papers of Samuel Pepys ; 1! 60 Tarr. W. Lewis . B .299 Tate. Allen ; R. . . 89, .'.Of. 642. 694 Tatham. Edward H. R. Petrarca. Francesco. His life and corre- spondence. A study of the early four- teenth century (1301-1317). Vol. I; early years and lyric poems. Vol. 11 : secluded study and public fame; IS 300 Tawney, R. H. Religion and the rise of capitalism : B 563 Taylor, Merlin Moore Heart of black Papua ; AN 200 Teasdale. Sara Dark of the moon ; B 608 Teggart, Frederick J. Theory of history : R 223 Theories of instinct. E. C. Wilm : AN 90 Theory of history. F. J. Teggart ; B 223 This believing world. I.. Browne; B.. 299 Thomason. John W.. Jr. Fix Bavonots ! ; AN Thomson. James Britannia. A poem. Through many windows. Tides. A. and .1. Street Time of man. E. M. Roberts : B To a ladv on her passion for old China. AN 155 Torrents of spring. E. Hemingway; B 89 Tolten. George Oakley Maya architecture ; B 42 Toynhee, Arnold J. Survey of international affairs, 1924; AN.. 538 Toynbee. Paget, editor. H. Walpole. notes Satirical poems by William Mason ; R 176 Trail-makers of the middle border. H. Garland ; AN 696 Transition. E. Muir; B 509 Translations and tomfooleries. B. Shaw; AN 620 Types of poetry. J. Zeitlin and C. Rinaker ; AN 458 1729 ; AN... H. Woodward ; AN B. 134 156 6 I t 696 224 J. Gay ; U United States and Mexico, 1821-1924. J. F. Rippy : B 41 Up from Methodism. H. Ashury ; B 458 U. S. : A second study in democracy. H. E. Buchholz; B 374 Valley of the kings. M. Pickthall : B 695 Van Doren. Carl Ninth wave : B 372 Van Doren, Carl ; R 456 Van Doren, Dorothy Strangers ; B 433 Van Doren, Mark : R .39. fin. 176, 223. 271. 32fi. 368. 431. 455. 483. 562. 601. 641, 668. 693 Van Vechten. Carl Excavations ; AN 135 Varney. John First wounds. A story in five chapters of verse ; AN 155 Verdict of Bridlegoose. L. Powys : B 39 Villard, H. S. : R 565 Villard. Oswald Garrison : R 534 Vivas, Eliseo; R 89, 535 Vision and jewels. M. Oyved ; B 644 Voltaire. A. Aldington ; AN 135 Von Bismarck zum weltkriege. E. Branden- burg: AN 539 W Wallas, Graham Art of thought :B 152 Wallis. J. P. R. and D. J. Sloss, editors William Blake's prophetic writings; B 176 Walpole, Horace, a selection from the letters of. Lewis. W. S.. editor ; B 431 Walpole, Horace, notes, P. Toynbee, editor Satirical poems by William Mason ; B 176 Walpole, Horace, selected letters of W. Hadley. editor; B 431 Walpole, Hugh Harmer, John ; B 565 Wur period of American finance. \ D B .rnet. iin.l II. B Romance Washington. George, family life of. I B ■'■ u Hughes . B dward . It i:u mond ; R. Webb, Beat Apprenticeship . B ... 85 \ fred von Das fransoaische gelbbuch son 1914; AN.. 539 •*■ I ''I ; R. 510 Wells. II G. World of William Clissold ; B 536 mum. William Linn ; R West. Rebecca, editor Selected poems of Carl Sandburg; AN.. What is civilization'.' Maeterlinck, Mukerji, and others ; B 154 White servitude in Pennsylvania. C. A. Her- nck ; AN 18 White. Walter Flight; B 89 Whitem.in. Paul Jazz ; B 275 Whitman : an interpretation in narrative. E. Holloway ; 1! 54] Whitman. Walt. J. Bailey; AN 1,5 Whitman. Walt, Story of. C. Rogers; AN 180 Whitridge, Arnold ; R 671 Whyte. Frederic, translator Pioneers of the French Revolution ; B 88 Wilkinson. C. H.. editor Poems of Richard Lovelace; B 176 Wild plum. O. Johns ; B 274 Wilhelm der zweite. E. Ludwig ; B 534 Wilhelm, Kronprinz Ich suche die Wahrheit ; B 131 Willard, D. W. and H. W. Odum System of public welfare ; AN 135 Willard. T. A. City of the sacred well ; B 42 Williams, Judith Blow Guide to the printed materials for English social and economic history (1750-1850) ; B 486 Williams, L. F. Rushbrook, director of public information, government of India India in 1924-25. A statement prepared for presentation to parliament; B 62 Williams. Stanley Thomas American spirit in letters ; B 223 Wilm, E. C. Theories of instinct: a study in the history of psychology ; AN 90 Wilson, F. P., editor Plague pamphlets of Thomas Dekker : AN. 227 Wilson, John Cook and A. S. L. Farquharson, editor Statement and inference ; B 670 Wilson, Margaret Painted room ; AN 621 Winnie-the-pooh. A. A. Milne; AN 511 Winthrop papers. Massachusetts historical so- ciety; AN 43 Wissler, Clark Relation of nature to man in aboriginal America ; B 199 Wolf, Robert ; R 509 Wolfson, Theresa Woman worker and the trade unions; B... 612 Woman worker and the trade unions. T. Wolf- son ; B 612 Wood-carver's art in ancient Mexico. M. H. Saville ; AN 276 Woodson, Carter G. Negro orators and their orations ; B 110 Free Negro heads of families in the United States in 1830 ; AN 251 Free Negro owners of slaves in the United States in 1830: AN 251 Woodward. Helen Through many windows ; B 614 Woodward. W. E. George Washington : the image and the man ; B 431 Wordsworth's Prelude. E. de Selincourt, editor; B 176 World of the Incas. O. von Hanstein, and A. Barwell, translator ; AN 135 World of William Clissold. H. G. Wells: B 536 Worm Ouroboros. E. R. Eddison ; B 87 Worship of nature. Sir J. G. Frazer ; B 226 Wright, Cuthbert Story of the Catholic church ; AN 619 Writing of history. J. Jusserand, W. C. Ab- bott, C. W. Colby, and J. S. Bassett : AN 408 V Yeajclee, Basi: A. Spiritual values in adult education. A study of a neglected aspect ; AN 277 Young. Katharine E. ; R 17 You can't win. J. Black ; B 605 Zeitlin. Ida Skazki. Tales and legends of old Russia : AN 511 Zeitlin, Jacob and C. Rinaker Types of poetry ; AN 458 Zeitlm. Jacob; R 109. 405

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The Nation . D K I> Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK. WEDNESDAY. JULY 7. L926 No. 3183 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS EDITORIALS: La Follette — Still Alive :t Much Ado About b Very Little 1 Degrees of Honor t "Can Cultured People Really I ■■■■ 6 NEWS FROM HEAVEN. Ry Hendrik van Loon 6 THE GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION: A CHALLENGE FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY. By Charles A. Beard 7 WHY WAS THE BRITISH STRIKE CALLED OFF? By W. N. Ewer . . £1 FLORIDA CASHES IN HER CHIPS. By Stella Crossley 11 A CALIFORNIA LIBERAL. By Michael Blount 12 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 18 CORREPONDENCE 14 BOOKS: Margins. By Wilbert Snow 15 The French Revolution and After. By David Saville Muzzey 1". Is Immigration an Error T By Karl F. Gelser 16 A New Science of Character. By Joseph Jnstrow 16 From Plato to Harrey. By Benjamin Harrow 17 Force* and Men. By Catharine E. Youne 17 Books in Brief IS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : Peace Tendencies in France. By Alfred Lowry 19 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSErH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager SUBSCRIPTION Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico; to Canada, $5.60, and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address : Nation, New York. Chicago Office : 38 So. Dearborn Street- British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: E. Thurtle, M.P., 36, Temple Fortune Hill, N.W. 11. England. THE SESQUICENTENNIAL FOURTH OF JULY is upon us, and all over the land sermons are being preached upon the text that America is the biggest, bright- est, busiest country in the world. It is. There are among us a faith in ourselves and our future, a hope, a spirit of achievement which, together with our mineral wealth, our continental frontiers, and the World War, have helped lift us to our new world dominance. And there is also among us a colossal indifference to the signs of rot within us. Few of us are frightened for the democratic experiment by the revelations of million-dollar graft in the State where the Declaration of Independence was pronounced; most of us smile at millionaire Mellon's blessing on corruption and snarl at any radical who dares challenge this government by dollars and suggest a change. We have grown to fear self-criticism. It is a good time to reread the history of the days we are celebrating, and Charles Beard's eloquent address, reprinted in part in this issue of The Nation, is worthy of the men whom it recalls. NO RELIGIOUS CELEBRATION in the history of the United States has ever approached in magnitude and splendor the Eucharistic Congress of the Roman Catholic Church in Chicago. One hundred thousand men with 100,- 000 lighted candles knelt before an altar fifty feet high while mass was celebrated on Soldiers' Field. Four hundred thousand people joined in glorifying the sacrament at some of the sessions. Eucharistic congresses, which began in 1881 at Lille, have as their official purpose the spread of the centra] doctrine of the Catholic faith that the body and Christ are actually present in the sacrament of the mass. The emphasis of the whole congress was upon worship. It was unfortunate, perhaps, that this purpose should be so obscured in the public mind by the ecclesiastical trappings, the "red train" of the nine cardinals, the size of the audiences, the robes of the church potentates. Ku Kluxers and readers of the Menace will undoubtedly use this display as proof that the Pope is trying to control America. Perhaps he is: we are not overly concerned. America was discovered by a Catholic and if the Catholics can recapture it by appealing to the American love of bigness and conformity, let them go ahead. '<rpHE SOUTHERN NEGRO is disfranchised as effec- J. tually as if he were on the moon," declared William Pickens in his keynote address at the recent Chicago con- ference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The conference launched a drive for a million-dollar fund to fight disfranchisement, segregation, and "Jim Crow" cars. Meanwhile, in spite of a determined fight by a minority, Congress refuses to face the fact that the Constitution is being openly violated not only in the di franchisement of Negroes but in the virtual disfran- chisement of millions of other voters by the rotten-borough system. We still officially apportion our congressional seats on the basis of the 1910 census, although there are great cities today which were little more than villages in 1910 and the Constitution calls for reapportionment every ten years. But what do the representatives of Mississippi, Vermont, and Wyoming care about the Constitution among friends? Despite Los Angeles's sudden zeal for the Con- stitution, her claim for more seats in Congress is de- feated for this session at least. This temporary disfran- chisement of city voters by the refusal to effect reappor- tionment should call attention to the permanent incongruity of Southern representation. Los Angeles cast more votes for President in 1924 than Georgia, Alabama, and Missis- sippi combined, but these Southern States have thirty Rep- resentatives in Congress and Los Angeles has two. The Southern States are cheating. THE FARMERS have again been bilked by Congress and the Administration, as it was inevitable they should be, and the Haugen bill has been sent to the ash- heap. Economically unsound as The Nation believes that measure to be, there was no legitimate reason why it should have been rejected by the Republican Party which has long been committed to the principle and practice of subsidies in the form of the protective tariff. Yet the Republican Party, as the watch-dog of big business, obviously could not afford to let the Haugen bill pass. A subsidy is fine for the subsidized so long as they are a limited group, but spread out to 30,000,000 agriculturists it is like trying to grow rich by taking in one another's washing. Subsidies were ordained for the few, not the many. For the Repub- lican Party it is unpleasant to have to face an agrarian revolt in the West, but it was impossible to risk a revolt of

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_liiv^ x^atiwii \J ±.\~T^J big business, East or West — for big business spells the Republican Party itself. So farm relief goes a-glimmering. And so, incidentally, has gone any action in regard to coal, all bills having been postponed until next session — or, more correctly, until another spell of eoalless cold calls for fresh oratory and renewed beating about the bush. IN NEW JERSEY Randolph Perkins, member of Con- gress and Dry, recently won a renomination, defeating B. D. McClave, Wet. On the same day two other Drys, one a member of the State Senate, the other a member of the State House, also won renomination, defeating Wets. Nothing was changed, but newspaper exaggerations sug- gested that Wet New Jersey was going Dry. In St. Paul, Minnesota, Melvin J. Maas, conservative bond salesman and Wet, defeated Oscar Keller, member of Congress, who is moderately Dry, for the Republican nomination for Rep- resentative of the Sixth District. This may mean that the political climate in Minnesota is moistening or it may mean th it St. Paul prefers bond salesmen to ex-dairymen ; we will await further particulars. We recall too well the chorus of victory which swelled from Wet throats in the East when Mr. Volstead was defeated by Mr. Kvale. The chorus stopped when news trickled into New York that Mr. Kvale had made his campaign on a platform declaring that he was dryer than Volstead. FAIRY TALES are among the latest tricks used by the Passaic textile mill-owners for breaking the long strike. The bosses imported several hundred strike- breakers from New England, lodging them in the mills free and paying them forty to fifty dollars a week. Three of these imported workers, refusing to act as "scab ," came into the strike headquarters and told their story. They had answered an advertisement at a local agency in a New England town, and been told there were openings in a mill on Long Island. Asking whether there was any trouble in the mill, they were assured that there was only the sweet- ness and light of patriotism — the owners desired to replace their foreign workers with Americans. These men believed that they were going to Long Island until they heard the railwav conductor call out the station of Passaic. The own- ers may find that instead of breaking the strike they have made new trouble for themselves. They have reve they have orders and need workers, despite all their protes- tations to the contrary. THE MORALE OF THE STRIKERS has struck an up- ward curve, fed by resentment at the importation of strike-breakers and by the solidarity of labor behind I During the past month conferences for the ■:' the Passaic strikers have been held in five The 260 delegates to the meeting in New York repn unions and fraternal organizal -. An Federation of Labor representatives - the I. W. W. and joined them in resolutions for p work of relief, defense, and the guarding in Passaic and vicinity. A photographic - in pictures is being sold for funds, to tl police of New Jersey, who with their nig and tear-gas bombs figure largely and u pages. These guardians of the | inue to stage astonishing side-shows of brutality: strikers. have been taken into police stations and even and there beaten. Sheriff Nimmo, however, who was respon- sible for the earlier reign of terror, has gently but firmly refused an invitation from the mayor of Garfield to return with his armed deputies. The little man must have found the public eye uncomfortably sharp. HOW BUSINESS INTERESTS seek to dump unprof- itable undertakings like the Cape Cod Canal upon the government has repeatedly been told in The Nation. A similar attempt is being made by business interests to exploit the Boulder Dam and the All-American Canal which are designed to use the waters of the Colorado River for irrigating the Imperial VaDey and for giving power to Southwestern cities. Taken by itself the irriga- tion part of the project would be a financial loss to the government but the dam will yield millions of horse-power of electric energy. This power can be so profitably sold that the whole project would pay for itself in a few years; moreover the power can be sold cheaply and the low rates would tend to set the standards for the Southwest. The power interests do not like this idea. They are perfectly willing to let the government spend $40,000,000 on Boulder Dam and then point to the inefficient character of all gov- ernment enterprise. When the government proposes, how- ever, to spend $30,000,000 on its own power plant and so make the enterprise profitable, they raise the cry of social- ism. They want the power plant for private enterprise and the deficit for government budgets. Fortunately a bill (S. 3331) has already been favorably reported by a Senate committee which aims to make the whole project a public development. It should be passed. AMAZINGLY GOOD NEWS comes from India, where the Government, yielding to the pressure of world opinion, has at last abolished the famous Calcutta opium auctions and has set at ten years "the period within which the export of opium for other than strictly medicinal pur- poses will be progressively and finally extinguished." A 10 per cent reduction is to be effected in the current year, and the last export is to take place in 1935. Thus will end one of the most infamous instances in history in which a great government has openly profited by debauching the - f the world. The British Government is to be con- gratulated upon its changed attitude. Meanwhile in India a strong public opinion against opium use is developing, and a recent study by the Opium Research Committee of the [American] Foreign Policy Association has cast a striking light upon the divergent accounts of opium con- sumption in India. The Government, producing national averages, has always held that it was slight; Indians, from experience, have insisted upon the contrary. The study shows that while large sections are virtually opiumless, consumption reaches appalling totals in certain urban dis- tricts and industrial centers. These are precisely the dis- tricts where medical assistance is most available, and there can be no excuse henceforth for government refusal to take action. Gandhi's national temperance campaign is already having its effect. Within six months of his visit to Assam, where opium-smoking and opium-eating are at ■ worst, consumption dropped 22 per cent. IF ANYBODY can save the French franc it is probably Caillaux. He accepted the Ministry of Finance in i's tenth cabinet on his own terms, with the under-

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July 7, 1926] The Nation standing that he was to have a free hand in regard to policy. As a propitiatory sacrifice he demanded the oust- ing from the war portfolio of Painleve, whom Caillaux holds responsible for his own forced retirement from the former's cabinet after the failure of the Franco-American debt nego- tiations last year. Caillaux then removed the Governor of the Bank of France, who was opposed to the further use of that institution's gold reserve to support the franc. Caillaux proposes to use that reserve in his program and is reported to favor the speedy ratification of the Berenger- Mellon debt agreement with the United States if it can be made the basis for a Wall Street loan to further bolster the currency. The new Minister of Finance proposes heroic measures to save the franc, and if they fail there will prob- ably be nothing left for anybody else to worry over. But no oxygen pumped into the franc can revive it unless the Government can balance its budget. A cut in the interest rate on the internal debt would help toward this, but the chief hope is in taxation, presumably of the wealthy, since other classes are already sucked about dry. Here is Cail- laux's tug of war, because the big industrialists and the financial manipulators are profiting by the decline of the franc— as was the case in Germany when the mark col- lapsed— and will fight taxation of their wealth to the end, no matter what disaster overtakes the rest of the community. WHAT IS A COLLEGE PRESIDENT? The regents of the University of Oregon are ready to tell us. The official statement of their investigating committee which nominated Dr. Hall gives the reasons for their choice: Dr. Hall as president of the University of Oregon will prove to be a very popular man. He is very easy to meet, has a pleasant smile, and one is immediately impressed by his unbounded energy. He is not only a real college ex- ecutive but has had business experience as well in connec- tion with one of the banks in Madison, Wisconsin. Dr. Hall is a very able public speaker, and his services un- doubtedly will be in great demand throughout the State. We are very enthusiastic about the new president. Possibly Dr. Hall has other qualities besides those which led to his selection, but at any rate he has a voice and a pleasant smile and has been connected with a bank. Is anything more needed? HONEST MEN are the trustees of Olivet College, Michigan. They recently dismissed Professor J. E. Kirkpatrick from the faculty, because of his radical views on student self-government, but they boldly told why. Frank N. Green, secretary of the Board of Trustees, in informing Mr. Kirkpatrick of his dismissal, wrote: I am instructed by members of the executive committee and of the Board of Trustees to say that this resolution was adopted not because of any inefficiency on your part as a classroom teacher but because your views of college administration, which views you have always been free to express and advocate, are not in harmony with the views of the Board of Trustees and of substantial friends of Olivet not on the board who are giving financial support to Olivet College. Experience has shown that these two conflicting views cannot live in harmony on the same campus. The same issue of the Olivet College Echo which recorded his dismissal also announced that "the endowment drive had passed successfully its first unit in its million-dollar effort." Hip, hip, hurray for Olivet and its million dollars! What does it matter who leaches there or what, if only the "substantial friends" give their "financial support"? La Follette— Still Alive MEMORIAL services for Senators are usually perfunc- tory and poorly attended, but at the service in the Capitol in Washington on June 20, last, a year after Robert La Follette's death, all available space was packed. Old- timers could not recall a more stirring demonstration. The New York World, in commenting upon it, observed: The tribute to La Follette's memory in the Senate on Sunday called forth a demonstration of esteem and ad- miration which would have been impossible just after his death a year ago. For the greater part of his career in Washington he had been a leader of the opposition, a merciless critic of his own party. His command of invec- tive, his intense individualism, made more enemies than friends; his unsparing keenness in debate, his unwilling- ness to compromise used more fear than liking. But twelve months had softened the memory of old antagonisms. This is true, but it is not the whole story. Ue do ^ot impute intentional hypocrisy to any of the Senators who lauded La Follette at the memorial service, or to the news- paper editors who now praise the man they once denounced, but the fact remains that a live mouse is more dangerous than a dead lion. It is easy to speak well of a man when you are no longer in danger of being called on to help or support him. The World, for instance, now concedes that Senator Robinson was not extravagant when he declared that La Follette was the real leader of the progressive movement during his generation. . . . He laid down a pro- gram aimed at predatory wealth; he helped convert men like Dolliver, Hadley, and Bristow; and when his enemies united against him Roosevelt was able to take over his half- launched progressive movement. The events which fol- lowed gave the Democrats their chance. For much of the progressive legislation which made the years 1913-1917 important La Follette was really responsible. But although "La Follette was the real leader of the pro- gressive movement during his generation," neither Senator Robinson nor the World found it expedient to support him when he was alive. They stuck to the shibboleths of the dead Democratic Party and its hopeless candidature in 1924, thus permitting Mr. Coolidge to remain in the White House. La Follette was too democratic, too unyielding, too sincere for most even of our "progressive" politicians or liberal newspapers like the New York World. He was the loneliest political leader of his generation, the object of the most bitter and continuous press hostility. Bryan was de- nounced as bitterly during free-silver days, perhaps, but in later life he was tolerated, or merely ridiculed. Roosevelt was commonly praised as a man by those who condemned his principles — due, perhaps, to the ease with which he divorced his principles from his personality. La Follette, lonely and tenacious fighter of the people's battles, never divorced his principles from his personality. New York newspapers may have feared rather than liked him, but millions loved him as few men are loved. His principles and his personality are still living forces in American life.

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The Nation [Vol. 123. No. 3183 Much Ado About a Very Little Til!-; Reed-King-La Follette committee has continued to plow the golden soil of Pennsylvania. It has dis- covered that the pious Mellon-Pepper crew spent nearer two million dollars than one; that their Mayor of Pitts- burgh instructed city officials to vote for Pepper if they valued their bread and butter (the gentleman blandly de- nied the shorthand report of his speech, but it was plain that he lied) ; that their Pittsburgh Chief of Police cheer- fully violated the law by instructing the policemen ti to it that the Pepper majorities were fat; and that both Mr. Vare's and Mr. Mellon's henchmen distributed enough money in cash, of which no records were kept, to have bought a dozen New York City elections in the good old Tammany days that were once considered the epic era of graft. But interest in this exposure of contented corrup- tion seems, to judge by the newspapers, slight compared to interest in the effort of Senator Reed to expose the heinousness of the Anti-Saloon League and the W. C. T. U. Tin Nation has never been fond of the Anti-Saloon ue or of its methods. The League browbeats people into behaving as it wishes them to behave; it cares nothing for the Constitution and its safeguards of search and seizure if they seem to stand in the way of enforcing pro- hibition; and, while ,-t has forced some Wets, fearful of their political future, hypocritically to vote Dry, it has blackened the characters of its honest opponents by de- nouncing them as seditious tools of the bootleggers and brewers. We do not think the Anti-Saloon League has it- self played fair, but we do not like to see unfair tactics used against it. The genius of the organization, Wayne B. Wheeler, was an impressive witness under Senator Reed's inquisition. He became interested in prohibition in col- lege ; he served the cause for years at one hundred dollars a month, and he now earns eight thousand dollars a year. That is little enough for the head of an organization which in the years preceding the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment spent two and a half million dollars annually. Mr. Wheeler had no hesitation in reporting the sums spent. and tl.e worst things brought out against him were that, like Mary Pickford and Babe Ruth, he signed a series of articles which he did not write, and that he occasionally hired Congressmen to make speeches. It did not appear that he hired Congressmen who did not honestly believe in prohibition, or that they made more than pin-money out of their speechmaking. Nor did the W. C. T. U., as it seems to us, appear in a more unfavorable light. The New York World and other organs denounce its action in raising money to enforce a statute when the Pennsylvania Legislature n< so. The legislature to please the Drys voted a Dry law. and to please the Wets refusi carry it out. The W. C. T. U. then took it upon its. There was nothing secret or underhand about il it begged for newspaper publicity. It estal in the State Capitol and. with the cooperation of Go\ Pinchot. sought to enforce the orphaned law. Doubt! State does better to enforce its own laws. But is it a crime for citizens to help a State enforce laws that the legisla- tors put on the statute-book, even if "he legislators who put them there hope they will not really be enforced? The remedy would seem to be to have an honest legislature which either would not pass unwanted laws, or would take seriously the laws which it does pass. The calm observer, undisturbed by this partisan racket, will not forget that the vast sums spent by the Dry leagues have been raised in small offerings from men and women who have no selfish stake in prohibition. Even if misspent they would still be in a different class from the millions spent in Pennsylvania to save the manufacturers from taxa- tion. Why cloud the issue by comparing them? For good or ill, prohibition has again become a live political issue. We have said before that we welcome any live political issue in a country where the citizens have been too busy with the radio to think before they voted. Wets and Drys. we believe, are equally sincere; let them argue, not accuse each other of corruption. The evil of cor- ruption in politics is independent of this issue. The Mel- Ions and the Peppers who tried in vain to buy Pennsylvania straddle the liquor question; the important thing is to get rid of corruptionists — Wet, Dry, or straddling. We sus- pect that the Mellon-Yare gangs are rather relieved by the elaborate attention paid to the Reed-Wheeler Wet-and- Dry battle of wits. Degrees of Honor THE season's crop of honorary degrees reveals several new varieties, produced by methods of cross-breeding whose secret is best known to university administrations. The honorary degree used to be for the most part a simple though glowing recognition of scholarly or artistic or scientific achievement, with an occasional stooping from academic heights to pick up a gem from the vague field of public service. But a complex civilization has changed that, until now one never knows where our sharp-eyed university heads may discover a Doctor of Laws. It may be in the House of Representatives, where New York Uni- versity found Speaker Nicholas Longworth. Or it may be in the embassy of a nation for whose friendship we yearn. Columbia University went bravely fishing in political seas and. despite its very Republican president, caught Governor Al Smith, upon whom it conferred his first academic degree. But fishing was best in the Presi- dent's Cabinet, where Georgetown University caught Her- bert Hoover, and Washington University (St. Louis) caught Secretary of War Davis, and any number of lines hooked a great scholar in the Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Mellon, in this annual hood-collecting contest, was close pressed by Owen D. Young. Mr. Mellon won with Harvard. Yale, and Amherst to his credit, but Mr. Young was not far behind with Rutgers and Princeton. The Yale degree was conferred upon Mr. Mellon with the tribute "No man has given up so much with such benefit to the public." Very true — he gave as much as $25,000 in the Pennsylvania primaries, and he very likely has several thousands left for worthy educational institutions. Mr. Young's service on the Dawes Commission and his pro- nouncements on the problem of power development might have qualified him for the old brand of academic degree — with a touch of modernity in the fact that he sits on dozens of wealthy corporation boards. But in the business of delivering degrees for cash, paid up or prospective, Har- vard was this year boldest of them all. She presented her LL.D. to George Fisher Baker, of the First National Bank

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July 7, 1926] The Nation of New York, who recently gave $5,000,000 to her el radii School of Business Administration. Mr. Baker's deg cost more than a Pennsylvania primary. At Amherst an old custom has taken on new significance. The seniors confer honorary membership in their class as they see fit, but it has been usual that the president of the college should be among those so honored. This year Presi- dent Olds was conspicuously neglected. On the list of honorary members in absentia, however, appeared the name of Alexander Meiklejohn. This was not, we believe, pri- marily meant as a slight to Dr. Olds, who has always been regarded with affection, especially during his long years of deanship. In 1023 Dr. Meiklejohn had spent eleven years in making Amherst the reality of his dream of a liberal college. By that time the trustees thoroughly regretted the rashness which had prompted them, in the height of a fashionable progressive wave, to intrust the sacred traditions of Amherst to the hands of such a man, and they requested his resignation. The class of 1926 had just finished its freshman year. It was perhaps too young to take a large part in the demonstrations of undergrad- uate indignation at the time — thirteen seniors refused their diplomas — but evidently it was not too young to have profited by its brief experience of a liberal president and to have learned self-determination. The last Amherst class which knew Dr. Meiklejohn effectively recorded its undergraduate stand, while the trustees were following the academic procession of honoring millionaires. 44 Can Cultured People Really Love? SATIRE threatens to become a lost art, for in these days folly outruns imagination and the most extravagant burlesque comes limping after the real thing. Mr. Mencken discovered how far quotation can exceed invention, and now any one with a pair of shears can outdo the fertile brain of Sinclair Lewis. For example we turn to Screenland for June. In a single number advertisements inform us that "Ex- cess Fat Is Not Forgiven," that "Daring Young Men Are Needed in Aviation," and that "There Is a Way" to develop the bust. A strong man enjoins us to "Make Marriage a Success" by his method, and a lady in scant attire asks the pertinent question "Why Starve Yourself to Reduce?" when you need only "chew Silph like ordinary gum." A handsomely hirsute young man confesses that "Sixty Days Ago They Called Me 'Baldy'," and two ingenious inventors offer mechanical devices, the one guaranteed to straighten our noses and the other (worn only at night) serving the double purpose of improving the lips and inhibiting any tendency to snore. To even the bow-legged man science holds out hope through an appliance supplied by M. Trilety, Specialist, and in a remarkable set of ten books "The Eternal Mystery of Woman Is Now Almost Completely Laid Bare Before You" by authors who have not hesitated to tell the entire truth about a group of ladies which includes Helen, Cleopatra, Poppea, Salome, Magdalene, Messalina, Catherine, and Dolly Madison. "If, while con- cealing nothing, they tell you of the faults of women, it is to accentuate their virtues ; if they tell you how a Russian countess in winter had water slowly poured over nude girls to provide new statues for her gardens, they also tell you how Joan of Arc inspired the people of France and how Lady Godiva helped those of Coventry." Yet ingenious as are these advertising columns they are more than matched by the text of the magazine itself, in which the featured article for the month is a symposium conducted by Elinor Glyn upon the subject with which we have headed this column. Madame Glyn, as those familiar with her philosophy of life might have predicted, is upon (lie side of culture. "If," she concedes, "it is merely the creative instinct you are alluding to — then culture has nothing to do with the emotion." But, she continues in a passage equally remarkable for its ideas and its syntax, if you mean by "love" that quality which is half spiritual and which raises the individual when under its influence then, naturally, the higher the cultivation is and the greater the refinement of mind, so love would be felt and enjoyed more by such persons than the merely uncultivated being who has no sense of values. Most of the screen stars who contribute their opinions are, however, inclined to put more faith in the simple heart. "I think that the part I am playing in Edmund Goulding's production 'Paris' answers this question perfectly," says Joan Crawford: That is the story of a young girl of the slums of Paris, uncultured and uneducated. She is in love with an apache, who is also an uncultured person. A very wealthy, refined young man is in love with her and while he offers her money and power and all of the refined, cultured things in life, she chooses her apache lover and never once wavers in her affection. This uncultured girl has an infinite capacity for love. There seems to be enough evidence to prove that love has nothing to do with education or culture. It is an emo- tion of the heart and the shopgirl has a heart like that of the princess. Renee Adoree, in spite of her somewhat coquettish name, prefers to consider mother-love, which she regards as unrelated to culture; and Eleanor Boardman, discussing the same subject, remarks rather ambiguously that "we see unintelligent mothers giving up everything for their children." Conrad Nagel retires into a magnanimous skepticism with the remark that "We cannot look into the heart of anyone but ourselves," but Ramon Novarro comes out clearly that "the more sophisticated and cultured a person becomes the harder it is for him to throw himself into love," and thus we are left with Mr. Novarro and Madame Glyn upon opposite sides of the great question. The article is illustrated with a picture of Madame Glyn pouring tea for Douglas Gilmore who "was selected by this world authority on love to demonstrate that cultured people are the best lovers," but unfortunately Corinne Griffith, who is pictured upon the next page and, we are told, "wears no jewelry except sapphire eyes and ruby lips, for she has a more precious treasure — the softest kindest heart in the world," expresses no opinion upon the subject under discussion. We feel that she could have settled it. It is reported that when Mr. Charles Chaplin and Madame Glyn first met the latter remarked "You do not look as funny as I expected," and that Mr. Chaplin replied "Neither do you." As to the truth of this report we can- not speak, but we are not surprised to note that the editor of Screenland in an editorial entitled A Plea for Imagina- tion finally delivers himself of the following counsel : "Be gullible, be easily deceived."

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The Nation [Vol. 123. No. 3183 WV Ship News Reporter on His Weeku Visit to Heaven: What are you going to do w.ih that '. that the Cardinals are through with it? SAINT Peter: Well, we thought we'd keep i> around. We may need it some day — when we go out to nice: Gene Debs, tor ins! <r Drawn by Hendrik ran Loon

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July 7, 1926] The Nation The Great American Tradition A Challenge tor the Fourth o\' July By CHARLES A. BEARD I HAVE sworn upon the altar of the living God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." This powerful blast against all oppression of the human spirit was written by Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, draftsman of the Virginia statute for religious liberty, and founder of the University of Virginia. And yet, vigorous as it was, this proclamation of freedom by Jefferson was but an echo from an age-long battle waged by those who dare to think against those who, with hemlock, faggot, gallows, irons, and prisons, vainly seek to strangle the irresistible power of inquiry and change. If a beginning of this great battle must be sought, let it be in the noble words of the "Apology" offered bj rates twenty-four centuries ago. There he said that if his accusers would spare him on condition that he would cease to search for truth his answer would be: "Athenians, I love and cherish you, but I shall obey God rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and have the strength, I shall never cease to follow the love of wisdom and to exhort and per- suade any one of you whom I happen to meet." With a smile upon his face and the light of eternity in his eyes, he drained his cup of poison to the dregs. Who remembers the legis- lators, the judges, and the accusers who brought him to that doom of immortality? If an immediate forerunner of Jefferson, one in the stream of our own civilization, must be chosen, let it be the blind poet of the Puritans, John Milton. In 1644, a quarter of a century after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, he issued an indictment of official censorship bearing the title Areopagitica : a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Lib- erty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England — a brief essay that stands out like a gleaming beacon above the dark oppressions of that age. Once a book which good and wise people feared as they did plague and death, it is now read in our schools by tender youth as a work of noble idealism enshrined in the finest imagery of the English tongue. For the timid, shrinking, frightened cowardice of the persecutor who would impose his little designs on the thought of mankind and keep his country asleep in inherited tradition, Milton offered the daring idea of free inquiry and free argument — an idea that would arouse the nation to greater and greater achievement. Methinks I see in my mind [he said] a noble and puis- sant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her undaz- zled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unsealing * This discussion of the American tradition of liberty formed the opening sections of an address presented by Mr. Beard on June 29, before the Fourth Commonwealth Conference, in session at the State University of Iowa. In his concluding paragraphs Mr. Beard outlined a proposal for the appointment of a representative national committee which should "study . . . the whole question of the nature and limits of political toleration : . . . examine the charges of maladministration made against certain governmental agencies during the recent crisis : . . . formulate ... a model statute indicating the proper limits on freedom of speech in time of peace and a second setting forth such limits appro- priate to war time; . . . describe . . . the procedural conditions under which prosecuting attorneys, police officials, judges, and juries should operate in dealing with persons accused of expressing forbidden opinions." her long abused sight at the fountain of heavenly radi- ance; while tlic whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prog- nosticate a year of sects and schisms. . . . Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to con- science, above all liberties. Nearly a hundred and fifty years after .Milton made this eloquent plea the American people wrote in their national Constitution a provision which expressed in a solemn avowal the principle which he had asked from the English Parlia- ment: "Congress shall make no law respecting the estab- lishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Jef- ferson had urged this amendment and rejoiced in its enact- ment. It was in keeping with his spirit and indeed an in- herent part of the American political system. That system embraced no king ruling by divine right, no house of lords ruling by prescriptive tenure, no estab- lished church claiming God's sanction on its monopoly. On the contrary, it was founded on the faith that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed ; that officials are not divinely appointed masters, but elected ser- vants ; that periodically the voters should, on reviewing the conduct of their servants, approve or condemn according to their judgment. To give to any set of officials — legislative, executive, or judicial — the power of censoring, controlling, or suppressing the opinions of the people would be to place the servants above the masters, defeat the first principles of the government, and restore a regime of special privilege. Ar election without discussion would be an impossibility. Discussion without freedom to inquire and to argue would be a farce. Inexorably out of the logic of the American sys- tem flowed the principle of freedom of press and speech. It would of course be doing violence to history to imply that this creed was universally accepted among the founders of this republic. Every school-child knows the history of the Sedition Act of 1798. Frightened by the criticisms of the Jeffersonians bent on ousting them from power, the Fed- eralists hurried through Congress a law drawn in broad and loose language which in effect penalized everyone who passed severe strictures upon the Government of the United States. In fact, this measure gave to Federalist judges, prosecutors, and executive officials the authority to arrest, fine, and imprison any of their political foes who were espe- cially objectionable to them and in practice it was so applied. And all know the verdict of history on this act of partisan fury and tyranny. The party that passed it was buried in oblivion, and for more than a century, in peace and war, no such sweeping violation of political liberty was placed upon the statute books of the United States. Even the Southern Confederacy, recoiling before the irresistible might of Northern armies and assailed by criticism within, did not adopt any measure of law comparable to the Fed- eralist Sedition Act of 1798.

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8 The Nation [Vol. 12 M183 Under these historical circumstances, and in keeping with Jefferson's faith in the long judgment of the people, there grew up in America a great tradition of political lib- erty. Though difficult to define in law, theory, or practice, though often violated in spirit by mobs and private organi- zations, that tradition contained certain elements which stand out in undoubted patterns of thought. It did not declare that no alterations might be proposed in our of government. It did not lay down the rule that in time of war the majority which controls the Government of the United States may exercise the powers and prerogativ a Caesar. No, the tradition of American political liberty was formulated by fearlesu and robust men who had the honesty to apply to others the principles they claimed for themselves. Let us seek what it meant in the language of its first great expounder, Thomas Jefferson. He did not urge the jail and the gallows for those who proposed to dissolve the Union and change our form of government. In his first inaugural he calmly said: "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Jefferson knew that there were limits to the political freedom which he proclaimed. He could read th" definition of treason in the Constitution. It was explicit. It ran: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court." In those lines stood the two words which Jefferson regarded as vital to any limitation on freedom of discus- sion, namely, "overt act." In expounding religious liberty he made this firm declaration: "To suffer the civil magis- trate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on the supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he, be;- j of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn sentiments of others only as they square or differ with his own." The same principle Jefferson applied again nearly twenty-five years later, showing that it was with him a rooted convic- tion. In a letter addressed to Elijah Boardman of New Mil- ford, Connecticut, on July 3, 1801 (now in the possession of Dr. George H. Wright, of that town), Jefferson objected to the idea that an opinion could be "an overt act," and added: "We have nothing to fear from the demoralizing reasonings of some, if others are left free to demonstrate their errors and especially when the law stands ready to punish the first criminal act produced by the false reasonings; these are safer corrections than the conscience of a judge." All down through the nineteenth century great 1 of American opinion continued to uphold the prim which Jefferson had expounded. A cloud of witness = be summoned to support this s . "This country, with its institutions." said Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address, "belo the people v. ibit it. Whenever they grow weary of the existing Government, they can exer- cise their constitutional right of amending it or their revo- lutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." It is not only liberty that ha celebrated but lib- erty in season and out. "The cry has been that war is de- clared," said William Ellery Channing more than a century ago, "and that all opposition should therefore be hushed. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny. . . . We should teach our present and all future rulers that there is no measure for which they must render so solemn an account to their constituents as for a declaration of war; that no measure will be so freely, so fully discussed. ... In war, then, as in peace assert freedom of speech and of the press." Years afterward, in the midst of the Mexican war, Theodore Parker exclaimed: "If the people cannot discuss the war they have got to fight and pay for. who under heaven can?" In the very midst of the life and death struggle over which the immortal Lincoln presided, the Democratic Party in its platform declared the war a failure, called for a cessation of hostilities, and protested against the violation of civil rights by the federal Government. Lincoln believed that the Democratic Party was wrong and the judgment of his- tory runs with his opinion, but neither he nor his country- men thought opposition to war and the advocacy of peace in war time a crime to be suppressed by violent and inquisi- torial processes. Interference with the armed forces and the prosecution of the war were of course forbidden and in practice there was no little violation of civil liberty; but the expression of hostile opinions in political discussions (even a demand for immediate peace) was not a crime. "If this blessed old republic," urged Senator Borah long after- ward, "cannot rest upon the free and voluntary support and affection of the American people in time of war as well as in time of peace, if we cannot, as a people, be free to discuss the political problems which involve limb and life, even in time of war, our government rests upon a very brittle foundation." From the close of the eighteenth to the opening of the twentieth century the great tradition of political liberty was regarded as a sacred element in our political philosophy and practice. In time of war it was often strained by domi- nant parties; in time of peace it was sometimes violated by mobs; but it was consistently upheld as a guiding principle. Its essential terms were clear. The people were free to criti- cize and discuss their government and its acts, subject to the ]■ ,v of libel and slander; they were liable to pains and penalties only when their language definitely threatened an immediate overt act. Broadly speaking, this was where we stood when the storm of the World War broke upon us in 1917. In that year Congress passed the Espionage Act for the entirely proper purposes of preventing interference with the enrol- ment and operation of the armed forces of the United States. The terms were explicit and the acts against which it was directed were made reasonably definite. This legislation was soon followed by the Sedition Act, and by State statutes often in terms still more general and inclusive. The provi- sions of these nd the history of their enforcement established pr unusual that the Hon. Charles E. Hughes was led to declare: "We may well wonder, in view of the precedents now established, whether constitutional government as heretofore maintained in this republic could survive another great war even if victoriously waged." Surely that is a grave warning that bids us pause and survey our conduct and prepare for the future. And it is hat we should do this in time of peace when the perils of battle do not thunder at our gates and the calm voice of reason can be heard.

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July 7, 1926] The Nation Why Was the British Strike Called Off' By W. N. EWER London. May 1? IT was, I think, the battle of Spion Kop. Anyway, it was one of the series of battles on the Tugela, five and twenty years ago, when Buller was struggling to break through the Boer lines and to raise the siege of Ladysmith. The battle had gone well for the British. The troops had advanced a considerable distance. They held good posi- tions. Their losses had been slight. Their morale was ex- cellent. They were confident that at last they were "through." The Boers also were convinced of the same thing. They were getting ready to retreat. The heavy gun teams were "in-spanning." The orders were given. Suddenly their scouts reported an astonishing thing. The British were not preparing to pursue. They were actually begin- ning to withdraw. They were evacuating their strongest positions. The Boers shrugged their shoulders and thanked their God for the folly of the Rooinek. The Englishman, they had often heard, did not know when he was beaten. Apparently he also did not know when he was winning. The gun teams were outspanned. The riflemen wheeled about and moved, not northward in retreat, but southward in pursuit. Botha was able to wire to Pretoria the news of another victory. Just what had happened no one knew — except the plain fact that just at the critical moment when the Boers were preparing to quit, someone at the British G. H. Q. decided for some reason or other to break off the battle. That, or something very like it, happened in London on the fateful day of Wednesday, May 12. It was the eighth day of the General Strike. The strike had been a success beyond all calculation, beyond all expec- tation. The response to the call had been unanimous; even more than unanimous, for thousands of non-unionists came out with their unionist fellow-workers, not under coercion, but moved by a sudden wave of class-consciousness which swept over the country. Let one tiny instance of this suf- fice— a South London machine-shop. It employed fifty men. Only five of them were trade unionists, but when the order came to those five, the whole fifty struck. From end to end of Great Britain the same thing hap- pened. Not the oldest trade unionist can remember such solidarity. Not the oldest agitator can remember such en- thusiasm. In sleepy cathedral towns, where Labor meetings were almost unknown and where a handful of men and women had struggled hard to keep a feeble organization in being, men left their work and great crowds gathered at demonstrations, to the bewilderment as well as to the de- light of those stalwarts. Everywhere intense enthusiasm. Everywhere, in accordance with orders, perfect calm. The "incidents" and the "riots" which figured in the news were of a trivial character. More people were arrested in a tup- penny-halfpenny Royalist demonstration in Paris last week than in any of the "strike riots" in Britain. The Govern- ment strove hard to give melodramatic value to a situation which was for them unnerving because of its grim quiet- ness. They paraded armored cars and tanks about the ts to "keep order" where there was no disorder. They enrolled "specials" by tens of thousands. And the poor specials had nothing to do but bore themselves stiff parad- ing empty streets, or else combine "police duty" with the conducting of scab omnibuses. They sent a squadron of cavalry and a battalion of guards and a fleet of tanks to fetch a food convoy from the London docks. Nobody had been stopping food convoys and a couple of policemen would have done the job. But the Government — it was a sign of nerves — must needs send a miniature expeditionary force. Five miles and more through the crowded East London streets those unhappy troops had to march. Five miles through crowds who cheered and laughed. A humiliating, demoral- izing business. No Communist could have devised a better plan for "creating disaffection in His Majesty's Forces." The experiment was not repeated. A whole week of orderly strike. Nothing for a Napo- leon-Churchill or a Mussolini-Jix to get hold of. Not an excuse for a whiff of grapeshot or even for a dose of castor oil. The calm of it was in itself disconcerting. The con- fidence of the men, their quiet readiness to stick it out as long as might be needed were alarming. "The first two bloody years of this strike are going to be the worst" was the slogan in the East End. "What about the Christmas number of the British Worker?" was the favorite jest of the strikers in Fleet Street. They had dug their toes in for a long struggle. At the end of a week the strike was as solid as a rock. The British Gazette cried in headlines that it was breaking, that the men were dribbling back to work; but try as it might, it could find nothing to put under those headlines to justify them. Day by day the numbers of the strikers in- creased instead of dwindling. From every district came the same report — that the hard thing was to persuade the men to stay in and await orders. And every day the quiet, relentless, economic pressure increased. The spectacular running of perilous "skeleton" services of passenger trains, the exploits of young gentle- men from the universities who drove buses and lorries, often to the public danger and nearly always with disastrous results to engines and gearboxes, were of no importance at all. Every considerable industry in the country was at a standstill or rapidly coming to a standstill, unable to func- tion for want of fuel, for want of raw material, for want of transport. Business men, seeing their losses mounting into the millions, were beginning to ask why they should be sacrificed in the interests of the coal-owners. The Anglican church began to call for peace. The saner elements in the Government became anxious. Over the week-end the tentative approaches were made. Sir Herbert Samuel was sent to explore the possibilities of agreement. That meant, in fact, that the Government was preparing for a compromise, for a settlement, provided that its face could be saved. Sir Herbert was to prepare the way for a retreat. The propaganda of the British Gazette grew less violent. The appeal of the Archbishop was allowed to be broadcast, was even published in the British Gazette. Sir John Simon, a day or two before the darling of the

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10 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3183 die-hards, was put up to support it in the House of Com- mons. The big gun teams in fact were in-spanning. The retreat was being organized. And the Labor forces, scent- ing what was happening, grew more confident than ever. Wednesday morning saw the Government wavering, shot through and through by internal dissension, under growing pressure from the business men and from the "saner" elements. It saw the Labor ranks unbroken, un- bent, more enthusiastic than at any moment of the strike. Suddenly there came word of comings and goings, of a meeting with the Premier. And then the brief announce- ment that the strike had been called off: that the Trade Union Congress General Council were satisfied, after seeing Mr. Baldwin, that the miners would get a "square deal." The first news was greeted with a roar of enthusiasm and delight. No one doubted for a moment that a resound- ing victory had been won. Probably some arrangement had oeen made to save the Government's face. Obviously the General Council had been promised that the Government would adopt the plan which Sir Herbert Samuel had de- vised and which had been adjudged by the council to be a reasonable basis for negotiation. Obviously they had been promised that the lockout notices would be withdrawn dur- ing the negotiations. For quite plainly they would not otherwise have called off the strike. That was i,he heartening first impression. It was fol- lowed by agonizing doubts as the evening wore on and the wireless screamed that the Government had won a decisive victory, that the strike had been called off unconditionally, that no promise and no pledge had been given, that the T. U. C. had surrendered at discretion. And then came the verbatim reports of the Downing Street conversation as confirmatory evidence. There was a shudder of doubt, a feeling of bewilderment, a suspicion that perhaps after all this was not the expected victory. A few more hours made it terribly clear. Men report- ing themselves for work in accordance with the order wire told that they must wait until wanted, that if they were taken back it would be at reduced wages. Automatically the line rallied, closed, held firm. Twenty- four hours after the strike had been called off scarcely a man was back. When news came to the railwaymen's meet- ings on the Thursday afternoon that they were to stay out, they cheered frantically. What had been happening they did not understand. But this they understood. It was the fight again, if only a rearguard action. Those two days' stubbornness saved a terrible disaster. The employers' counter-offensive on wages had been launched in the belief that the strike was broken. It checked and broke against the firm front which it found. But, how- ever splendid the troops, a retreat is a difficult operation in which loss is unavoidable. And some of the big unions — notably the railways and docks — signed, as the price of a settlement, humiliating admissions that the strike had been a wrongful act and promises that it should not be repeated. Moreover, days passed — and there was no word of the lockout notices being withdrawn. The general strike was liquidated: but a million miners were left to struggle alone. Mr. Baldwin produced his proposals. They were not the Samuel memorandum. And the miners were invited to consider them under the coercion of the lockout. What the miners will do I cannot foretell. They are sore and angry. They feel themselves deserted. And they do not understand why. So with the rank and file of the other industries. They feel that they have been balked cf victory. They also are puzzled. If I have been asked once I have been asked fifty times in the last two days : Why did they call off the strike? It is a vitally important question, but singularly hard to answer. In some measure it seems certain that the Gen- eral Council was duped by one of those pieces of ill-faith of which only the most honorable gentlemen are capable. It seems clear that they understood that the Samuel pro- posal was the Government's own proposal, and that the moment the strike was called off the lockout would be ended. There can be little doubt that the Government was prepared to do this: that only, when, to its amazement, the order to resume work was given without any guaranties being ex- acted, did it decide to repudiate any understandings and to claim an unconditional surrender. But even so we are driven back upon the question, Why were no guaranties exacted? Why was there no clear-cut understanding, too precise for repudiation? The answer must probably be sought in the fact that many, perhaps most, of the General Council had never really liked the General Strike. They had got themselves into a situation in which they were bound to order it — or to order something which would lead directly to it. But up to the last moment they had hoped for some miracle or some for- mula which would avert it. The Government's slamming of the door on further negotiations, Mr. Baldwin's tactical retreat to his bedroom in order to avoid even conversations, forced their hand. They found themselves suddenly lead- ing a great movement of which, in their hearts, they did not approve. The very success of the move, the unanimity of the response, the solidarity, the enthusiasm must have dis- mayed many of them. Here was a situation which might, if prolonged, develop into anything, a great force which might carry them farther than they dared think of, force upon them powers and responsibilities from which they shrank instinctively. The Government's declarations, the conveniently obtained judicial ruling that they were acting illegally, must have had its desired psychological effect. The Government propaganda, the insidious atmosphere of the West End of London, may have unconsciously worked upon men who were of necessity out of touch for the time being with their own people. The fighting line was as rigid as steel. But one cannot resist the conclusion that the nerves of G. H. Q. were shaken. They were in a mood to catch at the first opportunity of honorably breaking off the battle and returning to their normal habits. And so, when oppor- tunity seemed to have come they did catch at it, over-eagerly, without waiting to consider whether it was, in fact, an opportunity or a trap. All big struggles are at bottom a test and a trial of nerves. Reduced to its simplest terms the explanation of the whole business seems to be that the nerves of the Gen- eral Council gave way a few hours before the nerves of the Government. It is too soon to strike a balance of gain and loss with any confidence. But one has the impression that the ill effects of the bad days which closed the strike will, though serious enough, be transient, whereas the effect of the realization during the week of struggle of its own power will leave a lasting impression on the British Labor movement.

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July 7, 1926] The Nation 11 Florida Cashes in I lor Chips By SI LA CROSSLIN riA HE Florida boom has collapsed. The world's greatest A poker game, played with building lots instead of chips, 18 over. And the players are now cashing in or payi] Most of them, of course, are paying up; for. just as in poker, the chief winners are the big boys who had had ex- perience in the game and a large roll of money to start with and were able either to quit early with their winninj play on to the end of the game when the stacks of all the little fellows had melted away. Some big fellows who didn't expect the game I up so soon and gambled heavily toward the end lost heavily, and some little fellows who took a few hands when the was going best and cashed in before the finish are also rich or better off. But for the most part, uncountable numbers of Americans, who believe cards and gambling sinful, have staked their all in Florida's feverish game and lost. And the roads leading northward are today black with these sadder and wiser, but poorer people. And it is a strangely quiet exodus. To see and realize conditions throughout Florida today and compare them with what they were only a short time back one would ex- pect, if not a great hue and cry, at least great lamentations throughout the nation. But perhaps it's too soon for those cheated at the game to "squeal." Too many still have hope of getting their money back. "For land's sake," exclaimed my neighbor in Sinclair Hills Subdivision (four miles outside Tampa's city limits), "now you've unloaded your place and are going North, don't say anything about Florida till we can unload ours. We've been knocking Florida among ourselves, but if we have to board up this house and go off and leave it vacant after trying these three months to sell it, believe me, when we get back to Illinois we're going to praise Florida to the skies! They say they're buying better up North than here any- way, and we've just got to sell!" The circumstances of this woman and her family are typical. With all their savings they came to Tampa last summer and immediately plunged. First they paid $1,000 cash as down payment on a $3,800 "business" lot in Temple Terrace Estates, a far-out subdivision. The "high-pressure" salesman promised immediate street paving, water, etc., and my neighbor, with typical confidence, expected just as immediately to resell at a handsome profit. Then, with- drawing more from their savings, they made down payments on three lots in Inglewood Park (three being necessary be- cause they were of 25 foot frontage) and built there a small house especially to sell. And finally, with virtually the last of their savings, they "invested" in Sinclair Hills and built a "garage apartment" of one room and sleeping porch on the back of their "restricted" lot for temporary living quarters and, of course, eventual sale. But about the middle of last November buyers or "in- vestors" became noticeably scarce. Our neighbors and the thousands of others in like circumstances grew somewhat restive. Everyone whisperingly admitted "there's a slump on now." Invariably, however, this admission would be followed by some encouraging explanation. First it was: "It's always slow this time o' year; wait till the Christmas holidays an over." Then: "Wait till after the South Florida Fair in February," or "Wait till the races are over"; and finally: "It's bound to pick up in April — last April was our biggest month." But it never "picked up." On the contrary, lik< gigantic balloon that had been punctured, the gas begin noiselessly and gradually but surely to escape until by early March it had to be admitted by all, even the most frantic Florida boosters, that the end had come and that nothing but the shriveled skin of that enormous thing was left. Roger Babson, the statistician of Babson Park, Florida, fame, declared that "anyone who doesn't know the subdivi- sion business is dead, is dead himself from the nose up." When full realization of this began to dawn on all, such as our friends in Sinclair Hills, quiet panic began. The big boys and the bankers, who, incidentally, take 8 per cent interest in Florida but lend nothing with a subdivision lot as security, declared: "We are now back on a stable basis." But ordinary folk said: "The boom is busted." Throughout the State today are the eloquent signs of the boom's collapse and, as the native Floridian contemptu- ously describes it, "The rats are scuttling the ship," or "The 'binder boys' are marching through Georgia." Indeed, this hegira is described best by a Georgian, lounging on his doorstep along the highway : " 'Pears like they's mo' comin' out o' Florida than evah went down. I've timed twenty- seven Florida cars goin' by in the last hour and they been goin' by like that fo' mo' than a month now." This is almost true. The larger cities like Tampa and Miami, where but lately the streets were teeming with traffic, forcing the installation of new traffic and parking systems, are now nearly as lifeless as the street on a theater curtain. And where once neither living quarters nor office space could be found, the wind now whips For Rent signs on every other building. My own experience is typical and shows this contrast of conditions. In cities like Tampa and St. Petersburg on the West Coast the landlords last October were holding peo- ple up for $150 a month on dingy two-room apartments, and these could scarcely be found at that price. In Miami they were demanding $250 a month for similar quarters, requiring tenants to pay the first and last two months on a year's lease in advance. It was this situation that forced us to buy a lot in far-out Sinclair Hills and build, finding that there the down payment and monthly payments would be somewhat lower than such rent prices and we considered that, even though the boom collapsed, it was the more eco- nomical choice between two gangs of thieves. By March this situation had completely reversed. In Miami, as a friend there expressed it, "the landlords are crawling up and down Flagler Street on their hands and knees, begging you to take their $250 apartments at $50 a month." This friend, who by the same conditions we en- countered on the West Coast had been forced to make a down payment of $5,000 on an $18,000 home in Coral Gables and who last winter could not accept offers of $20,000 to $25,000 because he could find no place else to live and could not leave the city because his business was at stake,

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12 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3183 today finds that he cannot get $10,000 for his home. In- deed, there are no buyers at any price. The result of this situation is that the big "develop- ments" throughout Florida are having lots thrown back on their hands into their resale departments. There are in- stances where from 50 to 75 per cent of the buyers, unable to sell and unable to meet their second payments, have for- saken their "investments" for the development companies to do with as they may. And since even most of the largest developments were "shoe-stringing" — making their promised improvements only as the deferred payments came in — their improvements were halted; contracts with construction companies can- celed; salesmen, workmen, clerical help, and others laid off, and bills mounting into the millions of dollars for advertis- ing, building materials, and such left unpaid. Every few days now one hears the underground rum- bling of the collapse 'of one of the big developments, the whispered bankruptcy of a leading realtor. A Tampa land- lady who had made big money on two rooming houses dur- ing the fall and winter, charging fabulous prices for un- sanitary rooms and so-called apartments, told me the last week in March that out of fourteen roomers in one house only two were left, and eight out of ten roomers in the other house had "stood her up" for the rent. She said they were clerical workers, advertising men, and salesmen employed by "a $1C 0,000,000 development" in Tampa who had failed to receive their pay or had been discharged. Thus, like a house of cards, the slight disturbance of one card has laid the house low — all industry and commerce throughout Florida is seriously affected. The newspapers and magazines which grew fat on wild, hullabaloo ad'ertis- ing of real estate have enormous sums written in red on their books today. The auditor of one leading magazine told me "on the quiet" that it was $190,000 "in the red." In a new court recently created in Hillsborough County, of which Tampa is the seat, to care for civil actions, 80 per cent of the cases have been replevins of automobiles, payments on which have not been met. Every day now the Florida newspapers in articles and editorials declare in heated terms that "business is good," that at present there is "merely a readjustment that had to come," and they denounce violently anyone who makes a statement to the contrary. In true American fashion they cast about for a scapegoat to blame the "readjustment" upon. Presto! Two are found! "Northern propaganda founded on jealousy of our prosperity" and the "binder boys." There is some measure of truth, perhaps, in the state- ment that "Northern propaganda" hastened the collapse; but most of it was not vicious but rather genuinely truthful descriptions of Florida conditions. But the last thing the man with his fortunes at stake in the Florida boom really wanted was the truth. "Truth," to him, was always a flat- tering, exaggerated talk about Florida's climate and ad- vantages. "Lies" were anything the least discouraging to possible "investors." As for blaming it on the "binder boys" — hypothetical gentlemen always of the hated Jewish extraction — who bought short-time options on property with intention to sell the option or the property before the option was up, that is something of a joke to an unbiased observer who has lived through the boom. The truth is that a very high per- centage of all those who played in the Florida real-estate game were "binder boys" of greater or lesser degree. Most property was bought, not for use, nor even to hold long, but to sell quickly at the biggest possible profit. And a great majority of those who made down payments on expensive properties or lots had no plan or notion of making the sec- ond payments ; nothing, in fact, but an assurance of "a quick turnover" whenever desired. A California Liberal By MICHAEL BLOUNT IN 1910 Hiram Johnson became Governor of California, promising to "kick the Southern Pacific out of politics." He did kick the Southern Pacific out of politics; and he kept it out by means of commissions designed to regulate public utilities and empowered to make their rulings final save for a review by the State Supreme Court. But in 1916 Johnson went to the Senate, and the story of California since then has been the story of the gradual seizure by the big corporations of the very commissions Johnson created to watch over them. These commissions are appointed by the Governor. The incumbent Governor, Friend William Richardson, has been able, through a num- ber of vacancies, to pack the commissions with men who by nature and inclination are corporation supporters. Until a year or so ago, however, the State Supreme Court, possessed of the power to review the acts of the commissions, was a check upon their too often arbitrary holdings. Today, because of resignations and other cir- cumstantial factors, the Supreme Court itself is composed of a majority of appointed justices, including the Chief Justice, and to appeal to the court from a decision of a commission is to undertake a task well-nigh futile in the face of the natural tendency of the appointed justices to sustain the acts of the appointed commissioners. The check which once kept the commissions within the limits of judi- cial decency has been destroyed, and the Governor, as the appointing power, is virtually the head of the judiciary. Friend William Richardson boasts that he has never listened to a plea for clemency. He is reported to have said that the jury which convicted Anita Whitney of crim- inal syndicalism, on evidence which proved she was opposed to violence in any form, should have brought in a verdict of death. This sort of rumor has caused even his former backers to wonder how they can get rid of him. But the Governor's opponents for the Republican nomi- nation in the August primaries have not been able to evoke much enthusiasm. One, the present Lieutenant Gov- ernor, C. C. Young, is intelligently progressive and of no little ability. He is a quiet man, however, and has done little more than ripple the political pond. The other — Rex Goodcell of San Bernadino — has wet tendencies, and these tendencies hurt him in the south, where he should be strongest, while he is relatively unknown in the north. Until recently it seemed probable that out of this lethargic condition Richardson would emerge with the nomi- nation, and nomination in this case means election. A short while ago, however, a new figure entered the lists, and the situation has undergone a change. In an address to the lawyers of Fresno County Thomas J. Lennon, Asso- ciate Justice of the Supreme Court, announced his candi- dacy for the chief justiceship, and made certain pertinent remarks which startled the State. After twenty-four years

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July 7, 1926] The Nation 13 of unostentatious service on the bench Lennon told his hearers that he was weary of watching the disintegration of the Supreme Court, that what California needed was not more courts but more work by the courts now in existence, and that the present situation, wherein the acts of ap- pointed commissioners must be passed on by a court the majority of whose members are also appointed, is intoler- able and destructive of the State constitution, lie asserted that "a coterie of high-powered corporation lawyers and ex- and incumbent judges of high- and low-powered courts handpick and handicap judicial appointments," that there is "a beaten path from the door of the chief justice to the door of the chief executive," that "there should be no such link between the judicial and executive brandies of the government," and that the judiciary must be restored to the people, to whom it belongs. Lennon's announcement, wholly unheralded, has put steam into the Young and Goodccll boilers, and raised Len- non overnight from a quiet, unassuming, hard-working magistrate to the most-talked-of political figure in the State. Here, it seems, is one judge at least who will not pussyfoot. He appears to know nothing of circumlocution. He states his case without a softening word, breaking through the hedges of that sacrosanct dignity which is supposed to sur- round judicial office. The opposition is furnished by the present Chief Jus- tice, William H. Waste, appointed by the Governor, whom the Governor refers to as "my chief justice." Waste is a nice, nervous little man who took office following the resig- nation of Louis W. Myers. Myers had been appointed by Richardson following the resignation of Lucien Shaw, who had been appointed by Richardson following the resignation of Curtis D. Wilbur, who had been appointed by Richardson following the resignation of Frank M. Angellotti. Angel- lotti had been elected by the people, but resigned to become chief counsel for the Western Pacific. Wilbur resigned to become Secretary of the Navy. Shaw resigned because, it is understood, he agreed to do so after one year so that Myers might have the job; and Meyers resigned to make room for Waste. Waste is making a typical Y. M. C. A. campaign. As the head of that organization in California some years ago, Waste promulgated the rule forbidding the admission of Negroes to its rites. He has courted the support of the Klan in the sparsely settled districts, and will have the sup- port of the Governor. He is bone dry and opposed to any referendum on the Volstead Act. Lennon has gone on record as saying that "a verdict from the people, one way or the other, can do no harm on any question." Indeed, Lennon consistently has cham- pioned the right of the people to control a government they own. He dissented from the opinion ruling the 1924 La Follette electors from the California ballot. In his dissent, which was marked by a restrained and modulated vehe- mence, he reduced the opinion of the court to absurdity, and pointed out that no technical interpretation of a liberal statute should be permitted so to pervert the meaning of that statute as to deny the people the very rights that the statute sought to give them. He also dissented from the order denying Anita Whitney a hearing by the Supreme Court of California. It is possible that Waste may win. It is also possible that Richardson may win. But there is hope at least that California in 1926 will have occasion to congratulate itself as it did in 1910, and that the nomination of Lennon and the : o( Richardson will result in the emancipation of the judicial and executive branches of its government. In the Driftway AS a rule the Drifter doesn't read the political news with great assiduity. Commonly it bores him and it never seems to make much difference who is chosen at the primary or final elections. The Drifter thinks the situation was admirably summarized by Pat, a janitor friend whom some- body once chided for having failed to vote. "It's this way," explained Pat. "Whoever is elected I'll have to get up and go to work tomorrow morning just the same." BUT the other day, through a sense of duty or boredom or some other insufficient reason, the Drifter read all the way through an account of the Maine primaries. And was rewarded. For down at the very end of the dispatch from Portland he found a gold nugget: "In Allegash plan- tation, Aroostook County, all the male voters were absent on a log drive on the St. John River. The women apparently were timid about going to the polls, and not a single vote was cast." That is what the Drifter calls a sensible — and probably a happy — community. What should any red- blooded men care for politics when there was a log drive to occupy them? A feminist friend of the Drifter's resents the assumption that the women were too timid to go to the polls, insisting that that is merely a statement of the re- porter's prejudices; more likely the women were too busy tending the babies or feeding the chickens. Well, so much the better. That's a further indication that the community is a sensible and a happy one. Anyhow the Drifter's fancy was so much tickled that at once he looked up Allegash on the map and found it way up in the northwest corner of Maine, twenty miles from a railroad track and twenty thou- sand miles from politics. The Drifter contemplates a speedy visit to Allegash. Only he thinks he will go in winter, when he will probably be snowed in and will thus have a good excuse for making a long stay. He has hopes that in Allegash there is not more than one radio per family and that they have not yet heard of the crime wave or the failure of prohibition — never having tried either. HAROLD HERSEY amiably protests because this oracle on June 16 said that the Quill was founded by Arthur H. Moss: The fact of the matter is three of us conceived and carried into effect the Quill. They were Forrest Mann, Arthur Moss, and myself. At the time I had just enlisted as a buck private in the army and was editing he Dernier Cri, the Spectator, and other Village "mags." We had our office in an old ramshackle structure on Sheridan Square, now a highly respectable, commonplace apartment house. One evening we had nothing better to do and so we founded the Quill. I thought I could conduct its editorial affairs from the ranks of the army while Moss handled business details, but it proved too much for me and Moss and I soon disagreed on every possible matter that came up, al- though we still remain the best of friends. The Drifter

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14 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3183 Correspondence Bill Hard Translates Catullus To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: In the delightful article by Ludwig Lewisohn, Catul- lus in Verona, I find a charming translation of the famous first six lines of Catullus's fifth poem. I cannot rival this translation for poetry, but I venture to send you another translation which may be interesting from another standpoint. I have rendered each line of Catullus by an exactly corresponding line of English; I have used Catul- lus's exact figures of speech; I have retained Catullus's flip- pant tone in lines two and three; and I have used Catullus's own hendecasyllabic meter. Thus, while the reader will not be so charmed as by Mr. Lewisohn's translation, he will, as a minor matter, learn more precisely just what Catullus said, and how he said it, in this eternally appealing passage. With tremblings by the author, here this literal transla- t:m is: Live we, Lesbia, live and love and love, dear. Cackles now of the oldsters grown so serious Let us take at the weight of one brass penny. Suns can set and can then return awakened. We, when once has our little light gone from us, Sleep (we must) in a darkness, one, unending. Washington, D. C, June 20 William Hard Free Traders Convene To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: There is to be an International Conference to promote the Taxation of Land Values and Free Trade at Copenhagen, Denmark, from July 20 to July 31. The Genus Hon-o, species Free Trader, is about extinct in this country. The truth which W. G. Sumner, David A. Wells, Henry George, and John DeWitt Warner once made so plain has become eclipsed, proving Roger Babson right when he said: The war taught the employing class the secret and power of widespread propaganda. Imperial Europe had been aware of this power. It was new to the United States. Now when we have anything to sell the American people we know how to sell it. We have learned. We have the schools. We have the pulpits. The employing class owns th ? press. There is practically no important newspaper in the United States but is theirs. The Copenhagen Conference will be held in the Parliament building. Charles O'Connor Hennessy of New York has been chosen to preside. On the program the following topics are down for discussion: World Peace, Unemployment, the Housing Problem, the Importance of Free Trade for the Recovery of Europe, Taxation of Land Values in Practice, Land Valuation, Henry George and Denmark, Land Division in Germany, the Historical Development of Danish Agricultural Rights. Ex- cursions to the farming districts and the colonies of small hold- ers will be particularly interesting. It was the reform of farming conditions, getting the land back to the farmer, that put Denmark on such a basis of general prosperity that the little country weathered the war years and did so much to feed all Europe. The Danish farmer has done away with the middleman. This conference is called by those who believe that taxation should be used to prevent monopolies, not to create them; to equitably diffuse wealth, not to unjustly concentrate it; to pro- mote liberty and equality of rights and not to abolish them. Besides representatives from England and America there will be delegations from Germany, Aust ia, France, and other countries. New York, June 10 Chester C. Platt SPUNK The Foundation of American Independence In the rock-ribbed State of Maine, a veteran of the Civil War was running for the office of First Selectman. On Saturday night he wound up his campaign with an eloquent attack on his opponent, the village saloon-keeper, who there- upon rose to his feet and remarked testily: "If you didn't shoot off your mouth so much, Rogers, you might get an office in this town sometime." The Colonel drew himself to his full six feet, and replied: "I wouldn't forego the pleasure of shootin' off my mouth for any office in the town of Patten." In New England they call it spunk In Pennsylvania they call it nerve From Pittsburgh a subscriber to The Nation writes : "You had a lot of nerve to inform me of the ex- piration of my subscription at the very time you castigate our method of shelling out the coin here in Pennsylvania when we want to select an honorable representative to the U. S. Senate. . . . "It is this attitude of yours on public questions that makes it a pleasure to renew my subscrip- tion to an honest, fearless publication." Spunk or nerve, whichever you call it, it is the essence of American in- dependence and the spirit in which THE NATION has been edited for sixty-one years. THE NATION 20 Vesey Street, New York City Please send me The Nation for a year. Name Address . $5 a year Canadian $5.50. Foreign $6 7-7-26

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Books Margins By WILBERT SNOW The birds frequent the entrance to the wood, And fish patrol the edges of the shore; March breezes that anticipate May's mood And nuzzle round torn fences token more To me than mid-May's lilac-sconted noons; A friend who leaves me at my inmost shrine Is dearer far than one who importunes From me the secrets I would still keep mine; And even lovers stale not who retreat From chambers in love's mansion where alone Their loved ones sit determined to defeat Gregarious hours challenging their own — Aware that half the secret of a stal- ls grace to know the sun's heat from afar. The French Revolution and After L'Esprit Revolutionnaire en France et aux Etats-Unis & la Fin du XVIII* Steele. By Bernard Fay. Paris: E. Champion. Napoleon and Marie Louise: The Fall of the Empire. By Walter Geer. Brentano's. $5. Me moirs of a Napoleonic Officer. By Jean-Baptiste Barres. The Dial Press. $4. On the Road with Wellington. By August Ludolf Friedrich Schaumann. Alfred A. Knopf. $7.50. 'T'HE fascination of the heroic period of French history from * the eve of the revolution to the overthrow of Napoleon Bonaparte continues to make itself felt. Here we have four books, two by Frenchmen, one by an American, and one by a German, all written with contagious enthusiasm and each con- tributing, by way either of new material or of new interpre- tation, to a better appreciation of the period. M. Fay has embodied in a volume which should be translated into English at the earliest possible moment the results of long labors in France and America upon the mutual influence of revolutionary ideas and ideals as they developed on both sides of the water in the last three decades of the eighteenth century. Hitherto there had been no adequate study of the interpenetration of the philosophic, religious, and literary ideas of the two countries during this time in which took place "the greatest battle of ideas in modern times." • Nor is the author content merely to trace the origin and weigh the abstract value of these ideas; he attempts to show also how they leavened the spirit of the masses in both countries and so made permanent contributions to the mutual national psychologies — both in their sympathetic and in their antipathetic elements. Passing easily and fre- quently from Philadelphia to Paris and from Paris back to Philadelphia, Boston, or Charleston as his center of thought, M. Fay skilfully weaves his threads into a convincing pattern, showing the struggle here between sympathy and repulsion for the triumphing philosophy of Jacobinism, and the eclipse of fraternity in "the great schism" of 1795-1800. Mr. Geer's book is a companion volume to his "Napoleon and Josephine." Yet is it hardly a supplement to that. Chrono- logically the new volume repeats the second half of the old; but the treatment is from an entirely different point of view. Josephine was the outstanding figure there, and Napoleon's fortunes were considered from the point of view of the influences and the fate of the charming Creole who played an important part even in the days of repudiation and quasi-exile. Mr. Geer's theme now is "the Austrian marriage and its effects on tho Russian alliance." Beginning with the Polish campaign of i 307, the author treats in detail the formation of the alliance of Napoleon with Alexander of Russia, and the com- plicated results of that alliance in the diplomatic and military relations between Napoleon and the Powers of Europe. He looks upon Tilsit as the critical event in Napoleon's career. Had the entente negotiated there "been consolidated and per- petuated," he says, "it is probable that England would have given up the struggle and that his object would have been attained. The rupture with Russia, to which the Austrian alliance directly led, revived the almost extinct coalition, drew Napoleon into disastrous enterprises [the Moscow campaign], and ended in his downfall." It is to the disastrous enterprises and the downfall that the second half of the volume is devoted. The elements that entered into Napoleon's downfall are so com- plex that it is perhaps a bit rash to emphasize any one of them unduly. Napoleon himself, at St. Helena, attributed his down- fall to the Spanish revolt: "Cette malheureuse guerre m'a perdu." Scholars may quarrel with Mr. Geer on this point. But they will all have only praise for the thoroughness, clarity, and charm of his work. Especially to those readers who are not acquainted with the writings of Vandal he will bring a new revelation of Napoleon's contacts with Russia. Jean-Baptiste Barres (the grandfather of Maurice Barres) rose from being a 20-year-old skirmisher of the Guard at the time of Napoleon's coronation in 1804 to be lieutenant and member of the Legion of Honor before the overthrow of the Emperor. He made his peace with the Restoration government, adhered to the Revolution of 1830, and after thirty years of ser- vice under one regime or another died in the early days of the July Monarchy. His diaries, transcribed from "dozens of little note-books, tattered and soiled, which he had carried about with him, in his haversack, for twenty years, over half the highways of Europe," are now published by his distinguished grandson. Barres had no need to hang himself, like "brave Crillon," for he was "there" at all the great battles of the empire: Auster- litz, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Dresden, and Leipzig. He bore a charmed life, like his great commander. But, unlike his great commander, he has given us a most vivid picture of the daily life of soldiers in camp and on the march. While Barres, under the shadow of the imperial eagles, was jotting down a record of victories and hardships across the Rhine, a fair-haired Hanoverian commissary in the army of the Duke of Wellington was keeping a detailed diary of the campaign against Napoleon's marshals in the Iberian penin- sula. This diary, designed only "for the entertainment and edification of his family," lay hidden in the author's German home for a hundred years, until, in 1922, it was published (like that of Barres) by a grandson. From the original Ger- man work in two large volumes Mr. Ludovici has selected for translation the part dealing with the Peninsular War. From the moment that Commissary Schaumann landed in the raging surf off the shores of Portugal, in August, 1808, until an August day six years later, when he returned to London to celebrate the wild Peace Festival and was unable to reach his lodgings at two o'clock in the morning for "the stream of people who poured down the Strand with me" and "dragged me along with it," this is a tale of uninterrupted excitement. And the tale loses nothing in the telling because the diarist is something of a swashbuckler and more of a Lothario. Some passages of the diary rise to the heights of genuine eloquence and pathos. The description of Sir John Moore's retreat to Corunna, for in- stance, is as harrowingly vivid as any page of Tolstoi's "War and Peace." Commissary Schaumann was an artist with the brush as well as with the pen. The volume is illustrated with twenty of his sketches in color, including as the frontispiece a Selbstbildnis which looks like a sweet Little Lord Fauntleroy! David Saville Muzzey

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16 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3183 Is Immigration an Error? The Melting-Pot Mistake. By Henry Pratt Fairchild. Little, Brown and Company. $2.50. THE fundamental thesis of this book is indicated by its title. "The purpose of the melting-pot figure was to con- vince the American people that immigration did not threaten its unity but tended to produce even a finer type of unity. It failed because it did not take account of the true nature of group unity, of the conditions of its preservation or of the actual consequences of such inroads upon unity as are in- volved in an immigration movement." Race, nationality, group contacts, the making of a nation, the menace of recent immi- gration, assimilation, Americanization, the meaning of America, the making of Americans, and the duty of America are among the topics that receive special and well-argued consideration. Fat race and nationality, which, according to the author, are the two universal foundations of group unity, are the major problems upon which differences of opinion will arise. Racial assimilation, it is argued, is impossible because racial traits, being biologic facts, are transmitted from generation to genera- tion unchanged; they may mix but they do not amalgamate; and in dogs mixture produces a mongrel. Thus a human being made up of numerous strains is a sort of human mosaic, neither more nor less than the sum total of his biologic ex- istence. Mr. Fairchild might have quoted Solomon: "Though thou shouldst bray a fool in mortar with a pestle among wheat yet will not his foolishness depart from him." Pulver- ized though he might be, the fool would still be all there. Up to 1882 there was no race problem in America because the immigrants came from those races in Europe that were essentially like the American. Then the trouble began: the strains from Eastern and Southeastern Europe brought the new menace that is with us today and that threatens our unity and civilization. Nationality, on the other hand, being an acquired char- acteristic, may be socially transmitted and become the basis of national unity. But when the concussions of the Great War had died down "the melting-pot was discovered to be so badly cracked that it is not likely ever to be dragged into service again." The remedy, there-fore, is practically to shut out all aliens and Americanize those who are now with us. This logic of course justifies the passage of the pending Alien Registration bills — with an initial fee of ten dollars, subse- quent annual fines of five dollars, and the inauguration of a general system of espionage. It should be said at once, how- ever, that the author does not recommend harsh treatment of the alien now in our midst; he simply does not believe that in general the foreign-born person can become a real American; he believes that only those born and educated here can under- stand the meaning of America. Condemning, as Mr. Fairchild does, the melting-pot sym- bol as a mistake, one may be justified in asking whether the new symbol indicated by his title is not also an assumption unwarranted by facts. This book impresses one as having been written by one who knows his subject and has mastered his material; it is an excellent statement of his philosophy. But it will leave many unconvinced that the war demonstrated the impossibility of Americanization. Was dragging a German pastor through the streets and compelling him to kiss the flag evidence on the part of the German-Americans of failure to assimilate? Could it not, in the light of what we now know, be truthfully asserted that in view of the policy of our govern- ment during the war the German-Americans showed a spirit of loyalty and forbearance unparalleled in the history of war? What proof has ever been adduced to show that the Nordics, apart from environment, have a preeminent claim to democratic ideals of liberty and justice? Were the followers of Mazzini less inspired by these ideals than the adherents of Bismarck? Did Morel, Russell, and MacDonald endure imprisonment to preserve a biologic formula? Is it safe or scientific to as- sume that Mussolini commands the spirit of the Italians today or Horthy that of the democratic Hungarians? In none of these typical cases is the basis of dissent a racial one; in all it is caused by a mistaken policy on the part of governments or by unscrupulous leaders dominated by the idea of im- perialistic aggrandizement. The war proves absolutely noth- ing about assimilation. The significant thing that it does prove is not that different races and nationalities cannot live in con- cord under one flag — Switzerland is an outstanding denial of this assumption — but that a certain school of sociologists have no faith in the power of ideals to win and keep men to a common standard. Karl F. Geiser A New Science of Character Physique and Character. By E. Kretschmer. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $5. A S a technical contribution this volume is presumably cavi- -**■ are to the general, even to the fairly omnivorous, reader; but its theme should intensely interest the layman. It is a straightforward attempt to solve anew the enigma of person- ality, to find the correlation of bodily features and mental traits. As such it takes its place as the latest development of an ancient and persistent inquiry which in its long career has invited many an ambitious and fallacious solution. Quacks have read character, predicted careers, and collected fees. Undisciplined minds have launched fanciful systems of inter- pretation from Athens and Rome, London and Boston. The problem is legitimate and important; the conviction remains that nature has written the answer in anatomy and physiology and psychology, and it will not be a rare genius but the con- vergence of well-devised investigations that eventually pene- trates and reveals the answer. Dr. Kretschmer makes a strictly scientific approach, but he conceives scientific method liberally, using all available in- struments with allowance for their imperfections. He realizes that measurements and tables do not tell the whole story, and that impressions and pictures are significant even when not reducible to equations. Furthermore, facts require interpreta- tion; hypotheses are needed to give unity and intelligibility to the data. He focuses the entire armory of established methods upon the two terms of the personal equation — physique and character. The problem is threefold: to determine the distinctive types of bodily physique (constitution) ; to note the charac- teristic trends of psychic disposition (temperament) ; and to establish some relation between these. Dr. Kretschmer recog- nizes three types of physique: the "asthenic," the "athletic," and the "pyknic." Physique is a composite, complex but objec- tive; character is a still more complex composite with inevi- tably subjective components. The casual, the amateur, the socially experienced, the scientifically trained observer are all impressed with the differences in response to ordinary situa- tions and stimulations. The critical question is: What are the distinctive types of temperament? The psychoanalysts speak of introvert and extravert; James of tender-minded and tough- minded; Wells of poietic and kinetic; and Burgess of bromide and sulphite. Dr. Kretschmer belongs to a recent movement which has not yet found authoritative formulation, but which proceeds upon a convergence upon a significant set of con- clusions. A leading principle is that the clue to psychic dis- positions lies in the field of the abnormal. Stated popularly, if you want to know to what variety of homo a given specimen belongs, try to determine what kind of mental disorder he would exhibit if he lost his balance. At first blush this sug- gests a harsh and almost a cynical judgment; but it is an eminently sound one. For insanity is but the end-term, the

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July 7, 1926] The Nation 17 extreme expression, the magnified picture of tendencies present in all of us; and only those protected by the impervious cuticle of mediocre dulness are hopelessly sane. So by defining the goal toward which a man is tending — even though he but a moderate way along the route — you stamp his type That also is an older conception, refined and enriched by mod- ern study. Dr. Kretschmer follows the Kraepelin classification, which recognizes as the most comprehensive divisions the "cycloid" temperament and the "schizoid." While it is hardly likely that the census-taker of the future will ask whether you are a cycloid or a schizoid, the question may well play a part in questionnaires addressed to the psychoanalytically inclined. Distinctions must be shaded, alloys recognized, and a large allowance made for the deviating types, or the "dysplastic" groups, in turn composed of several wholly different variants. The additional complications of age and sex, of social habit, of direction of talent and endeavor, of facilities and disabilities, aid in projecting the endless varieties of humans — each, how- ever, still with affinity to a type. Of the two orders of men, the schizoids far exceed the cycloids in psychological interest. "Cycloid men are sleek and uncomplicated beings whose feel- ings rise directly, naturally, and undisguised to the surface, so that everyone can soon get a correct judgment of them. Schi- zoid men have a surface and a depth." Yet there are average schizoids as well as geniuses within the class, and to each a chapter is devoted. In its complicated development the theme leads to engaging speculations and suggestive excursions. Finally, for correlation: the most striking conclusion is that pyknics are cycloids and most rarely schizoids; the manic- depressives have a pyknic body type. The exceptions are few. By contrast the schizophrenic disorders draw most largely on the asthenic type, but the athletics and certain of the variant forms contribute measurably. These data are drawn from cases of mental disorder, but are confirmed in trends among the normal. The conclusions can be rationalized and carried out in far-reaching corollaries. They are certainly open to modification and completion; and many a critical reader will be more impressed with the speculative than with the estab- lished points in the argument. It particularly needs supple- mentation from the normal approach. But when the largest allowance is made for the many uncertainties of fact and interpretation, the impression remains of a distinct contribu- tion to the topic, and of a well-handled, fairly convincing analysis. Dr. Kretschmer has not formulated a definitive science of characterology; his types may be but first ap- proaches. But every future contribution will consider his directive ideas; he is launched upon a promising enterprise. Joseph Jastrow From Plato to Harvey The Evolution of Anatomy. By Charles Singer. Alfred A. Knopf. $4. THIS is a scholarly work, written with rare literary skill and demanding from the reader but the most elementary knowledge of anatomy and physiology. The history commences with the Greeks and closes with the work of Harvey in 1628. There pass before us Plato and Diodes, Aristotle and Theo- phrastus, representing the Athenian school; Herophilus, father of anatomy, and Erasistratus, father of physiology, repre- senting the Greek Alexandrians; Galen, "the prince of physicians"; the incomparable Leonardo da Vinci; Vesalius, the reformer of anatomy; Eustachius, the rival of Vesalius; and Fabricius of Padua, one of the greatest of all teachers of anatomy; and finally William Harvey. Harvey's great work, "An Anatomical Dissertation on the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals," appeared in Frankfurt in 1628 as a miserably printed little quarto. By this brief tract the whole scientific outlook on the human body was transformed. From now on men began to think physi- ologically even when occupied in purely anatomical study. Harvey took up his theme practically where Galen had left it. With Harvey, at last, a clear idea again emerges that each organ has a discoverable function and is related in its mode of working to all the other organs and to the body as a whole. The point of view of Harvey, however, is very different from that of Galen, so that in the coming centuries we hear less of design and more of machine. Dr. Singer has treated the his- tory of anatomy as a secular conversation between great minds — a debate continued through the ages. His book is the kind we have been led to expect from the foremost medical his- torian in England. Benjamin Harrow Forces and Men Europe from Waterloo to Sarajevo. By Percy Ashley. Alfred A. Knopf. $3. A CCORDING to the author this is a sketch of the political -**■ development of Europe from the downfall of Napoleon in 1815 to the outbreak of 1914. To a reader familiar with the salient features of nineteenth-century European history the work will seem fragmentary and incomplete. Mr. Ashley ig- nores entirely or mentions only casually many aspects of eco- nomic and social history which are closely connected with the political history of the period. Although he attributes a due share of the blame for the catastrophe of 1914 to the imperial- istic expansion of Europe after 1870, he says very little of the underlying causes of that expansion. In the preface he de- fends himself by reminding us that everything cannot be in- cluded in a work of such narrow compass. This is quite true; yet in the same preface he betrays the fact that his book was written with a purpose. In the first half of the century statesmen could call into being, or at least could guide, forces whereby the map of Europe in 1815 was greatly changed; in the second half of the century, and especially in its last five-and- twenty years, they were driven by forces which they had not evoked and could do little to direct or restrain. It is in defense of this thesis — one which few well-in- formed students of recent and contemporary history would support — that Mr. Ashley writes. It must be admitted that at first glance he seems to have succeeded fairly well. Certainly, as we follow him on his lucid way to the dawning of the world tragedy of 1914, we become more and more inclined to feel that, after all, individual acts and motives played but a negli- gible part. The statesmen of Europe seem like puppets in the grasp of a brutal force. The problem of war guilt is being warmly debated, and Mr. Ashley's point of view about it is interesting. It is a comfortable one as well, for it absolves everybody of responsibility. Yet its implications give not even a faint hope for the future. If the forces which bathed Europe in blood in 1914 are utterly beyond the possibility of human control, then we have little in store for us but an endless series of similar catastrophes. It is therefore a relief to turn to the supplementary chap- ter on the causes of the World War which Harry Elmer Barnes contributes to the book. For Mr. Barnes writes from exactly the opposite point of view. He admits the titanic qualities of the forces engendered by the system of political organization which developed in Europe after 1870, but he does not exonerate the statesmen of Europe from their share of the blame; for, after all, it was the statesmen who manipulated the system. Consequently Mr. Barnes's chapter has a judicious quality and a stamp of sober conviction which Mr. Ashley's work lacks. Catharine E. Young

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18 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3183 Books in Brief The John Quinn Collection of Paintings, Water Colors, Draw- ings, and Sculpture. Huntington, N. Y. : Pigeon Hill Press. Now that the John Quinn collection is scattered the cata- logue remains a noble if inadequate memorial to one of the finest collections of modern pictures America has ever seen. It is an invaluable book to keep on a convenient table and thumb through at odd moments. With its 200 reproductions of modern pictures it is a perfect supplement to Faure's vol- ume on modern art, Clive Bell's "Since Cezanne," Gordon's "Modern Painters," and Pach's "Masters of Modern Art." The influence of French painting upon American art is incal- culable, and much of that influence reached American artists through the collection of John Quinn, who was ever ready to exhibit his pictures publicly or privately. For that reason the catalogue of his collection, even though it illustrates pre- dominantly French painting, is an important item in the his- tory of contemporary American art. Occidental Gleanings. By Lafcadio Hearn. Edited by Albert Mordell. Two volumes. Dodd, Mead and Company. $6. A collection of Hearn's contributions to thy Cincinnati Enquirer and Cotmnercial and to the New Orleans Times- Democrat, Item, and other papers. In themselves the articles are lucid and undoubtedly valuable to the Hearn scholar, but it is less certain that they add much to their author's fame. At best they only confirm the range of his sympathies and his curiosity, for already in the eighties the passion for things rich and strange is manifest in subjects as diverse as Creole gram- mar and Creole songs, the Touarick Arabs and aphis-eggs. Gandle Follows His Nose. By Heywood Broun. Boni and Liveright. $1.50. Gandle spent his childhood close to dragons, so when at, eighteen he goes adventuring into life there is nothing that he does not willingly encounter. At first his whims are ful- filled by a magic cap and a genie, but the charm of their gifts does not divert him long, and he sets out a second time to seek more substantial romance. There is fantasy as well as mild humor and pleasant philosophy upon the road that Gandle treads as he follows his nose; but it must have been a rather straight and simple nose after all. Cuckoo. By Douglas Goldring. Robert M. McBride and Com- pany. $2. A third-rate English novel of the "Constant Nymph" school. Sincere and smutty, with a tapering plot and no re- deeming qualities. White Servitude in Pennsylvania: Indentured and Redemption Labor in Colony and Commonwealth. By Cheesman A. Herrick. Philadelphia: John Joseph McVey. $4.50. The apportionment clause in the American Constitution mentions "those bound to service for a term of years." Con- stitutional commentaries usually dismiss this quotation as re- ferring to apprentices, and most American histories dealing with the colonial period give it little more than a passing no- tice; but the fact is that "those bound to service" referred to a class of laborers constituting a form of servitude that played an important part in the economic system in several of the colonies, notably Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Dr. Herrick's book is a complete and very excellent study of this institution in all its phases in the colony and commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The "Indentured servants," or "Redemp- tioners" as they were called, were a class of immigrants who were unable to pay for their passage on embarking and who arranged with the captain or master of the vessel to be transported without payment in advance, but with the under- standing that if on landing in America their friends would not redeem them they would bind themselves to service for a term of years, usually four to seven, to anyone who might pay their passage. Thus originated a system of servitude, mid- way between slavery and free labor, which developed into a fixed system regulated by contracts and laws, and in Penn- sylvania was an important part of the labor system from the founding of the colony until after the revolution. This is by far the best account yet written of this important subject. The Jewish Anthology. Edited by Edmond Fleg. Translated by Maurice Samuel. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $3.50. Those who seek short cuts to knowledge will welcome this work which sums up as effectively as possible the characteristic literary and philosophical expression of the Jewish mind dur- ing the past twenty-live hundred years. Some notion of the diversity of the contributions may be had from the fact that ths originals of these utterances include every important lan- guage of Kurope in addition to Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and ancient Greek. Naturally the material is fragmentary and inadequate. Georgian Stories, 1925. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50. The skill which characterizes English writing is almost oppressively present in this volume. This craftsmanship is exhibited on diverse themes, none significant, and applied to varied characters, none profound. A fling with high society by Michael Arlen, an allegory by E. M. Forstcr, a pleasant satire by Aldous Huxley, and an essay rather than a story by C. E. Montague are the high spots. Man Alone. By George Agnew Chamberlain. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2. A dull story. The progress is from child to herculean Master of the Glass Works. The Shoals of Honour. By Elizabeth Sanxay Holding. E. P. Dutton and Company. $2. It is hard because of its excellent and finished style and its keenness of characterization to dismiss this book as merely unsuccessful. Basil Hazeltine, parasitical hanger-on of so- ciety, suggests an immediate comparison with the famous Lily Bart, but he emerges as a somewhat more flexible and modern piece of psychological construction. In his ease, however, after the debacle an attempt is made to show that his weakness is mostly environment-made habit and that he has a genuine level in life among the average middle-class suburbanites. This is where Mrs. Holding fails. The wo.' king up of the story has been too slow; the shift, while logically provided for, comes too quickly to be dramatically convincing; the balance is lost. □ THEATER □ THE THEATRE GUILD Presents- AT MRS. BEAM'S A Comedy by C. K. MTJNBO with ALFBED LUNT, LYNN FONTANNK. JEAN CADELL, HELEN WESTLEY. HENBY TRAVERS AND OTHERS. GUILD THEATRE, gsSJt Kui* 1Pw-*- "- 8:S0- THURS. and SAT., 2:*0. GRAND STREET THE Mli Annual Revue of .._..*.. .n^n. .~~w^ P'a.vhous at 8:30-Friday July 2m! ami 9th. FOLLIES When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Peace Tendencies in France By ALFRED LOWRY Paris, May SO ONE of the significant signs of the times in France is the marked increase of interest in the problem of the right of conscientious objection to military service. In a country where conscription has hitherto been accepted as a matter of course, like death and taxes, and where any oppo- sition was regarded both by the state and by public opinion as one of the basest forms of human depravity and cowardly selfishness, no change in the mental attitude of the people could be of greater moment, as indicating the growth of a will to peace. This interest may be said to date from September of last year, when those in charge of the Twenty-fourth Inter- national Peace Congress, held in Paris and subsidized by the Government, sought most unwisely to stifle all discus- sion of the problem. In the months which have followed many meetings have been held where this question was the chief topic under discussion. Georges Pioch, literary critic and distinguished orator in a land of orators, has courage- ously espoused the cause of the C. 0. Articles keep appear- ing in the daily press and in more thoughtful journals, both for and against; the subject is being aired and is becoming a live issue. Andre Ripert and Jules Brunand, representing the interesting organization known as l'U.S.T.I.C.A. (l'Union Syndicale des Techniciens de l'lndustrie, du Commerce et de TAgriculture) are out for it, and even the prudent Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, which has done so much for op- pressed individuals from Dreyfus onward but which has hitherto fled the question of conscientious objection like the plague, recently opened the columns of its Cahiers to the problem. Ferdinand Buisson, its valiant and aged president, would appear to be undergoing a pronounced modification in his own attitude to the question. La Jeune Republique (often described as the Marc Sangnier movement, Catholic for the most part, pacifist but cautious) has not come out for the extreme position. But at a dinner recently given to some forty carefully selected people, in the interest of the great peace conference and demonstration which is being organized for the month of August at Bierville, near. Paris, Marc Sangnier called upon two persons to speak, whose position he knew before- hand was that of out-and-out pacifism, clearly showing that what the group will not yet announce themselves they will at least gladly listen to. Last autumn a young author, Andre Chamson, brought out a novel called "Roux — le Bandit." It is the simple, art- less story of a Cevenol peasant who, because he could not as a Christian go to the front in 1914, vanished into the mountains to lead a parlous existence threatened by starva- tion, the cold, and the rifles of the gendarmes. The book has run to some 13,000 copies, and is still selling well. In- stead of being privately printed obscurely in a province, it is issued by Grasset, a publisher of established reputation. The book is being discussed and reviewed. (One might add that the story is in essential points true to fact, and that the original of Roux is at present serving his eighth year of a twenty-year sentence in a prison in the South. Efforts are being made to secure all important information in the case, with a view to obtaining his release.) For young Frenchmen who have their military service before them the personal problem is a knotty one, indeed. One would be content to suffer if one could by so doing bring the whole question to a head and bear witness to what one is convinced is the better way. But the authorities hush up as promptly as possible any cases of refusal, and unless one succeeds in fleeing the country one is spirited away — to prison, to an asylum for the insane (no man in his senses could hold such fantastic views!), or, even worse, to one of the penal colonies — Africa, Guiana, New Caledonia — the twentieth-century equivalent of the ancient "oubliettes," where one may languish helplessly for a score of years or longer. It is a real and terrible dilemma, and there are those who are agonizingly seeking the right course. Leaving this personal aspect of the peace question in France, one may ask what groups are doing active work. A careful investigation of some twenty-six societies or organizations professing pacifist principles was not too encouraging. Bulletins and banquets, gestures and a mar- velous prudence seemed to characterize a number of them, and traces were not lacking of what the French call arrivisme, which includes the unashamed love of bits of ribbon and the joy of seeing one's name on a letterhead. As in other countries, the activities of such groups are of little concern to the Government. The authorities know that they preach peace in times of peace, but will drop all and flock to the colors at the first threat of war. Hence the state subsidizing of the Congr'ess last September. But of these twenty-six, at least ten organizations are sincere and serious. Among the groups actively concerned for peace are the French sections of the Women's Inter- national League for Peace and Freedom, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Society of Friends. Then there are the distinctly French associations, such as Les Liberes de Toutes les Guerres, La Ligue pour la Reconnaissance Legale de 1'Objection de Conscience, La Mere Educatrice, etc. Large groups of war veterans are taking a strongly pacifist position. A list of individual public men and authors might be prolo'nged indefinitely: Henri Barbusse, Victor Mar- gueritte, Armand Charpentier, Pierre Hamp, Madeleine Vernet, Banville d'Hostel, Madame Severine, Georges Pioch, Madame Malaterre-Sellier, Madame Duchene, Andre Jouve, Charles Brun, Gouttenoire de Toury, Jeanne Melin, Mar- celle Capy, Charles Richet, Grillot de Givry, Han Ryner, Professor Georges Demartial. And the number grows. Of the Paris daily papers those most far-sighted along lines of international understanding are of course L'CEuvre, la Volonte (very new), and le Quotidien. The latter, though but three years old, is already the fourth paper of France. A rumber of weekly papers and magazines might be named : I'Europe, I'Europe Nouvelle, la Paix par le Droit, la Jeune Republique, le Semeur, les Liberes, I'Universel, VEcho des Amis. The last-named published its first issue on February 1 under the direction of Victor Margueritte and Armand Charpentier, and is a serious, well-edited monthly review, definitely devoted to questions concerning international reconciliation. Mention has been made of the movement centering about Marc Sangnier, which is distinctly but by no means exclusively Catholic in character. After a series of five

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20 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3183 international conferences, held in Paris, Vienna, Freiburg, London, and Luxembourg, the plan is this year to hold their gathering again in France, at the Chateau de Bierville, near Paris. In planning for this occasion, when they hope to assemble 2,000 or more young people from many different countries and to organize a great international camp, the Jeune Republique is taking a leaf from the book of two other ardent peace workers, Dr. Demarquette, the enthu- siastic leader of the Trait d'Union, and Dr. Dumesnil of the Mouvement Pacifiste Chretien, joint organizers for the past two years of a successful international camp at Chevreuse. The most interesting peace work of a definitely Protes- tant character is that of the group of alert, vigorous young pastors in the new outpost stations of the North (the de- partments of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais). The spiritual father of the movement, working among the miners and factory-hands of this region, is Pastor Henri Nick of Lille. Over in the Rhine Valley another pastor, Monsieur Rambaud, is working effectively on both sides of the frontier for reconciliation. It is true that this effort is purposely limited to Protestants of Germany and France, but the limitation is one which defines and focuses the work, with- out narrowness or bigotry. Among the masses of the population both in the cities and in the agricultural or mining communities one finds a hatred of war and a realization of its consequences. There is inertia and innate conservatism. But these people know what war is and where it has brought them. They have fought in the trenches and wasted years in prison camps. They have buried their dead, they have borne the grievous burden of their mutiles, their widows, and their orphans, under economic conditions that grow steadily more difficult. They know that even Fritz, the individual, was not bad sort, and they ask nothing better than to be allowed to work hard for a most modest living, thriftily contriving to make a little surplus where most people would be compelled to write a deficit. "Live and let live — even the boches!" Contributors to This Issue HENDRIK W. van Loon has written and illustrated several books, the most recent of which is "Tolerance." Chari.es A. Beard is a well-known historian, among whose publications are "American Government and Politics" and "Contemporary American History." W. N. Ewer is foreign editor of the London Daily Herald. Stella Crossley is a writer who has been living in Florida. Michael Blount is the penname of a journalist living in California. Wilbert Snow is a New England poet, author of "Maine CoasL" David Saville Muzzey is professor of history at Colum- bia University. Karl F. Geiser is professor of political science at Oberlin College. Joseph Jastrow is professor of psychology at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin. Benjamin Harrow is a New York physician and pro- fessor of biochemistry at Columbia University. Catharine E. Young is instructor in history at Hunter College. Alfred Lowry is the representative in France of the American Friends Service Committee. QvCC ($*!# (jtdt Non Depressant non Habit Forming In Convenient Aluminum Boxes At every drug store 9 Tablets Do. 10 Tablet! «0c for HEADACHE GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street. New York BOOKS WORKING CLASS BOOKS ECONOMICS, HISTORY, SOCIAL on SCIENCE and EVOLUTION. A»k Ivr our Its* catalog, newly roviaed. CHARI,ES H. KERK & CO., S47 East Ohio Street, Chicago REAL ESTATE HOME BUILDERS— NOT SPECULATORS While land at Mt. Airy (Croton-on-Hudson) is selling for considerably less than unimproved lots in the surrounding district*, and while the Mt. Airy property is steadily increasing in value, we want only HOME PUILDERS, not speculators, in this community of artists, writers and thinking people. We frequently deny applications for land in justice to those already home owners at Mt. Airy. Beautifully wooded Yt, % and 1-acre plots — some with river views — still available ; $360 and up each or terms ; 60 minutes from city ; 100 trains daily ; schools and stores near. HARRY KELLY, 70 Fifth Ave., New York Chelsea 0432 Are You Getting Your Share of Country? Northern Westchester is accessible but wild, inexpensive but beautiful. Where else can you find lakes, mountains, rivers and rood commuting within 40 miles of New York? Cottages for rent; houses, farms and estates for sale. Margaret Lane, Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y. Croton 400 LECTURES DR. WILL DURANT author of "The Story of Philosophy" will lecture twice weekly this summer at CAMP GREATER UTOPIA LACKAWAXEN. PA. 1st lecture, July 3rd WHITE FOR BOOKLBI I OKI M An Invitation for an Expression of Opinion THE SUNDAY EVENING FORUM of the HEBREW EDUCA- TIONAL SOCIETY, at Sutter and Ilopkinson Avenues, Brook- lyn, New York, will resume its activities the first Sunday in November. In order to obtain the greatest benefits from these meet- ings, the Committee invites suggestions as to speakers and subjects which might be of interest to them. If you plan to be one of the auditors, and have an opinion to offer, kindly write to: NATHAN SWEEDLER, Chairman 14 Count Sthfet Brooklyn, N. Y. Summer Time! Camps, hotels, summer homes, boarding houses, — and those who seek such accommodations Those who have an apartment they wish to rent Those who want to rent an apartment we recommend placing an advertisement in the classified section of The Nation, as the best means of bringing the right person and the right place together. Rates on re- quest. Address Dept. C, care of The Nation. When writing to advertitert, please mention The Nation

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The Nation foun n k n is r. r» Vol. cxxnr NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JULY II, L926 No. 3184 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS -1 EDITORIALS: For Sale— 48.000.000 Horses Big Brother or Bin Bully 28 Cruelty of Censorship 26 Dr. Hanbury Hnnkin Says : 26 PROPAGANDA ! By Hendrik van Loon 27 THE PENNSYLVANIA PATRIOT'S DUTY: ELECT A DEMOCRAT. By George \V. Norris COTTON GOES WEST By Max Stern 29 IS CHINA BEING AMERICANIZED 7 By Lewis S. Gannett SI JUSTICE IN GEORGIA. By Elbridge Colby 32 WOMEN IN GUAM. By M. S. Lea 33 THE COCK. By Jake Falstaff 85 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 35 CORRESPONDENCE 36 BOOKS: Further Commandment. By Leonora Speyer 30 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 39 A Labyrinth of Trickery. By J. Salwyn Schapiro 39 'Sblood. By R. F. Dibble .(0 A Century of Misunderstanding. By Ernest Gniening 41 Bryan by His Wife. By David Saville Muzzey 41 Mayas. Greeks, and Cambodians. By Hartley Alexander 42 Americana in Brief 43 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: What Is the British Empire? 44 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advbrtisino Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico: to Canada. $5.60. and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address : Nation, New York. Chicago Office: 38 So. Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: E Thurtle, M.P., 36, Temple Fortune Hill, N.W. 11. England. ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT — the wallops of an awakening Westland upon the apostles of the Administration of, by, and for Big Business. The myth of Economy Cal is fading; the fact of Millionaire Mellon, the real Best Mind who shapes the so-called Coolidge program, is dawning on middle-class America. Gerald Nye has swept North Dakota, defeating Mr. Coolidge's man Hanna for United States Senator, and the Nonpartisan League, which supported Nye, has also nominated its candidate for Governor. Norbeck of South Dakota defeated his Coolidge-indorsed opponent; Watson and Robinson in Indiana defied the President's orders but won their renominations ; McKinley of Illinois, Pepper of Pennsylvania, Stanfield of Oregon, and Cummins of Iowa, all staunch Coolidge men, have gone under in the primaries — and in all these weary months not one Coolidge candidate has won at the polls. The Keep-Kool-with-Koolidge slogan has lost its force. OUT IN THE WEST the farmers know why they are discontented — because the Government which sub- sidizes Big Business refuses to countenance similar aid to farmers. A good old-fashioned war against the tariff seems to be in germination. That is well enough in its way — the sins of the protective tariff can hardly be overdrawn — but the good old-fashioned tariff war is not good enough. The American people have been arguing the tariff for a cen- tury, and where are they? The Democrats, generally speak- ing, are low-tariff folks, hut the record of the Democrats in Washington is a record of fiddling and footling. Shall we simply put into office the men who, while talking desultorily about the tariff, helped give away Muscle Shoals and as- sisted Mr. Mellon to put through his tax relief for mil- lionaires? These men have no philosophy; they do not see or understand the real problem of freeing America from its domination by millionaires; and if the 1926 movement of revolt rides on their coat-tails it will get nowhere at all. LA FOLLETTE'S PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT in 1924 promised for a moment to give American politics a new orientation. But the leader was old and tired; and the lieutenants lacked courage and energy ; despite the record of five million votes the army disintegrated. Will the new revolt go further? Signs of hope are scant. Agrarian dis- content rises and falls, throughout American history, in inverse proportion to the price of wheat; it lacks steady fuel value. The labor movement, meanwhile, is playing pusillanimously safe. The old leaders fight new movements harder than they fight the industrial bosses; and they do not dare give themselves to a political movement which cannot claim immediate success. That is the vice of hustling America: it demands P. D. Q. results; it is im- patient with attempts to plan before building. The apathetic aimlessness of politics in the East is typified by the situ- ation in Pennsylvania. The Republican organization stands convicted of mass corruption, but it expects to win at the polls. Senator Norris, pleading in this issue of The Nation for decent Republicans to vote Democratic, is thus far almost a lone voice in his besotted party. BY A WAVE OF HIS WAND Mussolini has reestab- lished the nine-hour day in Italian industry. Thus the most precious possession of European labor, the eight-hour day, is abolished without discussion or appeal on the part of the workers. Where are the vaunted Fascist labor unions now? The dictator nods and they submit. The Italian workers, without the power to strike, cheated out of their own labor unions, with appallingly low wages and with lengthened hours, have only one thing left — the right to work — when Mussolini lets them work. Mussolini's emerg- ency measures are all proposed in the name of national economy, but, as usual, they fall most heavily upon the workers. Business is not disturbed. Real wages in Italian industry have gone steadily down since the Fascist dictator- ship was established. Last year they averaged less than a dollar a day in the leading industries; in buying power they were about 85 per cent of the 1922 level. CANADA HAS BEEN PLUNGED into a bitter par- liamentary election campaign by the defeat in quick succession of two premiers, Mackenzie King, Liberal, and Arthur Meighen, Conservative. Mr. King, whose majority in Parliament depended upon the cooperation of the Pro- gressives, had been in constant danger of defeat since the election in October, 1925; his downfall finally came in con- nection with scandals in the customs administration. The defeated premier immediately asked Governor General Byng (who is appointed by the King) to dissolve Parlia-

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22 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 ment and call an election, but the Governor General refused and summoned Arthur Meighen, leader of the Conservative Party, which actually outnumbers the Liberal Party in Par- liament. When the Meighen Government was defeated by a margin of one vote through the opposition of the Progres- sives, Parliament was dissolved and an election called for September. The Conservatives thus, by action of the King's representative, have the tactical advantage of hold- ing office — and patronage — during the campaign. Free trade and the customs scandals would naturally be the lead- ing issues, but all that may be forgotten in the bitter fight which Mackenzie King has started against the powers of the viceroy. The battle-cry of Canadian freedom has been raised. The West will line up against Quebec in a struggle that is bound to be desperate. IT IS NICE to be the president of a republic and still nicer to be a self-elected one, or practically such, like Louis Borno of Haiti. Unlike Mr. Coolidge Mr. Borno does not have to worry about reelection, because he appoints the Council of State that casts the votes. But like Mr. Coolidge he has to please the financial interests of the United States or lose his job — self-elected or otherwise. Apparently he is still persona grata with those interests, for he has just concluded a visit to the United States, in th • course of which Wall Street paid him special honor, con- cluding with a farewell luncheon by Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank. Mr. Mitchell dilated on the progress in Haiti since the United States had estab- lished what he benignly termed its "protectorate." Mr. Borno's visit had done much, he said, to convince American business men that Haiti was now a safe field for them. It looks that way. Haiti is now safe for almost everybody except the Haitians. TO FREK CUBA was one of the professed objects of the United States in going to war with Spain twenty-eight years ago, just as to make the world safe for democracy was one of our reasons for entering the world conflict in 1917. Tt;' first purpose has been realized hardly more suc- cessfully than the second. Leland Hamilton Jenks, formerly of the history department of Amherst College, made a study of conditions in Cuba last winter, and had this to say at the summer conference of the League for Industrial Democracy : After we had conducted an election and turned Cuba over to the Cubans in 190!), we commenced a policy of con- tinuous intermeddling in Cuban affairs. This was a policy in flagrant violation of the pledges given by President Mc- Kinley and Elihu Root at the time the Piatt amendment was adopted. . . . Our interference culminated after the finan- cial crisis of 1920 when the bottom dropped out of the sugar market. Ceneral Crowder was sent to Cuba on a battleship as •'personal representative" of the President. This was a status not known in international law. It was lawless. If it meant anything it meant that Crowder impersonated the President of the United States in Cuba. It became menac- ing when our Minister to Cuba resigned, and we remained without ordinary diplomatic intercourse with the island. Crowder addressed himself directly to the President of Cuba in tones of authority, not through diplomatic chan- nels. He upset one Cabinet and approved the naming of successors, who were naturally more solicitous to please him than to satisfv the elected President of Cuba. FORTY THOUSAND WORKERS in the ladies' garment industry of New York have gone on strike. The con- troversies which led up to the strike are not simple. The ladies' garment industry by virtue of our erratic tastes in style is a peculiar one. Seventy-five per cent of the clothing made is farmed out by jobbers to small contractors. The jobbers are really middlemen, but they are the only re- sponsible parties capable of making an agreement for most of the industry. Governor Smith's Advisory Commission, appointed to investigate the evils of the industry, described the jobbers in these words: This outside system of production is fraught with waste to all concerned. Counting all the partners in the sub- manufacturing shops, there are several thousand men whose energies are mostly spent in going from one jobber to another in search of orders. . . . The greatest burden of waste falls upon the workers through shortened seasons and through substandard conditions of employment. . . . When work is scarce, as it usually is except for a few weeks in each season, the workers are told that in order to meet the exigencies of price competition and to bring some work into the shop, they must enter into secret arrangements con- trary to the minimum labor standards which have been agreed upon and which are pretty successfully enforced in the larger shops of the inside manufacturers. . . . From an industrial point of view this is chaotic and demoralizing. Were it practicable, the workers would be justified in taking the stand that they would work only in inside shops and would refuse to work in outside shops where they were removed from all direct contact with the owners of tlic capital involved [italics ours]. THE INTERNATIONAL LADIES' GARMENT WORK- ERS UNION in the present strike seeks to compel the jobbers to be responsible for the labor conditions in their contractors' shops. The jobbers could maintain union con- ditions by sending work only to registered contractors ap- proved by the union, who might be compelled to give bond that they would maintain labor standards. If a jobber is caught sending work to any unsatisfactory outside shop, then all workers in contract shops doing his work would strike until the offending contractor had reformed. By a similar method the Amalgamated Clothing Workers has handled the less serious problems of small contractors in the manufacture of men's garments. The strikers are also demanding the forty-hour week and a guaranty of thirty- six weeks of continuous employment, but these demands are unimportant compared with the demand for organized re- sponsibility on the part of the employers. In the back- ground of the strike is the fact that the workers are de- manding more than Governor Smith's Advisory Commission recommended as an immediate solution; there is also a bit- ter controversy between Rights and Lefts in which the Lefts have emerged triumphant in control of the union. We hope that both wings of the union will see the necessity of a united struggle toward a constructive end. NEW YORK CITY is having another subway strike, and some of the newspapers ask how the strikers expect to get higher wages out of a nearly bankrupt company. Well, the nearly bankrupt company spent $2,025,481 to break the 1916 strike, and we do not doubt it will find banks willing to lend it money to pay strike-breakers twice the meager wages it pays its regular workers. (A responsible motor- man gets about $36 a week — half a carpenter's wages in the city.) The sudden strike is undoubtedly inconvenient to the

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July 14, 1926] Thr Nation 23 public, but a public that refuses to accept any responsibility in time of industrial peace must bear the brunt of industrial war. Did anyone really think that labor troubles were ended forever when General Manager Hedley smashed the regular union in 1916 and installed a hand-picked "com- pany union" in its place to delude the public if not the men? Or will it take another disaster due to the use of inexperienced strike-breakers to rouse the public to demand that men who hold its lives in their fingers be decently paid for their work at the throttle? A THIN LINE separates loyalty to established institu- tions from treason to human beings. When the exec- utive council of the American Federation of Labor de- nounced the Passaic strike because there were Communists among its leaders it committed treason to labor in the name of official labor loyalty. While 10,000 strikers and their families are fighting against intolerable conditions, the United Textile Workers, the only A. F. of L. union in the textile industry, is circulating the June copy of its official organ, the Textile Worker, with large display advertise- ments from the three firms on strike, Forstmann and Huff- mann, Botany Worsted Mills, and Gera Mills. That looks like accepting pay for treason. Nearly all the advertising in the issue is paid for by large textile manufacturers many of whom are bitter opponents of unionism, and there is not an item about the Passaic strike. The only bits of Pas- saic news printed by this so-called organ of the textile workers are of this ilk: Since the beer, ice-ci-eam, and soda season is upon us again, with a diminishing of activities in official organiza- tion work, we are going to indulge in a little personal gos- sip of Branch 17, its members and the shop. . . . The volley ball season has again opened up on the Onyx Courts with most of the old stars warming up. . . . Spring not only brought flowers but several Dodges and Auburns with an occasional Nash to the Passaic Knit- ters. We are pleased to note that Earl White has at last discarded his old war horse, "Flivver"— may she rest in peace. Horses are still allowed on the road even though John Duffy needs most of the road for his new Chevrolet. A RACE RIOT IN THE NORTH is properly the occa- sion for Southern comment upon Northern self-right- eousness. The burning of the Negro First Baptist Church in Carteret, New Jersey, in April and the ejection of more than a hundred Negro residents from their homes by a white mob were shocking outbreaks of white violence. But some of the Southern comment went wide of the mark. The July Crisis quotes the Little Rock (Arkansas) Gazette as saying that race clashes in the South "do not spring from economic roots" and that Southern mob victims are "almost invariably guilty of an atrocious crime." That is a hoary myth which facts disprove. The Houston (Texas) Post- Dispatch declares that "in the South, while individual Negroes are attacked, the Negro race as such is never mo- lested," but the Memphis (Tennessee) News-Scimitar thinks that the Southerner draws the race line but "accepts the Negro individual for what he is." Two recent Northern outbreaks, one in Brooklyn, New York, the other in Bev- erly, New Jersey, are worth studying. The Brooklyn riot was caused by white resentment at the residence of Negroes in the neighborhood and by Negro resentment at the white resentment. It appears that the Negro resentment was the hotter of the two, for Negroes opened the hostilities. The cause of the lighting in Beverly is undetermined, but both Negroes and whites were arrested. In Carteret, we recall, the police arrested the Negro accused of killing a white man, and extended protection to the innocent Negro com- munity. There was no lynching in any of these riots, and no unpunished demonstration of white lordship. It might well be argued that these riots were less signs of Northern brutality than of Negro health. Where in the South would a Negro dare to move into a white community? In the North he moves in, defends himself against white violence, and if he loses the fight he has a chance of winning before the law, as did the Sweets in Detroit. THE DAMNED SOULS SOCIETY of the University of Rochester is suing Clinton Howrard, prohibition orator, for $10,000 damages for libel because he is alleged to have called them perverts, moral degenerates, and intellectual morons. The society is composed of five students, headed by a 19-year-old ex-Catholic freshman, who champion the cause of atheism. When their suit came into the courts Justice Rodenbeck ordered them to prove that atheism was normal, thus establishing their own mental normality. But why should these atheist students prove the normality of atheism? New truth is always abnormal. Shelley was dismissed from Oxford in 1811 for writing "The Necessity of Atheism" and the world has ever since done honor to his abnormality. There are a number of reasons why we would like to see these Rochester students get enough damages from Clinton Howard to complete their college education. In the first place, they probably need the education. And then, Mr. Howard is one of the champion featherweight vilifiers of the country. HEYWOOD BROUN said it so well that there is no reason to rewrite this little sermon on censorship and the death of a bad play, from the New York World: "Bunk of 1926" has closed. It was not killed by the play jury, the district attorney, or the police. Lack of public patronage caused it to shut up shop. It is said the producers lost approximately $80,000 on their venture. Throughout the run the piece had only one good week, which came at the time steps were taken to suppress the performance. And it seems to me that the moral of all this is that the community can very well afford to let the public decide for itself. It is no longer possible to put a show over merely by hinting that it is shocking. Theatergoers have come of age and need no guardianship. T HE EASTWARD PROGRESS of Western civilization has at least one sure index in that symbol of energy which has converted the jaws of the nation into a machine of perpetual motion. With the American industry produc- ing fifty million dollars' worth of chewing gum a year — an increase of 17 per cent in 1925 over its record in 1923 — Mr. Wrigley has announced an energetic foreign policy for the next year. Germany, he finds, is making rapid progress, but France is hampered by financial instability — quite naturally, for the repeated dropping of the French jaw in alarm at the falling franc must seriously interfere with the chewing of friande a mdcher. In the Far East the index is revealing, with Mr. Wrigley's business progress- ing well in Japan, but "not so well in China." China must really be a backward nation.

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24 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 For Sale— 48,000,000 Horses THE fight for the control of the St. Lawrence River water-power has begun in earnest. Roy Finch, New York State Engineer, has recommended private development of the project with the possibility of State ownership after fifty years; Governor Smith stands squarely for public ownership and development now. The New York battle is typical of the whole struggle of private against public in- terests for control of America's power. The St. Lawrence project is big in itself (it is estimated that it would provide four times the power that can be generated at Muscle Shoals), but it is only one of many giants that the power industry is raising up to serve or enslave us. The force of 48,000,000 horses lies hidden in the dynamos of our present power system. They are clean, swift horses, the strongest and most obedient that the world has ever known. They can empty our slums into garden cities or they can ac- centuate the difference between green-lawned suburbs and gray Passaic. If Congress should attempt merely to destroy the great power combinations which are gradually extending their control, the only people to profit would be a few oratorical politicians trained in capitalizing the voters' antipathy to Wall Street. Nor is the old program of municipal owner- ship adequate to meet the present crisis in power develop- ment. City ownership of electric plants is usually an ex- cellent thing for the consumer, but the generation and transmission of power is becoming State-wide and nation- wide in its scope. Small municipal generating plants are often unable to compete with large privately owned ones. When they sell out to private owners there is great glee in the camp of the power interests, but their occasional fail- ure is not so much a failure of public ownership as a failure of small-scale production. The situation demands a national program of power development and control. If the United States were suddenly faced with a war, such a program would be worked out in a month. Why should not a program of national service be worked out in time of peace? Or in our present war of man against nature, of the consumer against high prices, of the worker against low wages — an ugly, endless war in which millions suffer daily for the want of proper rationing of food, clothes, houses, health, vacations, and security? If we could act as the economic generalissimo in that endless war we would map out a national program for power development that would begin with two modest but important steps: 1. National or State development of the chief water- power resources, notably Boulder Dam, Muscle Shoals, and the St. Lawrence. These great water resources are the most vulnerable spots in the private-power program. The government already owns the water at these points and a strong minority in Congress stands for the public develop- ment of the water-power. Just as the Ontario hydro-electric development smashed the skepticism of Canada in regard to public ownership of power, so a few similar experiments in this country would smash the bugaboo, the so-called "failure of public ownership," which is kept alive by the shoutings of the Saturday Evening Post and the allied power interests. Although Congress has adjourned without taking any action on power development there is an excellent chance that a beginning will be made at the next session. The Boulder Dam project is almost won for the public. Senate Bill 3331, if carried by the Senate, will appropriate $125,- 000,000 for the dam, an all-American Canal, and a power house which would yield 3.6 billion kilowatt hours at only 3 mills per kilowatt, paying for the whole project in twenty- five years. After Boulder Dam comes Muscle Shoals, which is now generating power at the rate of 670 million kilowatt hours a year and selling to private companies. In spite of the Coolidge proposal to lease Muscle Shoals to private in- terests for fifty years the project may yet be redeemed for public development, with the aid of progressive additions from the Middle West to the senatorial phalanx led by Senator Norris. The St. Lawrence project is still in the dream stage, but it may reach completion before Muscle Shoals and Boulder Dam, because of the demand of New York business interests. These water-power projects present no insuperable ob- stacles to public development. The water is ours, and the federal law provides that we cannot lease this water irrev- ocably to any private interest for more than fifty years. We can do more than generate power at these centers; we can construct our own distributive system. And since the cost of power to the consumer is about one-fifth generation and four-fifths distribution, it is important that the public ownership of water-power should include the public development of the main transmission lines for that power. 2. A more aggressive federal regulation system for all power companies. This is required to prevent the theft of too much wealth by the power interests while the public is waking up to its own responsibilities. It is more important than the development of water-power, because about two- thirds of all our power is produced by coal. We need a definite contractual arrangement between the government and all the power companies establishing the present valu- ation as a base for all future rate negotiations; otherwise our grandchildren will be mulcted out of billions of dollars. Today the great steam-generating power plants are regulated by the public-service commissions of the various States. These public-service commissions are overworked with a mass of rate disputes which demand immediate ac- tion. They have little time to guard the consumer against the dangers of overcapitalization. Twenty-four States have no legislation at all for the control of security issues by the power companies. New combinations are reported al- most daily in the press; last year's power investments totaled seven and one-half billion ; and Wall Street acts on the assumption that anything is worth what a sucker will pay for it. If we ever succeed in nationalizing the power system we may have to pay twice what it is worth — as we shall have to do for the railroads. Today we even pay the power companies' bills for fighting against us. If we ask for cheaper electric lights from a public-service commission, the private companies hire costly experts to dispute our claims, then ask for rates which cover all their expenses and include the experts in their expense account! A federal regulation system would naturally begin with a law giving some federal body the same authority over the financing of all power companies doing interstate business which is now exercised over water-power companies. That authority would be similar to the authority of the Inter-

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July 14, 1926] The Nation 25 state Commerce Commission over railroads. A new federal power body would be necessary, because the present Federal Power Commission, composed of three overworked cabinet members (the Secretaries of War. Agriculture, and the Navy), is inadequate for such a task. They have done ef- ve service in water-power development, but they have no legal authority to create an adequate regulatory system for the steam-generating power plants which dominate the Eastern field. A more extensive program would be doomed to death by the opposition of power interests and reactionary po- litical groups. There is no virile movement toward public ownership in this country today. Believers in public own- ership should begin the fight for publicly controlled power by creating samples of successful public enterprise, the while guarding carefully against the worst abuses of pri- vate monopoly. Big Brother or Big Bully WHAT are we up to in Nicaragua now? With the withdrawal of our marines from that republic last year, and the resumption of control by Nicaragua of its bank and railways, there appeared to be hope that the long period of interference on the part of the United States had ended. Vain expectation ! When we are not inter- fering for the selfish advantage of big business, we seem destined to be meddling for what defenders of such a policy would doubtless call "Nicaragua's own good." We are play- ing either the big bully or the big brother. And a policy that permits us to play the big brother allows us also to play the big bully. It will be recalled that the present President of Nica- ragua, General Chamorro, obtained office last year by forc- ing out his predecessor. General Chamorro belongs to a party and a family that have long been serviceable to the commercial interest of the United States, but we have refused to recognize him because of the treaty signed in 1923 with Central American republics in which it was mutually agreed that recognition would be refused to gov- ernments set up by force. Commenting on this action in our issue of June 23 we observed that the Department of State was deserving of credit for logically standing by its announced policy in an instance where it worked against our interests. But we added: "Whether the policy itself is a sound one is another matter. The Nation believes that the old practice of international law, by which any estab- lished government is recognized regardless of origin, is wiser and less provocative of meddling in other people's affairs." Recent news from Nicaragua seems designed expressly to bear out the last sentence. Advices received by Nicara- guans in this country, if accurate, indicate that our charge d'affaires at Managua has been conducting what amounts to a deliberate and organized attempt to drive General Chamorro out of office. A telegram from President Cha- morro himself, dated June 10, says, when translated: The American charge d'affaires, Mr. Dennis, came today to see me and notified me that he was going to under- take a campaign to enlighten the Nicaraguan people about the necessity of forcing me to retire from power, and that in case I did not retire voluntarily the United States would compel me by force, because it was going to accom- plish its purpose whethei 1 wa willing or nut. already had the first handbill distribul . lie lias Another telegram says that on June 1.") Mr. Dennis called a meeting at tile legation of various members of the Conservative Party (that of General Chamorro) to dis- cuss the situation and hail previously made public a state- ment in which In- said that "my Government cherishes the hope that the Nicaraguan people by a return to a consti- tutional form of government will make it possible for the United States Government to extend recognition to such a government and to enter into formal diplomatic relations therewith." All this, it must be obvious, is an entirely different thing from merely refusing to recognize an existing regime because it was set up by force. It is a practical invitation to the friends of General Chamorro to desert him as they would a sinking ship — and to his opponents to overthrow him by any means at their command. When one recalls that President Cleveland sent a British ambassador pack- ing because he indicated a preference in a pending presi- dential election, one realizes the extent of the breach of diplomatic etiquette and practice of which we are guilty in Nicaragua. But the Department of State and the sponsors of the treaty of 1923 will reply that the intrigue is for "Nicara- gua's own good." We don't doubt for a minute that in their opinion it is. And that's precisely the point we would make against a treaty that prevents the recognition in Central America of a government that is set up by force. Our own republic could not have been recognized in 1776 under such a rule. To decide if a country has what Mr. Dennis piously calls "a constitutional form of government" involves a judgment upon its domestic affairs which can- not well be neutral. It is none of our business to play either the big brother or the big bully in Latin America or elsewhere. We are rapidly becoming the world's worst meddler both at home and abroad. And we won't get back to legitimate international practices until we cancel the Central American treaty of 1923. The Cruelty of Censorship MANY of our readers are probably familiar from news- paper accounts with the main facts of the censor- ship of the New Masses by the Post Office Department. A copy of the May issue, with which the magazine made its first appearance, was sent to Washington with an applica- tion for second-class mailing privileges. Instead of receiv- ing such privileges, the editors were presently informed that the issue was unmailable in any way under the statu- tory provision forbidding the postal service to lewd or obscene matter. No specifications were given, but when a representative of the periodical went to Washington in per- son one brief poem, the general tone of a story, and sev- eral passages from other contributions were cited. Now, it happens that in all the press comments in re- gard to the first issue of the Neiv Masses — including con- siderable that was not favorable — we had not seen any com- plaint that the magazine was improper up to the time of the ruling of the Post Office. It would seem odd, with the array of periodicals nowadays intentionally catering to vulgar and prurient instincts, that a serious-minded pur- poseful publication like the New Masses — whatever its

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26 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 shortcomings — should be singled out for censorship. But there is a reason. The real sin was not obscenity but heterodoxy — the fact that the magazine attacked current economic and political beliefs. As the editors say in the July issue: "We do not believe that if the verse or prose in question had appeared in any magazine with a more con- ventional economic point of view — or none at all — it would have met with censorship." We don't either. The New Masses was not greatly injured. At the time of the. Post Office's ruling the May issue had already been mailed to subscribers and no ban has been placed upon the subsequent issues. Newsstands sales, of course, were in- creased by the publicity. But the by-products of such ac- tions are frequently more damaging than the direct re- sults, and it has proved so in this instance. Although the objections of the postal officials were based upon the work of a considerable number of contributors, only one name became public, that of Hal Saunders White, a young man of the highest character and a poet of promise. Mr. White was an instructor in English last winter in Yale University and has a contract with the University of Montana to teach in its summer school this year. But when Mr. White ar- rived in Missoula to take up his duties he was not allowed to do so. The university officials, quailing before news- paper publicity =md afraid to risk their jobs in a stand for academic freedom, told Mr. White he could not teach and made every effort to get him to resign. Fortunately he has refused to do this. The issue between him and the university is a plain one of sticking by or repudiating a contract. Mr. White is under no obligation to apologize for or to defend his poem; it is no part of his work for the university. If the university were a private individual there should not be the slightest difficulty in enforcing such a contract through the courts. But a State, if it chooses, may break its word and set up its sovereign rights in defense. Is it possible that the great State of Montana will be guilty of so dishonorable and so mean a course? Dr. Hanbury Hankin Says: ON more than one occasion in the past American cap- tains of industry have been known to take a fling in their own crude way at higher education, but it has re- mained for an English physician, an M. A. and a late fel- low of St. John's College, Cambridge, to turn the logic which he learned at the university against logic itself. In his volume called "Common Sense and Its Cultivation" which Dutton's have just brought out in this country he proves, to his own satisfaction at least, just why it is that both knowledge and the power of orderly thought are very undesirable possessions indeed. Others have charged that colleges do not teach people to think, but it is the gravamen of this author's charge that they do. Business men, says Dr. Hanbury Hankin (for such is his name), judge well because they judge unconsciously. Somewhere below the surface of that every-day self of theirs which amazes the learned by its ignorance and the logical by the number and brilliance of its apparent non- sequiturs lies an unconscious mind vvhich uses the knowl- edge it does not know that it has and follows processes of deduction which it cannot understand. Like those math- ematical prodigies who perform unconsciously the most in- tricate arithmetical calculations without having the least idea how they do them and who generally appear more than ordinarily stupid in regard to everything else, your man of affairs arrives at his conclusion quickly and surely with- out ever taking the trouble to make his process conscious or running the risk of error involved in the intricacies of formal thought. To the vast irritation of the thinker he apparently jumps to the right conclusion hours before the logician has laboriously arrived at the wrong one, because he really thinks with his unconscious mind instead of try- ing to think with his consciousness. Hence, Dr. Hankin concludes — by logic, we fear, rather than by intuition — education is useless. But that is not the worst. Education, by loading the mind with facts and encouraging one to remember them, prevents knowledge from disappearing into that apparent forgetfulness where it would be really useful and teaches one to rely upon that very deceitful instrument, conscious reason. Your college don goes out into the world with the surface of his mind cluttered up with irrelevant information and his natural judgment corrupted by the habit of logical thought; no wonder he goes down in the struggle for life before the young man whose knowledge is stored safely in his forget- fulness and who thinks without knowing it. Dr. Hankin would, however, prefer to reform educa- tion rather than abolish it. Hitherto it has proceeded upon a false theory and hence achieved undesirable results. Of late years, especially, the attempt has been made to develop education programs which would be useful in content and interesting in method, with the result that students have tended both to remember what they learned and to con- tract a taste for conscious mental processes, whereas the most useful education would be one which, while providing certain mental exercises for the mind, would leave no bur- den of fact behind and would encourage no habit of con- scious thought. Hence history, literature, and the sciences should be ejected from the places which they have recently won in curricula and yield their places to such things as the declensions of foreign language, which are neither inter- esting nor logical. By way of specific suggestion Dr. Hankin recommends to our attention the educational sys- tem of the Baniya caste of successful traders in India, which contents itself with teaching to the young almost nothing except a set of multiplication tables in fractions which go after the following fashion: Four and a half times one and a half are six and three-quarters; four and a half times two and a half are eleven and a quarter; four and a half times three and a half are fifteen and three- quarters. Dr. Hankin — whose book is not, as might at first be suspected, a work of elaborate irony — conducts his argu- ment largely by the method of illustrative anecdote, prov- ing, for example, that the untrained mind judges better than the trained one by telling jokes on college profes- sors and captains of finance. This is not an unassailable technique of scientific inquiry, but we shall not undertake any attack upon his conclusions and shall content our- selves with the remark that, sympathizing as we do with the classical philosophers, who held that contemplation rather than success in business was the ultimate end of life, we are glad we got our education before Dr. Hankin instituted his reforms, and that humble as is our position in the world we would not exchange it for wealth and that merely unconscious mind which seems necessary for its attainment. That, however, is merely a matter of taste.

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The Nation •n Propaganda !

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28 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 The Pennsylvania Patriot's Duty: Elect a Democrat By GEORGE W. NORRIS, Republican United States Senator from Nebraska •r|pHE perpetuity of the American government depends A upon the free and uncoerced exercise of citizenship by the citizens. A democracy cannot exist if the people are too ignorant to exercise the franchise intelligently, or if the citizens are denied the right of suffrage or coerced in the use of it. If elections are controlled, through the manipu- lation of machine politicians and political bosses, by the use of immense quantities of money, the result is the same as if they were determined by military force at the point of a bayonet. Self-government ceases to exist. A primary election is just as important as the general election. It is even more important in Pennsylvania, where, under any ordinary circumstances, no one but a Republican stands any show of election. The total salary of the Senator to be elected in Pennsylvania will be, in six years, $60,000, and yet in the recent Republican primary, to elect a nominee for that party, $3,000,000 was expended. A few years ago the nation was shocked by the disclosure that a little less than $200,000 had been spent in the Michigan primary. The Senate, although seating Newberry, solemnly declared that the expenditure of such amounts of money was contrary to the fundamental principles of our government, and de- nounced it in the severest of terms. In obedience to the demands of an incensed nation Senator Newberry had to resign from the Senate. After all, public sentiment is the strongest law and the most effective governmental force in civilization. When organized and crystallized in behalf of an honest, free citizenship it can overcome the intrigue and the demoralizing evil influence of the greatest of political machines. But in the light of recent disclosures in Pennsyl- vania, the machine behind Newberry in Michigan was a tight-wad. If the Senate of the United States is to be controlled by men securing their right to serve in that body by the ex- penditure of huge sums of money, the liberties of the people will disappear and the ultimate destruction of our govern- ment will follow as surely and as naturally as the rising and the setting of the sun. If the special interests are willing to spend $3,000,000 to control one vote in the Sen- ate, what can be expected from the highest law-making body in the land? Does any one believe that the manufacturers represented by Mr. Grundy, or that the interests repre- sented by Mr. Mellon, do not expect a return for their cash? They not only expect their money to be returned — they expect a high rate of interest on their political investment. How much better it would be if the Senatorship were openly placed upon the auction-block and millionaires boldly and openly invited to bid for the coveted prize! If we are to sell public office as we do chattels, why not do it openly and let the contributions be paid into the Treasury of the United States? Are we helpless? Must we who do not live in Pennsyl- vania say that after all this is a natter entirely under the control of that State when the men who have spent their money there expect to get it back through national legis- lation? The taxpayers of the Pacific Coast, of the great Middle West, of the South, of the North, of New England will have to share the burden with their fellow-citizens of Pennsylvania, for after all, these millions were only an investment and we will be expected to pay them back ten- fold. The Senator-elect from Pennsylvania will help make laws for every State in the Union ; and the citizens of Cali- fornia or of Maine are as much concerned in the issues involved as the people of Pennsylvania. Does Pennsylvania realize that in electing a Senator it acts for the nation as well as for itself? Do Pennsylvanians understand that if they permit their millionaires to buy a seat in the United States Senate, we must extend the same privilege to every other State and to every other combina- tion of millionaires? It seems to be taken for granted that Mr. Vare, the beneficiary of this public sale of public office, will be elected, and that the only remedy the country has is to demand of the Senate that it refuse to seat him. This would be a rebuke, it is true, to the methods that obtained in the Pennsylvania primary. But would it be a remedy? It must be remembered that in the primary contest in Pennsylvania the Governorship was likewise on the auction- block. The Vare machine and the Mellon machine were contending for supremacy. One machine won the Senator- ship, but the other machine won the Governorship, and if Mr. Vare were elected and the Senate refused to seat him, the vacancy would be filled, by appointment, by the new Governor of Pennsylvania. Is it not fair to presume that the Governor would appoint a Senator satisfactory to the machine that gave him his own office? The result would then be that instead of having a Senator representing the Vare machine, we would have one representing the Mellon machine. The only result would be to throw out Mr. Vare and instal Mr. Mellon's man, thus giving the highest bidder the prize after all. Perhaps, if we are to sell Senatorial positions for money, it is as well to be square and let the highest bidder name the man. Are the citizens of Pennsylvania so hidebound in poli- tics that they will never, under any circumstances or con- ditions, scratch their tickets? Why should not the honest, patriotic people of that State vote for the Democratic nominee for Senator? If this condition confronted any Western State there would be no doubt of the result. The citizenry, regardless of party, would repudiate corrup- tion and gladly avail themselves of the opportunity on elec- tion day to elect a man free from such contamination. It happens in this case that the Democratic nominee for United States Senator from Pennsylvania is a man of national reputation. He has served in the House of Repre- sentatives and made a fine record. He was the first Secre- tary of Labor, and in the handling of that great office gave to the country an eminently satisfactory and efficient ad- ministration; in the coming campaign, no word of criticism of his private or official life will be uttered. He is able ; he is honest; he is patriotic and courageous. Only one charge will be made against him. He is a Democrat. And will Republicans heed that cry? Will Pennsylvanians put parti- san politics above the duty they owe to their country? Are they going to say to the nation that party regularity stands

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July 14, 1926] The Nation 29 higher with them than the liberties and principles that underlie a free government? In the face of a shocked nation-wide citizenship, will they blindly curry out the mandate of corrupt millionaire politicians? It is shocking to think that such corruption as obtained in the Pennsyl- vania primary could succeed; it would be more shocking still if the people of Pennsylvania gave it the seal of their approval in the coming election. The election of Mr. Wilson would not only put a good man in the Senate from Pennsylvania, but it would be the most severe rebuke that could possibly be administered to a corrupt party machine. And why should Republicans not inflict this deserved chastisement of their leaders? Is it the duty of a Republican to overlook corruption in his own party and denounce it only when he finds it in the other party? If he is moved only by the one idea of purifying his own party, how can he do it better than by refusing to follow corrupt leaders? He would not stand for such thin business; he would not stand for them in his lodge or in his own family. He chastises his own children when they commit wrong, because he has a sincere desire to improve their conduct. The Republican of Pennsylvania, if he wants to make the Republican Party of his State respectable, will vote for the Democratic nominee. Do the Republicans of Pennsylvania want a precedent for such action? These leaders who now cry "Vote the ticket straight, yellow dog and all," do not themselves prac- tice what they preach. In Iowa a little more than a year ago Mr. Brookhart was nominated as the Republican can- didate for Senator. There was no question about the regu- larity or the honesty of his nomination. But he had shown an independence of action that displeased the party leaders, and they called upon the people of Iowa to vote for the Democratic nominee. They spread their anti-Brookhart literature over the State, in the name of the Republican Party; the sacredness of a Republican nomination meant nothing to them when they had no strings on the nominee. But that was not all. After the election was over and the Republican nominee had been elected and had received the certificate of election, they still kept up the fight. In the name of the Republican State Committee of Iowa they came to Washington and asked their frllow-Kepublicans in that body to vote for the seating of a Democrat. While this contest was pending, tile Assistant Secretary of War, with the influence of a Republican President behind him, camped in the corridors of the Capitol and used every means in his power to induce Republican Senators to vote against the seating of Brookhart. The arguments used in the main were not that the Democrat had been elected and a Republican defeated, but almost universally that the Republican elected with the regular Republican nomination held views contrary to those held by the so-called Repub- lican leaders. The result was that this powerful combina- tion of Republican leaders nullified the voice of the voters of Iowa, threw out a Republican, and put in a Democrat. In the face of such conduct these same leaders now demand regularity of the Republican voters of Pennsyl- vania. If they can justify their conduct in refusing to sup- port Brookhart, whose nomination was honest and unques- tioned, how can they demand that Pennsylvania Repub- licans overlook the disgraceful influences controlling the Republican primary in Pennsylvania? I speak for millions of patriotic people throughout the length and breadth of our land, who are earnestly hoping and praying that their brethren in Pennsylvania, regard- less of partisan politics, will go to the polls on election day and repudiate the political machines that are a stench in the nostrils of the nation. It cannot be that the great Key- stone State, that has always been in the foremost ranks in defense of justice, liberty, and freedom, will falter when it is called upon to settle this question, not only for Penn- sylvania but for the whole United States. [The Nation has asked the other Republican United States Senators whether they advise honest Pennsylvania Republicans to vote for Vare or Wilson. Among the early retui-ns were: Senator Pepper — "out of town," and Senator McKinley — "suffering from sciatica." Further returns will be reported next week.] Cotton Goes West By MAX STERN KING COTTON, who counts his subjects, black and white, old and young, by the million in the South, is broadening his dominion to the far Southwest and chiefly to California. His advent into the fertile fields of the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys has been about as sudden as the coming of the gold diggers in the rush of forty-nine. Practically overnight fruit, raisin, alfalfa, and melon lands have been transformed, as a snowstorm transforms an East- ern scene, into "fields of snowy white." The peculiar adaptability of California climate and soil to cotton growing has been known for some time. The Imperial Valley's low, hot plains have been yielding superior and profitable cotton for more than seven years. It has been the agricultural and horticultural depression of the past few years, causing economic disaster to raisins and other fruits, that has drawn the farmers of the two great valleys of central California into the cotton belt. It was found that these valleys, with plentiful water for irrigation and with long hot summers, can produce not only more cot- ton per acre than any other area in the United States but a better quality. The yield here is about 370 pounds per acre as compared to the nation-wide average of 165.5 pounds, and it is entirely free from the pestiferous boll-weevil of South- ern ill-famo. Hence it has happened that with the winter's crop all picked, ginned, and baled California has awakened to find cotton up among the State's six headline crops, ranking with raisins, prunes, and oranges. Last year California harvested 77,000 bales. This year it has jumped to 130,000. The cotton fields stretching from the Lower California bor- der up to the rice fields of the Sacramento Valley cover 170,000 acres. If the great Miller and Lux plantation goes into cotton, as is expected, next year's acreage will mount to about 400,000. The California Development Association, the Los An- geles Chamber of Commerce, "Californians Incorporated,"

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30 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 and the boost clubs of the valleys unite in "pointing with pride." They point to more than seventy gins springing up through the valleys; to the two big textile mills employing hundreds of women and girls in Oakland and Los Angeles, sending out the music of the looms; to a harvest worth in raw cotton $16,500,000. San Francisco and Los Angeles, their docks piled high with bales of cotton, are vieing with each other for the honor of being called the "New Orleans of the Pacific Coast," with San Francisco claiming the lead. The hydro-electric companies will have a new market for their fast-developing industry. The hard-pressed grower of the valley will jingle some real coin in his jeans and his banker will breathe easier. It has remained for the social workers to view the situation with anything but delight. Recently the new cotton lords met in the Bank of the Southwest assembly rooms in Los Angeles to consider com- mon problems. One paper particularly impressed those of the social workers who attended. It was written by a young man named "Jack" Millar, head of the big Oakland cotton mills and also head of the California Manufacturers' Association. "We must have," he said, "what we could term a cot- ton manufacturing atmosphere, and by that I do not refer to climatic conditions, but to the surrounding influences that cooperate with the de/elopment and success of the cotton industry." He then explained what cotton atmosphere means. "In Alabama, for instance, any new mill pays no lccal taxes for five years. . . . The Massachusetts mini- mum-wage law exempts textile workers," etc. Now, California has been proud of its labor cor"e. Cer- tain bulwarks have been built against corporate greed and, with the possible exception of Wisconsin, California leads all other States as a pioneer progressive commonwealth. The result is that for living conditions among its workers it stands first. Are these standards to be exchanged for the privilege of nursing into power a new infant industry? Will the labor code be traded for the "cotton atmosphere"? And what of King Cotton's retinue? In the South it consists of blacks and poor whites. In California it is more or less tacitly assumed that, for the time being at least, Mexican ex-peons will largely make up the army of pickers, ginners, loom-hands, and other servitors to his majesty. Since the war Negro migrations to the West have been conspicuous. But they pass by the cotton fields. Appar- ently they have turned their backs on the ancestral calling of picking the white man's cotton, and they are seeking jobs in the cities or in the fisheries and lumber camps of the Northwest. Mexicans, on the other hand, are here in num- bers. More than 250,000 of them are scattered throughout the State today, toiling in section gangs and construction camps and "following the fruit" as seasonal labor. Next to Texas, California has been the Mecca of the Mexican workers. Until recently they have been seeping across the border at an estimated rate of 125,000 a year. Were it not for certain untoward developments all would be well with the big owners and employers. As the Southern Pacific's Maintenance of Ways superintendent recently said, a Mexi- can is an ideal worker — -"he is patient, obedient, religious, and free from bolshevistic tendencies " But two things are happening to this reservoir of cheap and patient labor. The Mexican and American Fed3rations of Labor have entered into a "gentlemen's agreement" to halt Mexican migration, and apparently it is working. Jose W. Kelly, the Mexican Federation's American delegate, re- cently stated that the flow of workers across the border has virtually stopped. Although this is probably an overstate- ment, it is true that the pull on the southern side of the line is at work almost as strongly as the push on this side, and that the flow will undoubtedly slacken. On the other hand, the bankers are trying to discour- age big plantations of cotton such as would employ Mexi- can hands on a wholesale basis. With the examples of the raisin and prune men here and the Iowa corn farmers freshly in mind, they are trying to prevent the California farmer from putting all his eggs in the new cotton basket. "Diversify!" is the cry down the valleys. "A little cotton on a lot of farms" has been suggested as the slogan. There is another type of immigrant coming into the State. These are the small Oklahoma farmers. In their second-hand flivvers, piled high with furniture and family, they have been pouring through the divides by the hun- dreds and joining the annual migrations of fruit pickers that swing around the State over the long harvest season. Heretofore there has been a hiatus between the grape har- vest in September and the early February sugar-beet thin- ning and asparagus cutting. With the cotton harvest be- ginning in October and continuing through January, the gap will be filled and the cycle of seasonal occupation com- plete. Doubtless many of the new families from the Middle West will take root on small farms in the valleys. Herein the social workers sense a new menace — child labor. The laws forbid children between the ages of eight and sixteen staying away from school, but laws are elastic things. And the social workers know all too well the ways of cotton. Loopholes in the minimum-wage law for women, women's eight-hour day, and the compulsory-education laws are certain to be sought by the new cotton capitalists. Al- ready their spokesmen are sending out the first lines of battle with such clarions as "labor shortage," "Eastern competition," "irksome legislation." As a warning of what is coming one need only read this paragraph in a recent issue of the California Cotton Journal on the Thorn in Cotton : At this moment the labor shortage is the most serious confronting California's cotton history. Its solution must be undertaken at once. Immigration laws that levy a head tax on laborers have plugged the gateway through which the Mexican laborer had entered and child-labor laws have seemingly estopped the children from aiding. Certain grow- ers have imported Negro labor from the South, employed it in harvesting their crops, and turned it loose to eke out a precarious existence. This system savors too much of one- man selfishness at the expense of the commonwealth. Cali- fornia does not want to saddle itself with a Negro problem. Well, then, what does the Journal suggest? you may ask. The Journal believes there are thousands of boys and girls in California's public schools who are without the range of the child-labor laws and who are not only willing but eager to help harvest the cotton crop. The growers, the ginners, all should seek, yes, should demand, the cooperation of the school department in this most im- portant matter. The Journal has every respect for and will ever advocate a religious observance of the law, yet it thinks a way may be found to so interpret the law that when a growing industry is threatened its provisions may be legally brought to the rescue. Law is common sense. Is it common sense to ask it to save an industry from damage?

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July 14, 1926] Thu Nation 31 Is China Being Americanized? By LEWIS S. GANNK I 1 TWO or three Greek temples, a few structures with traces of Gothic inspiration, and a miscellany of imi- tation warehouses and factory-buildings stand on the campus of the Chinese government university in Nanking — an architectural hodgepodge worthy of an American State university. Half a mile away are a group of mag- nificent buildings with heavy black overhanging root's curling skyward at the corners, carved banisters, and richly painted paneled ceilings, redolent of old China. They are the lovely Asiatic shell of a Christian mission college founded and supported by American Methodists. That is typical. In fifty years the great port cities of China will have left hardly a trace of the lovely old Chi- nese architecture — except in the mission-college buildings and in the few joss temples which will doubtless be pre- served to gratify the tourist trade. The foreign mission schools, hurriedly Chinafying themselves to meet the na- tionalist attack, are spending tens of thousands of dollars in adapting the old Chinese style to modern requirements. The sweeping green roofs and gaily painted beams of the Peking Union Medical College, built with Rockefeller money, are a joy to the eye. Nanking University and Ginling College for women near by are good to look upon. But in four months in China I saw only one beautiful recent building which did not owe its existence to foreign- ers— the Returned Students' Club in Peking, a remodeled temple; and there the students may be suspected of having learned abroad their respect for old China. Shanghai is a great British city, of solid British masonry; Tientsin is as foreign; even Canton, which has providentially escaped the curse of great foreign settle- ments, is enormously proud that Chinese have actually built a ten-story building on its Bund without foreign aid; and Canton's new buildings are as foreign to China as any suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, or Birmingham, England. Peking, a capital of politics rather than of commerce, resists the current most effectively. You can buy Standard Oil kerosene in any village in China, and British-American cigarettes. The great cor- porations behind those products have in a generation taught the Chinese to change their habits in order to make them buy — the Standard Oil, indeed, used to give away lamps in order to create a market for the strange new fuel. If any third foreign product is on sale in the village it may well be Wrigley's chewing gum. I saw Spearmint gum on sale in the streets of Urga, the capital of Mongolia, 700 miles across the Gobi Desert from the most accessible railroad. Architecture and chewing gum are outward symptoms of a profound inner change. Western architecture is spreading because it is cheaper. Gum and tobacco cost less than opium. Only American church-people can afford painted paneled ceilings and bright tile roofs with gargoyle corner ornaments. The Chinese — like the Europeans, like the whole world — are abandoning old beauties and old cus- toms for cheaper and more efficient models. They are be- coming modernized, standardized, Americanized, like Japan. Mystery, leisure, charm are ebbing; cost account- ing is defeating tradition. The cult of the efficient seems a matter of course to most Westerners and almost all Americans, but to the Chi- it is a revolution. Old "China-hands" will laugh at the suggestion that it has touched Chinese psychology — but old China-hands need a vacation and a perspective. The Chinese has for untold centuries followed tradition and has believed that it was wicked to deviate from it. His young men and young women are beginning to despise custom and tradition; and his middle-aged business men, almost unconsciously, are beginning to ignore it. It was only forty years ago that the first railroad tracks laid in China torn up by superstitious officials; today they are an indispensable instrument of civil war, as is the once- despised telegraph. The only opposition to them comes from Westernized Chinese who know how easily international politics slips into an engineering contract. Once a contract is let, there is no longer much difficulty about arranging to remove the graves that beset all the short cuts. And a wanderer through the black lanes of an old Chinese city may be surprised to discover that the squeaky Chinese music that wails to the night is produced not by a stringed instrument but by a Victor record. Foreign railroads, manners, oil, and architecture are prevailing because they are more efficient. American wheat, when it costs a dollar a bushel in Chicago, can be landed in Hankow, ten thousand miles away and six hundred miles up the Yangtze from Shanghai, cheaper than it can be brought from Shensi, only a thousand miles away, where it may sell for twenty-five cents. Railways and steamships make the difference; no wonder they and their products are breaking the crust of old China. Foreign clothes have made less progress because, in cold weather at least, they are less efficient than the old Chinese robes. Foreign hair- dressing — including the bob — is making its way among the women. Curt foreign manners are replacing the leisurely old Chinese courtesy. The streets are being widened, and the intimacy of the old Chinese workshop, opening on a narrow street and aware of all that its neigh- bors said and did, is disappearing. Foreign machinery is revolutionizing Chinese industry. Foreign ideas — and the railway, taking the young people away from their homes to study and to work — are breaking up the immobile unity of Chinese family life upon which the whole structure of Confucian ethics is based Boys go away from home to study, and refuse to return to the wives of their parents' choice. In the port cities one meets sad young men who are homesick for New York, prefer fox-trotting to Mah Jong, and inquire eagerly about the Charleston. Chinese, with their habit of explaining everything by thousand-year-old parallels, will tell you that there were student revolts in the Han dynasty, before Christ was born, but it seems to me that even the nationalism of the stu- dent movement today, passionately denouncing foreigners and all their works, is essentially a part of the cult of Western efficiency. This political nationalism, this con- ception of national sovereignty as a precious right to be cherished and preserved, has its roots in foreign education and practice — in part in Allied war-time propaganda. The

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32 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 old Chinese patriotism — a patriotism profounder than any- thing known in the West — was cultural rather than politi- cal, inclusive rather than exclusive. It was a loyalty to a civilization rather than to a state, conservative rather than aggressive. It was powerless to halt the intrusion of West- ern men and methods into the political and economic control of China, and was satisfied because the Westerners were so obviously inferior in the refinements of living. These young students are the counterpart of our flapper generation; flaunting their posters and banners, parading by thousands against the unequal treaties, and making soap-box speeches about self-determination, they express contempt for the passivity of their elders and of repeating a lesson learned from abroad. Theirs is not the language of old China but of young Europe. When it defies us most violently young China is most certainly expressing its determination to be iike us. China is so picturesque, so obviously different to the outward eye — her people are so readily distinguished from the Westerner by the color of their skin and the tilt of their eyes — that we are tempted to make her out more different from us than she is. I once asked an Asiatic scholar how the East could preserve its essential Oriental- ism while submitting to industrialization; he replied: "I don't think there is anything peculiarly Oriental and Occi- dental. There is merely medieval and modern." China has been separated from us through four thousand years of recorded history, and has developed what seems a very different civilization. Yet much which we call "Chinese" or "Oriental" is to be found in our own Middle Ar;es. When the Chinese have a network of railroads — which will in- evitably break up the old village economy — and good roads and rapid local transit, other differences will fade and dis- appear. We may discover our essential likenesses too late. And then the problem, for the Chinese as for us, will be how to regain those essentially medieval virtues which China still has and which our restless, mobile, industrial- ized West has lost. Meanwhile the process which has reached its apex in bustling, rushing, goalless America goes on. There is, as yet, no power in China to stop it. Men may prate till doomsday of the enormous inertia of the vast rural masses of China; the fact is that, like the peasants of Russia, they have only inertia — no active, creative foroe of their own. The great central force which has maintained China's identity through fifty centuries is her worship of the past, but the mechanical superiority of the present has already proved its power to defy that ancient citadel. And as the other civilizations of antiquity crumbled when their beliefs decayed, so the old China is yielding to the new West. What happens in the port cities of China today will hap- pen throughout China the day after tomorrow. The fever- ish, abnormal life of those cities has a significance out of all proportion to their share of China's four hundred and fifty million people; the rest of China too will adopt the Western — or modern — method of working hectically while it works, and of playing madly while it plays; it too will forget the Chinese — or medieval — knack of combining work and play so that long hours seen, short. The port cities are a hint of China's tomorrow. [Lewis Gannett's next article on China, 1 Merer Liked Missionaries . . ., will appear in The Nation for July 28. Other articles ivill follow.] Justice in Georgia By ELBRIDGE COLBY IN the town of Americus, Georgia, there is temporarily quartered a portion of Company K, 24th Infantry (col- ored), of the regular army. These doughboys have left their rifles and soldierly equipment many miles away and are temporarily in Americus to dig iron pipe out of the site of the now-abandoned Souther Field for transport and reinstallation in Fort Benning, where the wooden water mains are rotting away. On September first of last year a white night watch- man in a lumberyard had his "dinner" brought at about ten o'clock by his wife and child. They came down a street through the Negro section of the town, past a crowd of Negroes congregated in front of a dance hall ; as far as can be discovered they were not molested or accosted in any way. About an hour later, the family of three walked up the street, on a sidewalk eight feet ten inches wide. On the curb, with his back to the sidewalk, talking to another colored soldier of the same regiment, stood Private Smith, known as one of the best-dressed and best-behaved men in the 24th Infantry; he was wearing the uniform of the United States Army. The night watchman, named E. J. Fulbright, kicked him from behind in that part of the anatomy usually employed for seating purposes, kicked him into the road, and exclaimed: "Get off the sidewalk." The sidewalk, you will recall, was eight feet ten inches wide. The kicker declares that the soldier turned and said: "Who's going to make me?" Six other witnesses declared that Smith said nothing. In any event, Smith was un- armed. He made no threatening gesture. And yet night watchman Fulbright drew a gun and shot the soldier dead on the spot. Although the offender was indicted he was not kept in jail in spite of the charge of murder against him. Three months later came the trial. The general argu- ment for the defense was to the effect that the jury knew the law and knew they were sworn to defend the law, and that any Southern gentleman would have done the same as did the kindly family man named Fulbright. Great stress was laid on the fact that this was a "Northern nigger" hail- ing from Montclair, New Jersey. A Mr. Fort, serving as attorney for the defense, recited the events of the years from 1860 to 1865 with many oratorical flourishes. He even referred with tender feelings to "our sainted and beloved commander, General Robert E. Lee." Late in November another colored soldier had visited his permanent station at Fort Benning and while there had stolen an army automatic. At the time of the Fulbright trial he was in custody of the sheriff for carrying concealed weapons, and was also awaiting trial by a court martial for the pilfering of the pistol. Neither he nor his offense had anything to do with the Fulbright case. Yet, because the prosecution might emphasize the fact that Company K at Americus was unarmed and doing fatigue work, he was brought into court by the sheriff and seated near the jury, with the automatic dangling conspicuously. His name was not mentioned. No apparent reason existed for his appear- ance in that court at that time except a desire to prejudice the jury. The proceedings of the court were signalized by the

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July 14, 1926] Thr Nation 33 tremendous amount of chewing and spitting of tobacco that went on, and by the fact that all windows were kept tightly closed, just as if there were a law in Georgia that courts must suffocate justice with foul air. Some officers of the army, legal advisers and higher commanders of the killed soldier, came to court to listen to the proceedings, wearing the uniforms which all officers are supposed to wear when on duty. Their uniforms brought forth many a slurring remark about "those damned Northern officers." It was observed, by persons present. that the watchman accused of murdering the soldier had an intelligence and an appearance far below that of the average Negro soldier in the army. It was thought by some that the mat and soldierly appearance of Private Smith might possibly have been the provocation of the attack. The verdict? Is there any question that an attack upon a Negro soldier would result in such a court and in such a community and in such a State — in anything but an acquittal?* Women in Guam By M. S. LEA AS late as the fifteenth century a woman of Guam was free to have as many children as she wanted. This was because a woman who was capable of bearing a great many children was looked upon as a paying investment by the young buck who chose her to be his wife. She was sent in early adolescence to the living hall of the island bachelors with the purpose of testing her fecundity; and she went every year until she was twenty-five years old or there- about and usually possessed a large and active family to help her with her farm by the time she was married. The more children she possessed the more desirable she ap- peared in the eyes of homing men, for their number de- noted her popularity and charm as well as her actual money value. The Spanish priests, chancing upon the island with Magellan in the sixteenth century, knew no rest until they had remedied this state of affairs. After the wars which gave them the land had ended they set about definitely to establish the doctrine of the church of Spain. The native form of government was destroyed and the cross raised to stand among the palm trees on the tiny coral shore. The Spaniards were kindly, after their military authority was acknowledged, in matters pertaining to childbearing in the cross's shadow. Women no longer began their ordeal as little girls, and they were safely and immediately married with church rites in as many cases of natural pregnancy as was possible. Where this was impracticable the matter was overlooked. Life on the island was simple and a thatched dwelling hut, with its accompanying animal house- hold of cariboos, pigs, and chickens, often sheltered a man several of whose children were in reality his grandchildren, where mothers accepted the responsibility for their daugh- ters' lapses from grace, and the padres gave absolution to everyone provided church attendance was good. There were many ways in which Spanish rule in the South Seas was brutal and neglectful, but to the family it seems to have been uniformly lenient. After a decade of American rule Calvinism began reaching voracious fingers toward the beaches of Guam. The day of the padres was passing. Round-stomached friars with ruddy faces and flapping frocks continued to pace the streets benignantly offering the crucifix for the passerby to kiss, but there was an insidious whispering of rational thinking in the air. Rational thinking made its appearance finally in the ascetic flesh of a Baptist mission- ary, who, with the funds of his church, engaged a bleak little house on the beach road and endeavored to lure into it such of the natives as he could induce to accept austere discourse in place of high-church ceremonial. Perhaps they did not know what the discourse was about more than they knew what the ceremonial was about. Some of them may have gone from a love of novelty, and it is likely that he gathered in many who, for reasons of their own, were escap- ing the ire of the priests. His meetings made a poor show- ing and his influence was thought to be negligible, but in the end it was felt. Filomena was my maid. I recall clearly that day on which she stood before me, her crooked eyes glistening, her blunt hands quivering where they were crossed upon her stomach as she said, "Ah, m'am, can do go mi rancho good afternoon? I ask you plees!" "Oh, Filomena," 1 replied, "that is three holidays in two weeks. Last week it was to get ready for a Novena, and this week it was for a saint, and now " "M'am," said Filomena humbly, "mi bullock have got babee cow!" I was not the person to come between Filomena and a young thing. She spent the afternoon at her rancho admir- ing her talented bullock's offspring; for to a Chamorro all cattle are bullocks and to Filomena the young of all the animal kingdom were babies. Yet no man would marry her. Her eyes were crossed and her body was queerly built and clumsy. Moreover she loved human young things to distraction, and they and the church were her economic undoing. What passion she could spare from the one she lavished upon the other. What love and holiness she could borrow from the other she spent upon the one. She was everybody's godmother, and the office of godmother carried with it monetary responsibilities. Gifts of layettes were, involved, and ornaments of cloth and paper flowers, beau- tifully fashioned, to decorate the altar for the christening. Likewise a fat pig for the christening supper. All of these things Filomena provided; bent above yards of muslin and cheap lace bought at the trading shops she concocted snowy, fine-sewn petticoats and caps and dresses. Baskets of pink and white and yellow roses bloomed under her skilful fingers to come at last to the old cathedral beyond the plaza, where, massed against the wine-red calico curtains at the back of the altar, they gleamed delicately in porce- lain arabesque. But the real joy of her work for her foster children • The author has discussed the full legal implications of military personnel in State courts in an article in the Georgetown haw Journal, for January, 1926.

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34 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 lay in acquiring little pigs, later to be the gustatory delight of the older, craftier recipients of her largesse. Too poor to buy pigs of her own, other people gave them to her when a sow died and they would otherwise have been abandoned to death by starvation. Then Filomena took them to her broad and kindly lap and fed them with a spoon. How many scores of little pigs she brought to adulthood in this manner, how many tens of hundreds of spoons of milk she must have put into their squealing mouths, would have proved a neat problem in figures. "Ah, m'am!" she would cry, "have got plenty little pig for take care 'Of now ! The ol' mother ain' no good no more !" In her judgment of human mothers she was exact and critical. One sensed a cunning trying out of popular opinion in her comments ; she would look a little curiously with her one straight eye upon the person she was address- ing and say without adornment of her speech, "You see dat 'oman, m'am, she ain' no good ! 'Ave got babee, no 'ave got 'usban!" There hung in the air about her a fine suggestion of parrots and catechisms, her crooked eye wandered, her thick fingers crossed themselves in restlessness upon her stomach. My cook, who was a lanky native man of nearly thirty summers, put the public point of view concerning Filomena very simply. He said, "Filomena, she's crazee." Filomena seemed crazy to him. He had six babies, to four of whom she was godmother, and when the seventh arrived he would not even leave the plaza, where he was playing baseball, to go home and look at it. "A little boy was here asking for you, Joaqui i," I said. "Das nothing, m'am," said Joaquin. "I fin' him. My wife she say have got nodder babee. I see him tonight." Babies were a matter of prose to the wife of Joaquin. There had been a time, probably, when she had been round and slim and golden-skinned, with eyes like black moths and hands delicate and slender. She had worn her camisa, with its embroidered pattern, like a lovely dragonfly about to set sail across ponds of hyacinth. Her feet were like little cats and followed each other as silently and lightly under her trailing skirt. Joaquin had seen and loved her and now she had seven babies. Next year she would have eight. That Filomena would have liked eight babies there could be no possible doubt, although it was unreasonable to suppose that she would ever have them. Yet all that happened seems to me today to have been inevitable when viewed in the unvarying sagacity of retrospect. It happened that that year I became ill with a linger- ing infection and for months lay in the flimsy government hospital, built lightly of boards to sway with typhoons and earthquakes, watching the tops of palm trees through the small, high window and listening to the drone of surf along the black reef fringing the lagoon. Service among nurses on the hospital staff was irregular and hospital fare un- palatable, and Filomena came and went like a soft, brown bumble-bee, bringing me bowls of soup from my own kitchen, padding about on sandaled feet, the tail of her bright skirt following her like the whisper of an ave; for she had forever about her the breath of prayer. What was it that blinded my eyes to what I was later to learn had been the jest of the old capital town for weeks? I can only offer that I was spellbound by the palm trees, by their silver surfaces under the sun and moon and their surreptitious, steely chatter in the trade winds. Filomena was always squat. Indeed, the women of the South Seas have such round figures that only a person occupied wTith such speculation would be apt to notice much change in them in pregnancy. One night at midnight the head girl among the native apprentice nurses, a pretty, yellow wench called Luisa, came to me on the pretense of taking my temperature; saying laughing beneath her breath, "M'am, das bery fonee 'bout Filomena." "Filomena?" I said sleepily, "Filomena?" "Filomena have got babee," she said slyly. "Born tonight." "What rot!" I said sharply. Despite her protests I took the thermometer from my mouth and sat up in bed. "Das true!" declared Luisa. "You're foolish," I argued with her fretfully. "Filo- mena can't have a baby ! Filomena " In my mind there arose the vision of Filomena's one straight eye, its honesty as she parroted, "Dat 'oman no good " But the other looked past me, communing with a power I could not see. Morning brought no lightening of the nightmare, for nightmare it was in that island so rapidly being translated into terms of harshest Anglo-Saxon morality. Filomena had long been in the employ of Americans attached to the naval base at Guam. She was well known in that stratum of native society spoken of among the white people as the slipper gang. Her blood was crossed with the blood of Spain, and she was Spanish trained. And now she had a son out of wedlock of whom her people were newly, bitterly ashamed. All this and more I learned from the tittering Luisa as she arranged my breakfast tray beside the bed. Filomena, whose life and substance had been spent for other people's children, had no money saved with which to buy clothes for her own child. She had been shut in her room by her senile old mother, a wrinkled hag whose young- est daughter was said to be her granddaughter, and refused companionship or assistance of any kind. Distracted I thrust a gold piece into the giggling yel- low girl's hand. "Send her this quickly for me," I said to her. "Tell her to get whatever she needs. Tell her that I'm coming to see her as soon as I'm well." And Luisa fled from the room to deliver the money and spread the story of my own depravity. At ten o'clock the missionary's wife called to see me. Her small, white face was taut with mixed feeling, she pulled a chair to my bedside reluctantly as one having a distasteful thing to do. She spoke first of my health and I admitted great weariness of body and spirit; whereupon, the formalities dispensed with, she left me as a topic and fell upon her point. In tones that rivaled the chattering palm leaves in steeliness she asked me what I knew of Filo- mena's child. "Nothing," I told her, "utterly nothing." At that she scrutinized me with sharp unfriendliness, but I was very young and very ill, and obviously she con- cluded either that I was a fool or lied. "What," she asked next, "are you going to do about it?" It hadn't occurred to me that I was expected to do any- thing about it. It did not even occur to me at the time that the missionary's wife was impertinent, although I had never, to my knowledge, set eyes on her before that moment. I responded honestly, for I was alive with memo-

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July 14, 1926] The Nation 35 ries of Filomena's baby cow, her baby pigs, her gra profiteering baby godchildren, that I had sent her a sum of money. Then I turned my eyes to the palms for preference as she heaped contumely upon me that 1 had not, that morn- ing, dismissed the native woman from my employ. I made what haste I could to recover from my malady and on the day upon which 1 was released from the hos- pital went direct to the small house which sheltered her and her multitude of kin. At the corner of the plaza I met a friend who told me that the governor was having the island searched for her betrayer, and that a rascally old keeper of trading shops was discovered to have disappeared from the place; but these things seemed trivial to me then as, a number of years later, it seemed trivial to learn how another governor was having the names of all mothers of illegitimate Chamorro children published in the Guam News Letter. It seemed to me that a fetid air hung about the house as though the thoughts of an island full of mocking, spite- ful people wrapped it in a shroud. At the porch I was met by the old woman, her toothless mouth smeared with the scarlet of the betel she chewed. When 1 asked to see her daughter she seemed unwilling to admit me; nevertheless I inserted the toe of one foot within the crack she had opened in the door and called through the gloom, "Filomena!" At once a sad voice answered from behind a partition, "Ah, m'am, I tink bery good you not come here!" I thrust the old woman aside and feeling my way past chairs and a table found another door and a veritable pit of darkness. So closed was it against the sunlight that not a solitary ray penetrated to show me where she stood. "Filomena," I begged her, "tell me where you are." Only a sob answered me out of that pit of night. Slowly my eyes became accustomed to the darkness; I was able to make out different objects in the room. There a chair stood. That was a bureau. The long oblong under the window shutters was a table. And that — that was a crib ! A low, iron crib which some former employer had given her now filled with a mass of musty bedding. No use, I concluded, to try and locate its occupant. But the woman beside it, crouching where she sat on the floor against the bars, I recognized, thick shoulders bent, soft, brown face bowed, hiding the crooked, ever-questioning eye ; a figure like an image of Grief's self cryirg into locked hands. I put my arm about her, but she drew away from me shivering and I heard her moan, "I plenty 'shamed!" "Filomena," I stammered helplessly, "Filomena, " "Ah, m'am!" She cowered lower, grinding her cheek against the rusted iron of the crib. "Filomena, let me see your baby!" Again that pitiful plaint arose in torment to her lips and she flung out her arms to hide him from my sight. "I 'shamed!" "Who told you that, Filomena?" "Eberybody, m'am! All de people — mi madre " From among the shadows on the floor the low voice rose brokenly, repeating the terrible, blasting things that the old woman had said, stabbing her anew with the sharp- ness of their venom. I let her cry for a little, soothing her with what dreary platitudes I might, and then resorted to strategy to see the child. "If you won't show him to me, Filomena, I'll pick him up myself and my doctor will be furious." At that she tlew to slide hack tin- wooden shutters, i ing, "You too much sick, m'am! You sit down!" And so, by cunning, I came face to face at last with tl of all the turmoil. lie was wrinkled and rather black, and I thought him unflattering!} like all of the new-born babies I had seen, save for his color. Bui I could not tell Filomena that; so 1 saul. "He's a beauty, isn't he! Oh, Filomena!" Swiftly she knelt at my side, for I had taken him into my lap, as though she feared that in my admiration I might covet him for my own; circling the tiny, squirming body with her arms, murmuring against his rumpled face a single, breathless word. "Babee!" But the next moment she had returned with a flash of memory to the bitter, familiar cry. "I 'shamed!" Through the open window the stench of drying copra drifted, wafted on the sensuous benediction of the trades. The Cock By JAKE FALSTAFF Give me a hot summer, Says the cock, With the prints of hooves in the caked hogwallow And the yellow dust smooth as water on the road. Give me a hot sun to bake the leaves So the caterpillars will fall from the pig-hickory And the pinch-bugs walk wobbly on the flagstones. Give me the blue sky cloudless So I can spot the hawk at the horizon, Giving the calls that the hens know, Making them run to shelter. Give me the heat rising over the stubble And the sparrows threshing the shock. A hot day and a cool dusk, Says the cock, With the swallows gibbering under the muddy eaves And the bats blundering around the dinner-bell. A hot day, says the cock, And the hens wallowing in the dust-puddles And the chicks running stiff-legged after butterflies. I will forsake the hen-house And roost in the apple-tree; In the morning I will fly To the reel of the binder and crow. Give me the flowers swooning in the sunshine, The spiders growing fat in the box-stall, A hot summer, a hot summer, Says the cock. In the Driftway LIKE a good many other persons who do not believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, but would like it to be such, the Drifter occasionally gets discour- aged about what is called the labor movement. He sees the labor but he can't always make out the movement. Then again in more optimistic moments the Drifter discerns progress. One mark of progress, he thinks, is the emphasis

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{6 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 placed by modern labor organizations upon educating the children of workers in proletarian philosophy. Heretofore the goal of ambitious workers has been to educate their children for "something better," in the course of which the best young minds have mostly been lost to the proletarian cause. * * * * * THE Drifter has remarked with interest on the part taken by children in the strike of the textile workers in and near Passaic, New Jersey, where the younger gen- eration has furnished the shock troops in various parades and demonstrations. To some it may seem that these chil- dren have been exploited by their elders — that they have been used as window-dressing and advertising matter when they should have been playing hop-scotch or marbles. It all depends, the Drifter thinks, on whether the hearts of the children have been in the strike, or whether the young f^lks have been used as unwilling or indifferent actors. Those who have seen these children testify to the genuine- ness of their interest, and the Drifter has lately read a composition on the strike, written by a girl ten years old, which points in the same direction. In her odd and alien English this little girl mingles snatches of the phraseology which she has heard at labor meetings with her own vivid and personal impressions. She writes: Our life are very miserable as I know. Our parents were compeled to work very hard, long hours, under fears and cruelty, for so little wages they were not able to make human living for us and themselves. Our parents were compeled to work very hard, not only in the mill but they was work exhaustly at home also. They awaken early morning to get ready on time to work, to prepare ail neces- sary for all day for us and selves. They go to grocery, make lunch, cook food, awaken us even early, to give us full instruction, warn us to be careful, what we got to do, how to use poor food and poor home. They then see if windows are nailed, gas tied with string or wire, knives forks, matches are lock up, then we are lock up too. ***** H OW to use poor food and poor home!" A lot of the education of the worker, young or old, is just that. And those who have wondered how a mother manages who has to go off to work in the gray of the morning, leaving young children behind by themselves, may get hints from "gas tied with string or wire" and "matches are lock up." This ten-year-old proletarian then goes on to say : We older do what mother did, we warn our brother and sister when we hear alarm clock ring we leave them to school and turn come to guard on themselves. Imagine our mothers and fathers at mill their double work, double think and double fears. Our parents return home exhausted to work again at home, to make warm supper and order. But let me tell you that ours parents return to us overworked, gloomy, find us at home crying, hungry, food all over floor, chair upside down, ours dresses torn and some one are hurt or sick. What is then? Whos punish is that? Who is that? What for is that? For whom is that? Where is that? THE Drifter will not try to answer those six staccato questions. Who can? But children who at ten years of age are pressing such queries will not be likely at twenty to forget the workers' cause for 'Something better." For our young writer speaks from experience. I proof that all on my selves. I was locked up at home that time I was six years old. I guard my brother four years and sister two years. My mother was working at Botany mill till got completly exhausted and knocked to bed. My mother cannot work hard now. I am ten years now but never forgotten that days. IT is tragic that a child of ten has to look back upon bit- terness which she cannot forget, but it is more tragic that many so easily forget that such bitterness exists. America suffers from too great prosperity and too much good-nature. The American labor movement will have more motion when it is inoculated with some of the bitter- ness that now distinguishes European proletarianism from our own. The Drifter Correspondence Negroes and Artists To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: Langston Hughes, defending racial art in America, forgets that the Negro masses he describes are no different from the white masses we are all familiar with. Both "watch the lazy world go round" and "have their nip of gin on Satur- day nights" (love of strong liquors is supposed to be a Nordic characteristic). If there is anything "racial" about the spirit- uals and the blues, then there should be immediate ability to catch the intricate rhythm on the part of Negroes from Jamaica, Zanzibar, and Sierra Leone. Such is not the case, and we must conclude that they are the products of a certain American environment: the South. They are American folk-songs, built around Anglo-Saxon religious concepts. An artist, it seems to me, is one who, able to see life about him, and, struck by its quick interchange of comedy, drama, and tragedy, attempts to portray it or interpret it in music, poetry, or prose, on canvas or in stone. He can only use the equipment furnished him by education and environment. Con- sequently his creation will be French, British, German, Rus- sian, Zulu, or Chinese, depending on where he lives. The work of the artist raised and educated in this country must necessarily be American. It is the Aframerican masses who consume several mil- lions' worth of hair-straightener and skin-whitener per annum in an effort to reach the American standard in pigmentation and hair-texture. This does not look as if they did not care whether they were like white folks or not. Negro propaganda- art, even when glorifying the "primitiveness" of the American Negro masses, is hardly more than a protest against a feeling of inferiority, and such a psychology seldom produces art. Atlanta, Georgia, June 21 George S. Schuyler Escaping- Seventh Street To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: No person with an innate love of justice can fail to be greatly heartened by the thought that the colored race is producing men like Langston Hughes. But isn't Mr. Hughes a bit impatient with the growing intelligentsia of his race? After all, what is racial experience but the expanded spiritual history of the individual? For a man to deny his own soul and try to mold himself after the pattern of someone else is pathetic, of course, but, oh, how human and understandable! Mr. Hughes revels in the colorful and inspirational aspects which the Seventh Streets (the colored ghettoes, so to speak) present to the artist. But he must not forget that the Seventh Streeters are filling the schools and universities with their children. When these youngsters emerge from the crucible of

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July 14, 1926] Mat on .;« education, would Mr. Hughes have them go back to Seventh Street? It wouldn't be human of them, would it, not to want to move away from Seventh Street, in order to build new worlds for their wider horizons? Washington, D. C, June 25 Dorothy Fox Brown-Skinned Nordics To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: It is encouraging to read Mr. Langs ton Hug] article in The S'ation of June 23. He has manfully tackled a subject which hitherto could be discussed only within closed doors. I can quite well remember the distressful reaction mani- fested by one member of a theater party, comprising young Negroes, a few years ago, when it became known that tickets had been secured for a .Negro Broadway play. Imagine any one going to see Negro artists perform! And so this pale, emotionally repressed caste, too proud to breathe the rhythm of life and too childish not to warm themselves at its glowing spontaneity, lives daily under a yellow mask of illusion. Mr. Hughes would have us believe that Negro art would be possible if this brown-skinned Nordic could be eliminated; but he fails to see that in our present environment the de- velopment of any true Negro art remains an utter impossibility. Where is the motif, where are the symbols, where is the sym- pathetic background upon which every true art develops? I am constrained to agree with Mr. George S. Schuyler that Negro art "made in America" is only a myth. All this noise is ' strongly charged with commercialism. Negro art is not pos- sible on a soil alien and entirely unsympathetic to its germina- tion and development. Yet the budding Negro artist must struggle on despite the handicaps and the mushroom minds within his group, for the struggle is more joyous and more pregnant with real life than its abandonment. He must never tire to bellow and write and laugh the brown-skinned Nordics from a place of recognition. New York, June 28 Headley E. Bailey Where the Battle is Fought To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: How in the name of Hank Ford can a Negro or a Jew or a Chinaman or even an Irishman escape his environ- ment? Especially when that environment is the most insistent the world has ever known; pounding like an obsession at the ears and nerves and brain — America the gigartic? The Negroes are not quite as isolated in America as were the Jews in Russia. And yet, even before the Revolution, the younger Jews were Russianized, were quite different from Ger- man Jews or American Jews. Even our old orthodox Jews, prisoners of ghettoes, were differentiated when they came from Salonika or from London or Prague. Environment had changed them even in the ghettoes. If Negroes think they can build up some special racial cul- ture in this huge America, they are either optimists or are blinded by race patriotism. It can't be done. I have known little Chinese flappers in San Francisco, one generation removed from the joss-house, who rouge, wear silk stockings, read Snappy Stories, and do the Charleston. One sees hundreds of them on the streets there. If the young Chi- nese-Americans develop a poet, would it be proper for him to go back to Confucius and forget America? He would be as futile and reactionary if he did as some of our white poets who try to escape their age by sentimentalizing among the tombs. We Negroes, Jews, Germans, Chinese, Anglo-Saxons are all part of America, for better or worse. We are citizens of a new age, bloodier yet more hopeful than all the ages of the past. wilder than any mere continent crawled over by human be- ings. What he judges here as elsewhere is the principle ristence itself. What Mr. Powya thinks of existence it would be im- >ie to repeat in temperate terms, for he deals in ex- tremes—in the two extremes which ( xactly meet in any fine and experienced imagination. He is convinced that life is stale and brutish; yet he is continually finding it fresh, amusing, and lovely. He believes nothing and no- body—voluntary poverty, a tireless critical faculty, and the disease which furnished the subject of "Skin for Skin" have .) that; yet he is continually giving himself to per- sons and things determined in their innocence to take him captive. He knows the world is bad, and he feels that it is good. In a word, he is one of those happy, unhappy men who have worked their feet down through the slush of opinion until they stand on fairly solid ground — in his own words, on "Eternal Matter, bereft of divine innuendoes but capable still of sustaining, after its sublime manner, the fearful and wavering soul of man." Hence these books of his, books in which everything touched — man, star, and 'oeast — responds in its own clear voice. Mark Van Doren A Labyrinth of Trickery International Anarchy, 1904-19H. By G. Lowes Dickinson. The Century Company. $4. \T OTHING is more depressing than diplomatic history. It is Africa, narvaru, or tne bootleg cabarets. A last thought. In this battle, as I have observed him, the black worker thinks, feels, and acts very much the same as the white, yellow, or red worker the world over. Only he uses the Southern dialect. New York, June 27 Michael Gold Real Indians in the Real North To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In "Mantrap," his new novel, Sinclair Lewis maligns our Canadian Indians. He represents them as burning and de- stroying the store and home of an independent fur-trader at Mantrap Landing, a Hudson Bay post in the hinterland of Saskatchewan. Every one knows that the Indians have been peaceful as a prairie sunset ever since 1885. The humane treat- ment has appealed to them, and in any case they are nature's gentlemen. The bad Indians are an invention of the fiction writer. It might have been Lewis's to kill with one mighty blow all the romantic lies and misconceptions of an heroic North. There are heroes up there, but they are not smooth-faced boys rescuing mysterious girls from hard-bitten rogues and scoundrelly half- breeds. They are serious men — missionaries, traders, police who go about their business as a matter of course. Sinclair Lewis's portrait of Joe Easter, the one redeeming feature of the book, shows that he has felt this. But why did he vitiate the real merits of his story by half-baked romanticism re Indians and half-truths re the Mounted Police? He must have noted even during his short stay that the real police work in Saskatchewan is done, not by the Royal Mounted but by the provincial police, an efficient body of men if ever there was one. Yet the only policeman in "Mantrap" is romantically a scarlet rider. "Man- trap" is just another exploitation of Canada as background when Senegambia or the moon might have done just as well. Regina, Saskatchevjan, June 1~> Austin Bothwell

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38 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 placed by modern labor organizations upon educating the children of workers in proletarian philosophy. Heretofore the goal of ambitious workers has been to educate their children for "something better," in the course of which the best young minds have mostly been lost to the proletarian cause. * # * * * THE Drifter has remarked with interest on the part taken by children in the strike of the textile workers in and near Passaic, New Jersey, where the younger gen- eration has furnished the shock troops in various parades and demonstrations. To some it may seem that these chil- dren have been exploited by their elders— that they have been used as window-dressing and advertising matter when they should have been playing hop-scotch or marbles. It all "depends, the Drifter thinks, on whether the hearts of the children have been in the strike, or whether the young fcJts have been used as unwilling or indifferent actors. Those who have seen these children testify to the genuine- ness of their interest, and the Drifter has lately read a composition on the strike, written by a girl ten years old, which points in the same direction. In her odd and alien English this little girl mingles snatches of the phraseology which she has heard at labor meetings with her own vivid and personal impressions. She writes: Our life are very miserable as I know. Our parents were compeled to work very hard, long hours, under fears and cruelty, for so little wages they were not able to make human living for us and themselves. Our parents were compeled to work very hard, not only in the mill but they was work exhaustly at home also. They awaken early morning to get ready on time to work, to prepare all neces- Contributors to This Issue Hendrik W. van Loon has written and illustrated sev- eral books, the latest of which is "Tolerance." George W. Norris, Republican United States Senator from Nebraska since 1913, was reelected in 1924 despite the fact that he did not leave Washington for his cam- paign, make a speech, or spend a cent. Max Stern is a staff correspondent for the Scripps-How- ard Newspaper Alliance. Lewis S. Gannett, associate editor of The Nation, re- cently spent six months in the Orient. Elbridge Colby is a captain in the United States Army (Infantry), stationed at Fort Bennington, Georgia. M. S. Lea was at one time assistant editor of the Guam News Letter. Jake Falstaff is on the staff of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal. J . Salwyn Schapiro is professor of history at the College of the City of New York. R. F. Dibble is the author of "Strenuous Americans" and "John L. Sullivan: An Intimate Narrative." Ernest Gruening, former managing editor of The Nation and of La Prensa (New York), has spent much of the last three years in Mexico. David S. Muzzey is professor of history at Barnard College. Hartley Alexander, author of "Manito Masks: Dramati- zations with Music of American Indian Spirit Leg- ends," is professor of philosophy at the University of Nebraska. £ The P.O. Censor as Gropper sees him. Note his shears behind his back. That means he decided that the NEW MAfTEr IS MAILABLE Our July issue has gone out to our subscribers, and future numbers of the NEW MASSES will go through the mails with no more than the usual scrutiny directed toward radical publications — and all other publications, for that matter. Subscriptions are now in order. They should be sent at once to make sure of all the summer issues. We don't mind changing addresses. Tell us where you have escaped for the hot weather, and where you will return in the fall. We will see that the NEW MASSES follows you without fail. The important thing is to subscribe now. NEW MASSES, INC. 39 West 8th St.. New York, N. Y. Enclosed is $2.00 ( check .... money order. . . . cash ....), for which send Hie NEW MASSES for one year. BeRin Name Address WORKING CLASS BOOKS ECONOMICS, HISTORY, SOCIAL SCIENCE and EVOLUTION. An- I*t our tttt catalog, newly rovund. i HARliES H. KJE.RR & CO., S47 East Ohio Street, Chicago DOUBLY A PRIZE WINNER PRECIOUS BANE By MARY WEBB "A novel in ten thousand." — Katharine Lee Bates "Something rare and fine and beautiful." Louise M. Field in The Evening Post (Literary Review) "Filled with moving tenderness, pathos and beauty." John W. Crawford in The New York Sun E. P. BUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., New York $2.00 When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Books Further Commandment By LEONORA SPEYER Thou shalt not choose ailliction; Saying: Of this I lack, This worthy grief I still can bear On my submissive back; Or: This small visitation Fits nicely in my pack. Thou shalt not choose ailliction, But take the one that comes; Greet it with sigh or psalmody, With swords or funeral-drums; Or like Jack Horner in his corner, Relish the bitter plums. First Glance OXE must say of Llewelyn Towns that he writes well- that, in fact, each new book from him, so short and yet so full, makes it more probable that his is permanent prose. One must also say, both in explanation of this fact and as evidence of its importance, that he seems to have invented the kind of book which he should write. Doubt- among all the books in the world there are several in the mode of those by Mr. Powys on Africa, England, Europe, and the United States; but I do not remember any now, and at any rate I am convinced that the effort he must have put forth in order to discover — perhaps create — his precise medium was the authentic effort of an original soul. Few modern works in any art have given me purer pleasure than that which I have got from Llewelyn Powys's "Ebony and Ivory," "Black Laughter," "Skin for Skin," and now "The Verdict of Bridlegoose" (Harcourt, Brace: $2.50). This new volume is fed by memories of the five years which Mr. Powys spent in America. But nothing could be more stupid than the expectation or the hope — or the fear — that the author herein has passed judgment upon our land and us. To be sure, no less than always before he is as frank as an adder about his dislikes and as direct as a puppy in the expression of his likes — my images are in- spired by a practice of Mr. Powys himself, who never loses an opportunity to compare a person with an animal, and who in these two hundred pages has invoked for the pur- pose "detestable malt-weevils," "frantic whistling mice," "an old salamander," "a green-hooded snake," "a barn-door owl," "a little red flea on a nipping frosty morning," "a red-legged Palestine jackal," "a wood-pigeon cooing over its two white eggs," and "a dry old stationary heron." He hits off many a knave and many a zany, and he rises to magnificent praise for a few magnificent specimens — Theodore Dreiser, John Cowper Powys, C. E. S. Wood— of a race which he confesses it is "extremely hard to think of as noble." And he delivers himself of generalizations concerning us which are interesting because acute. But it could never have been his intention to pronounce a "ver- dict" upon America. His hunting ground is wider and wilder than any mere continent crawled over by human be- ings. What he judges hei Isewhere is the principle nee itself. Whal Mr. Powya thinks of existence it would be im- ile :>> repeal in temperate terms, Tor lie deals in ex- tremes in the two extremes which exactly meet in any fine and experienced imagination. He is convinced that life is stall- and brutish; yet he is continually finding it fresh, amusing, and lovely. He believes nothing and no- voluntary poverty, a tireless critical faculty, and the disease which furnished the subject of "Skin for Skin" have seen to that ; yet he is continually giving himself to per- sons and things determined in their innocence to take him captive. He knows the world is bad, and he feels that it is good. In a word, he is one of those happy, unhappy men who have worked their feet down through the slush of opinion until they stand on fairly solid ground — in his own words, on "Eternal Matter, bereft of divine innuendoes but capable still of sustaining, after its sublime manner, the fearful and wavering soul of man." Hence these books of his, books in which everything touched — man, star, and beast — responds in its own clear voice. Mark Van Doren A Labyrinth of Trickery International Anarchy, 190U-19H. By G. Lowes Dickinson. The Century Company. $4. XT OTHING is more depressing than diplomatic history. It is -^ ' written either by bitter partisans who can interest only those that agree with them or by historians who record the facts of diplomacy as if they were always inevitable. An under- tone of pessimism pervades the work of the latter. They assume that the moves of diplomats are always dictated by conflicting national interests the outcome of which, sooner or later, must be war. Mr. Dickinson's book is a new kind of diplomatic history. The central theme is the calamitous outcome of a system of in- ternational relations called international anarchy — "the juxtapo- sition of a number of states, independent and armed." Unlike other histories of diplomacy this one is concerned chiefly with the fundamental aspects of international relations, not with the policies of this or that nation. No more impartial account has yet appeared of the diplomatic background of the World War. Not the slightest trace of partisanship, conscious or unconscious, to be found on any page. Mr. Dickinson unravels diplomatic mazes with the simplicity of one who has conquered his material, and the style is felicity itself. Like his master, Plato, Mr. Dick- inson is artist as well as teacher; he, too, has the power of charming his readers into the paths of knowledge. The first portion of the book is devoted to a general descrip- tion of the European situation, especially to armaments, the balance of power, and the policies of the Great Powers. Diplo- macy was the only means yet devised to prevent the "cosmos from plunging into chaos." And a most ineffective means it proved itself to be! Secret in its ways, dishonest in its methods, having no power behind it save that of the nation of the nego- tiator, it created an atmosphere of distrust and fear which was provocative of war. All the nations practiced the same methods, and the result was a labyrinth of trickery. The coolness with which a nation could double-cross, even triple-cross, an ally was due less to calculation than to fear. The fundamental principle of diplomacy was the balance of power which, however, was an invitation to war, not to peace.

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40 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184' The Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy was a classic example of the old diplomacy. Its treaty contained secret clauses. Its object, acclaimed defensive, was aggressive: to aid Italian aggression in North Africa and Austrian aggression in the Balkans. Germany promptly sold out Austria by making a secret arrangement with the latter's enemy, Russia. Italy sold out Germany by making a deal with France. Austria remained loyal to her allies; she had no one to whom to sell them. One part of the Triple Entente was based on a definite treaty, the Dual Alliance between France and Russia; the other part on the Entente Cordiale between England and France. According to all accounts the Entente was not an alliance but a "gentle- men's agreement." Mr. Dickinson is skeptical, and well he may be. The idea of a "gentlemen's agreement" between nations is absurd for the reason that nations are not gentlemen. England and France did have a treaty to support each other in North Africa. England and Russia did have a treaty to support each other in the Middle East. England did have "military and naval commitments to France which were like a suction pipe to draw her, whether she would or no, into the war." If France went to war with Germany the status of Morocco might be seriously affected. If Russia went to war with Austria it would certainly involve France and Germany. How then was England "free" to act? The so-called Triple Entente was as much an alliance as the Triple Alliance. It was devised to lull the British public into the belief that their government had not committed the country to an alliance against Germany. The second portion of the book describes the international crises that succeeded one another in rapid succession. As Europe was divided into two great coalitions no dispute could be "localized"; a quarrel between two Powers immediately drew in their allies. Like a Greek choi-us Mr. Dickinson appears at each tragic scene — in the Balkans, in North Airica, in Asia Minor — to comment on the situation. Always his theme is the lack of a super-national machinery with power to compel the nations to arbitrate their difficulties. The Powers were "ready" in 1914. Mr. Dickinson's treat- ment of the gTeat crisis is a masterpiece of objective historical writing. He does not point to Germany as the guilty nation; neither does he apportion the guilt nicely among the belligerents. According to the author the war was not desired or willed by any of the belligerents; it was the outcome of the "anarchy of armed states pursuing by war the maintenance or the exten- sion of power." They all strove for peace, but the strivings of diplomats for peace after they have brought about a situation that leads to war is all too familiar. Every nation acted as it did by force of circumstances. England, even more than the other nations, urged a peace- ful settlement. Did not Sir Edward Grey from first to last strive for peace? His efforts came to naught largely because of his ambiguous statements in regard to England's commit- ments to France. At no time did he declare bluntly that Eng- land would support France against Germany, as did Lloyd George in his famous Mansion House speech during the Agadir crisis. On the contrary he reiterated the statement that Eng- land's hands were "free," which convinced the Germans that she would remain neutral in case of a conflict. Poincare, noth- ing if not downright, told the British that if they refused to intervene war would be inevitable. In regard to Belgium Grey was equally ambiguous. He said plainly enough that England would intervene if the neutrality of Belgium were violated, but when the German Ambassador asked him whether England would keep out of the conflict if Germany respected the neu- trality of Belgium Grey declined to give him any assurance in the matter. There can be only one explanation of Grey's am- biguities and shif tings: he had to assure the British public that Britain was free to intervene or not to intervene, and at the same time he had to , assure France of support against Ger- many. He was helped out of his difficulty by the colossal blun- der of Germany in violating the neutrality of Belgium. And yet the legend of Grey persists. Even Mr. Dickinson accepts it, though he is careful to point out Sir Edward's shortcomings. What an advantage it is to be an English gentleman and a lover of nature! "What little puppets knocking away with Lilliputian ham- mers the last stays that restrained the launch of the great death- ship War!" exclaims Mr. Dickinson. The senile Francis Joseph and his reckless Berchtold, the imbecile Czar and his tricky Sazonov, the grotesque Kaiser and his stupid Bethmann, the envenomed Poincare, the fumbling Grey! Where were the Napo- leons, the Pitts, the Talleyrands, the Metternichs, those war- makers who could inspire a Hardy to write the "Dynasts"? At the Peace Conference only one man, Wilson, repudiated in its entirety the system that resulted in the World War. He saw clearly that the evils of secret diplomacy and the balance of power could be abolished only by a League of Nations. And he clung to the League ardently and desperately. What solu- tion does Mr. Dickinson propose? The only possible solution that has yet appeared, the League of Nations. "All the States," he declares, "must enter the League. The legal openings left for war must be closed, as was provided by the protocol. . . . There must be arrangements for an equitable distribution of important raw materials and the abandonment of protective policies. And above all, there must be general, all-round disarmament." J. Salwyn Schapibo 'Sblood! The Saga of Billy the Kid. By Walter Noble Burns. Doubleday, Page and Company. $2.50. The Rise and Fall of Jesse James. By Robertus Love. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.75. /^1 ONE forever are the incandescent days of the dear dead ^-* West. Where once the slinking coyote and the furtive rat- tlesnake were supreme in endless solitude the all-conquering Hereford now chews her placid cud; the great open spaces are chopped up into dull little ranches or city lots open principally to radios and Fords; the sweat-toughened pick of the Forty- niner has suffered a sea-change into towering oil-derricks; the crack of the six-shooter finds a ghostly echo in the thud of Spalding's spheres against bats or mitts; and the picturesque profanity of flaming frontiersmen has paled into the flatly ver- bose curses of the football coach. Briefly, a rip-roaring wilder- ness has become a tame, dirty back-lot, and what was once a dashing, devil-may-care hombre is now (save in the movies) only a mere man. But Romance, bless her heart, must not be allowed to die; and at this very moment scores, and possibly hundreds, of Underwoods and Remingtons are busily clicking down lurid tales about the embattled deeds of black-eyed, black- bearded, black-souled Bad Men, from Galveston to Seattle, who strive, invariably without success, to prevent heroic Him from rescuing virtuous Her. Of late a few writers have made more subtle attempts to revive the glittering past. They have sedu- lously ferreted out the cloudy, entangled episodes in the lives of epic demigods whose gallant accomplishments are today feebly plagiarized in a monotonous flood of horribly printed Western magazines; and so, almost simultaneously, appear two books that chant two glowing cantos in the Odyssey of the Frontier. For surely Jesse James and Billy the Kid committed deeds that, strummed on Homer's lyre, might easily have matched the stormy wanderings of Odysseus. One cannot help wondering, indeed, whether the crafty Greek rogue might not have extri- cated himself and his band with far greater expedition from some tight places had Billy or Jesse been there. What chance would one-eyed Polyphemus or a whole crew of nasty suitors have had against a Kid who killed a jackrabbit or a man with equal nonchalance — it was all in the day's play — and who,

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July 14, 1926] The Nation 11 trapped in a blazing building, surrounded by half a dozen men holding cocked rifles aimed at every avenue of escape, rolled a cigarette and, wanting a match, waited till a huge piece of blazing roof fell within a foot of his head, bent and lighted his cigarette with the comment, "Much obliged," then dashed out- side with a forty-four in each hand and, leaving one dead and another sorely wounded enemy behind him, escaped without a scratch? Could Odysseus have thought up a better retort than Jesse may have been the author of, in rebuking a Protestant . bishop who objected to losing his watch? "We don't really like to compel a parson to do our bidding, but we are poor men for the time being, sir, and the world owes us a living. As to your Watch, you really don't need it; your Master the Nazarene never owned one. And as the good Book commands you, when travel- ing, to take along neither purse nor scrip, we propose to put you in good standing with the Ix>rd. Therefore, parson, shell out!" And might not Odysseus have learned Christian gallantry from these two modern desperadoes who never deigned to dally with pliant Circes on desert isles? For history solemnly assures us that Jesse and Billy each loved but one woman: Jesse was a happy husband and father when Bob Ford's treacherous shot whizzed rearwards through his skull, and Billy's boyish heart — he was only twenty-one— was pierced by Sheriff Pat Carrett's bullet before he had virtuously led his solitary inamorata to the altar. In other ways, too, they belied the hallowed traditions that have been woven about the generality of bold, brave, bad men. Neither was particularly large nor good-looking; both had hair blond enough to satisfy the most egregious Nordic; Billy was left-handed, and Jesse — in a whisper be it spoken — was bow- legged, had granular eyelids, and was a Baptist fundamentalist long before the term was invented. Both of the present books are competent performances, but the "Saga" surpasses the "Rise and Fall" as much in its style as in its title. Mr. Burns wisely neglects to give definite data for a history that, by its very nature, cannot be positively authenticated; and if he occasionally verges on melodramatic tears (his hero's grave, we are informed, is perfectly bare today save for "a gnarled, bristly, heat-cursed cactus crawling like a snake across the heart of Billy the Kid") , his work nevertheless constantly impresses one with its relative aloofness and its lucid sincerity. Mr. Love, on the contrary, habitually tries to differ- entiate between fact and fiction, with the result that the reader generally accepts the fiction and doubts the fact; his dreadfully jocular journalese ("But, perhaps you are asking, what about Jim Cummins, recently introduced and suddenly sidetracked? Impatient friend, Jim Cummins will keep until the more serious business of this bloody but not thundery opus is transacted") has about as much detachment as a calliope, and Jesse thus remains a palely ineffectual hero not much superior to his brother Frank or any of the Younger brood, whereas the dry bones of Billy the Kid are fleshed with life. Both works suffer from too much padding: whenever the sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, or casual companions of either scapegoat are mentioned a wealth of tire- some biographical detail ensues. But why cavil? Here are two books packed with a greater quantity of romantic dynamite than a ton of average detective tales. R. F. Dibble A Century of Misunderstanding The United States and Mexico, 1821-1024. By J. Fred Rippy. Alfred A. Knopf. $.">. 'T'HE periodic crises in the relations of the United States and Mexico invariably disclose an almost total ignorance on the part of our people and press of the immediate causes of the diffi- culty. A wretchedly inadequate and inaccurate news service to the American press from the Mexican scene and the governmental habit of diplomatic secrecy are responsible for this general lack of inform definite public opinion in regard to Mexico ha I nited Daring thi pa I century this ha Iternatelj tile, aggressive, interventionist, and mildly tolerant. At pi it has crystallized into a friendlier and more sympathetic atti- tude than ever before. If this natioi of mind, so highly . tie for both countries, is t" be maintained, facts which arc I information, and intelligent interpretation are increasingly necessary. Professor Rippy 's conscientious and detached review of neighborly differences provides an admirable foundation. Packed into its well-documented pages is an accurate and readable account of a century of misunderstanding. It is depressing to note how constantly recurs the same motif, how virtually identi- cal arc the utterances of statesmen and politicians on both sides of the border in every crisis, how automatically the newspaper comments repeat themselves, and how unvarying are the ambi- tions and intrigues of those financially affected. The French aphorism, "Plus ca change plus e'est la meme chose," tellingly describes this international relationship. On neither side does much, if anything, appear to have been learned. And yet the United States stands today in a new and unprecedented world position, while in Mexico a fundamental transformation is in process. Professor Rippy leads us to the threshold of these changes, for the scope of the book, while including the diplomatic correspondence until 1924, does not permit an analysis of the social reforms which have been brewing south of the Rio Grande for a decade and a half. His excellent survey should be read above all by newspaper editors and by those who desire to make an intelligent approach to what in this country is denominated "the Mexican problem" and by our neighbors is felt to be "the Yankee peril." Ernest Gruening Bryan by His Wife The Memoirs of Willioym Jennings Bryan. By Himself and his Wife, Mary Baird Bryan. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company. $3.75. ON the sixty-sixth anniversary of Bryan's birth the House of Representatives devoted two hours to speeches eulogiz- ing the Commoner. Mr. Tilson of Connecticut struck the true note when he characterized Bryan as "a genuine crusader." The volume before us fully bears out Mr. Tilson's conten- tion. It is a tribute by a devoted wife to Mr. Bryan as a good husband and a Christian gentleman. It is rather a glorified scrap-book than a serious biography. Chapters on the children, on friendships, on Mr. Bryan as a college stu- dent, an orator, a traveler, a story-teller, a total abstainer follow one another without any apparent plan. Perhaps a hundred pages in the book are concerned with matters of significance to the historian, or indeed to the public in general. Although the first 200 pages are written in the first person, as the bona fide "Memoirs," one cannot be sure that even for them Mrs. Eryan is not more responsible than her husband. She confesses to having "polished" them, whatever that may mean. Mr. Bryan was never a careful and methodical writer. From his first battle to his last plea against evolution, his pen was only the servant of his mouth. He relied upon "pres- ence" and the spell of oratory to win his point rather than upon the calm persuasion of reason. At any rate Mr. Bryan's part of the book brings us only to the convention of 1912 (with many hiatuses), and we have to depend wholly on his wife for the interpretation of Mr. Bryan's policies as Secre- tary of State and his part in the conventions of 1916, 1920, and 1924. The only chapter in the first part of the book that throws any new light on Bryan's career is the long apology for his conduct in the Baltimore Convention of 1912. It is

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42 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184!; hardly of a nature, however, to convert many of the followers of Champ Clark. Mrs. Bryan assumes direct responsibility for Part II. She is certainly better qualified than many wives would be to write the memoirs of her distinguished husband, because she always took an active interest in his problems and shared his labors and confidence to a remarkable degree. She attempts a more consecutive narrative than Part I furnishes, relying on her diary and on memorandums and letters left by Mr. Bryan. But Mrs. Bryan's work is so obviously and naively a "tribute" to her husband that it has little value as an objec- tive study. There is something pathetic, in view of the revelations cast by the House Papers on the cavalier fashion in which Mr. Bryan was ignored as Secretary of State, in Mrs. Bryan's naive rejoicing that "many are thankful that the peace-loving Mr. Bryan is at the helm"! And there is something misleading, at times, in her justification of Mr. Bryan's actions. For example, she says that after the sink- ing of the Lusitania "Mr. Bryan took the position that, in order to maintain strict neutrality, we must send a note to England protesting against her interference with our ship- ping, as well as one to Germany for destroying the Lusitania." As if we had not been sending such notes to England for some months. Again, in defending the resignation of Mr. Bryan in June, 1915, she cites the famous House memorandum discussed with Grey in February, 1916, as a contributing cause, remarking: "Obviously, these conditions made the po- sition of the S-:cret„ry of State extraordinarily difficult." She also maintains that the second Lusitania note was "very much softened" in the final draft, "just before Mr. Bryan's resigna- tion took effect," but that "he had no knowledge of this change at the time his resignation was tendered and accepted." This conflicts with the testimony from several sources that Mr. Bryan was present (in spite of the proffer of his resignation) at the cabinuL meeting in which the final text of the note was agreed upon. But these matters of state, after all, oc- cupy only an incidental place in Mrs. Bryan's personal narrative. David S. Muzzey Mayas, Greeks, and Cambodians Maya Architecture. By George Oakley Totten. Washington, D. C: The Maya Press. $25. The City of the Sacred Well. By T. A. Willard. The Century Company. $4. Mystery Cities. By Thomas Gann. Charles Scribner's Sons. $5. Elephants and Ethnologists. By G. Elliot Smith. E. P. Dutton and Company. $6. "THE Greeks of the New World" is a phrase which I seem * to recall having myself in a moment of incaution applied to the Mayas of Central America and Yucatan. But when I encounter it in others, employed with a high seriousness which I trust can never have been mine, it gives me certain pause. The Maya civilization was the most outstanding in pre-Columbian America; it did resemble the Greek in the multitude of its nota- ble cities and in their inability to form a stable nation; and like the Hellenic culture the Mayan has left a notable array of archi- tectural ruins, profoundly impressive, and of artistic fragments in sculpture, pottery, painting, gems, and gold-work. The Mayas also present an analogy to the Greeks in the more abstruse field of science, for none can deny that their numeral-calendric system is one of the remarkable intellectual achievements, and there have even survived three of their hieratic books (out of the many thousands of volumes buried by zealous devotees of the God of the Spaniards) which compare favorably as works of art with the best out of Egypt, and which represent, we have reason to believe, a liturgical, historical, and scientific literature of no less value. In the prime fields of human achievement the I Mayas mark a true civilization and a great moment of time. But Greeks — that is another matter; for the best in the! Maya is as inferior to the Hellenic as the level of the New World as a whole was to the Old World of Columbus's day or ; perchance as it is in our own. Were we to compare the Mayas only with the ancient Orientals, and indeed all that went before \ the Greek miracle befell, then the Americans would certainly suffer little, and might carry the palm, but Mr. Totten and the Maya Society and the other enthusiasts (including myself) | should habitually utter a little prayer for the preservation of the white light of sanity before we launch unrestrainedly into , the movement for a Maya Renascence. Hence it is that we (and, perhaps, Mr. Morley and Mr. Spinden and Mr. Joyce) should take blithely to the Cambodians. Elliot Smith is really thinking of Cambodian ambassadors (such as I recall years ago when "Wang" was sung) , ambassadors of i culture, in pirogues and outrigger craft, bee-lining it across the Pacific to teach the native savages to carve makaras and ele- phants on their shrines (makaras being more or less lizards and more or less elephants) ; and to make the lesson vivid he shows analogies that take us progressively back to the pyramids and stepped temples of Babel, and permit us to be comfortably (albeit adventurously) monogenetic in our myth of the origin of human ideas about how to do and to decorate. There are puzzles which the Cambodian embassy theory — even if the ambassadors trav- eled by relays, a century or so to the lap — ravels out. But, per contra, we mustn't forget our Greeks and the landbridge via Atlantis; for from what other source, I should like to know, did the pre-Columbians get the Phrygian cap and the caduceus of Mercury and the thunderbolt of Jupiter? As for the Roman cross, a dragon-fly, a tree, a man are all safe sources. It is rather fun to see the Mayas breaking through the staid reports out into press-agented books. In the pile before me Mr. Totten's is a really notable collection of plates — the finest that have appeared since Maudsley and the Peabody Memoirs (to both of which he is indebted). Whether its effect will be, as he hopes, a new blossoming of Maya architecture, this time north of Mexico, is a matter for betting, and the odds need not be great, for the possibilities are genuine. Certainly, the artists and architects should add the volume to their libraries and the images to their imaginations. They should be cautioned that the text is unscholarly and sadly in need of an editor, but it is the plates, not the text, that make the book, and the bibliography is full. As for the eight color plates — well, there is a difference between barbaric color, which is often beautiful, and color- blindness, and I do not believe that the Maya were so hopelessly inferior, say to the Apache, in this sense. The eight plates may be excised with no loss. Of the others Mr. Willard's book tells the story of Thomp- son's years of work at Chichen Itza and Mr. Gann's tells prin- cipally of excavations at Xunantunich and Lubaantun carried on by himself. Interesting plates and a great deal of personal nar- rative, sentiment that not infrequently topples over into the pur- ples, archaeological enthusiasm, snakes, scorpions, and jaguars —all these sugar the science or spice it. They are books that belong to a distinct genre highly developed of late years — in the same character as the news service that introduces the screen show, but just as much better as a literate drama is superior to a film-play. Elliot Smith's two-year-old book I have introduced because he is carrying the war into the enemy's camp, and that is al- ways good sport; there has been too much tame concurrence. Besides we are looking for a new book from his pen. For the reader subject to sudden captations I should recommend a sus- pense of judgment, at least until we have the remaining parts of Jacques de Morgan's posthumous "Histoire de l'Orient," of Jacq rhich the first volume appeared last fall. Hartley Alexander

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July 14, 1926] The Nation 43 Americana in Brief Some American Ladies: Seven Informal Biographies. By Meade Minnigerode. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.50. In May, 192,r>, the good citizens of Nashville, Tenn' '» the na: re the intrigues and mam ful, of Adam . Clay, . and their friei organize a presidential campaign which should give then trol of the government It is at least a chastening reflection to observe that victory, when it came, was attained by the sacrifice Of political consistency to appeals to popular emo- tion, the Whigs in this respect taking a leaf from the book of Democratic experience under Jackson. Only the national aspects of the story, however, are emphasized, the growth of Whig organization in the States being but lightly touched, and the fortunes of the party in the South, already treated with some fulness by A. C. Cole, are summarized rather than elaborated. The Formative Period of the Federal Reserve System. By W. P. G. Harding. Houghton Mifflin Company. $4.50. The exigencies of the war combined with some obvious needs to give the Federal Reserve Board practically all of the important powers which a central bank would have exercised directly and in plain view. The present volume by the "War Governor" of the board may be taken as the official apologia for its course in the war and as a good account of how in mod- ern times war and financial activities are tied together. Die Kunst der Massenbeeinflussung in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Von Friedrich Schoenemann. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. The purpose of the author, who during the war was a teacher of German at Harvard and who at present lectures on American civilization at the University of Miinster, is to ex- plain to Germans the nature of American war propaganda, not only in order to show what actually happened but also — curi- ously enough — to teach Germans a lesson in undaunted patriot- ism and unity of action. The presentation is made with skill and accuracy, although the German point of view naturally prevails. Of the pillars of American propaganda the following are discussed in detail : the schools, the church, women, the press, the moving picture, polite society, and social and political organizations. The book is important chiefly because it gives a clear, authentic conception of the basis upon which German post-war opinion of America must rest. □ THEATRE a GRAND STREET THE ith Annual Revue of ^-~ >^^-^ Playhouse. 466 Grand St. Drydock 7616. NEIGHBORHOOD Eves. (Except Mon > at 8:30. Matinee. Friday, July 9, and Saturday, July 17. FOLLIES -THE THEATRE GUILD Presents AT MRS. BEAM'S! A Comedy by C. K. MUNRO with ESTELLE WINWOOD. JEAN CADELL. EARL LARIMORE. HELEN WESTLEY, HENRY TRAVERS AND OTHERS. f^TTTT F» TT-TPiTDP 62nd st-' We9t of B'way. Evs. 8: K.J*UIL,LJ lnl.ni IV U, Matinees THURS. and SAT.. 2: □ DEBATE SESQUICENTENNIAL DEBATE George Hiram Mann, Nat'l Security League Jay Lovestone, Workers Party Resolved : That the present form of government is not in the interest of the American Masses. Central Opera House. 67th St. & 3rd Ave.. N. Y. C. Friday, July 16, 9 P. M. Admission 35c. Auspices of the Workers School i < ntion The Nation

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International Relations Section What Is the British Empire i THE South African Premier, General J. B. Hertzog, speaking at Stellenbosch University on May 15 on The Relationship of South Africa to the Empire, made something like a declaration of independence. His speech is of peculiar importance to Americans because of our proximity to Canada and of the "Six-to-One" debate on the representation of the British Empire in the League of Nations. General Hertzog referred to a speech made last November by his predecessor, in which General Smuts said that the future existence of the British Empire could be assured only by maintaining imperial unity in foreign rela- tions. General Hertzog then said, according to the Cape Times (Cape Town) for May 17: The full significance of this principle, with all that it im- plies, will, I think, be better understood by looking back over the struggle for international freedom by the self-governing Domin- ions of Great Britain, more particularly the Union of South Africa. With the grant o^ self-government, from time to time to one or other of the Dominions, the question has repeatedly arisen as to its scope, i. e., as to what is implied under self-government. It is obvious that the Dominion concerned, continually striving for freedom and the satisfaction of its national aspirations, had to put the widest and, for itself, the most favorable construction on its powers and authority. In almost every case, therefore, the grant of self-govern- ment has been regarded by influential leaders of public opinion in the Dominions as an emancipation from hitherto existing bonds of subordination to the United Kingdom, coupled with a definite grant to that Dominion of autonomous power and authority, also in regard to the outside world and its relations with foreign Powers. A Common Sovereign According to this opinion each Dominion is, by virtue of its self-governing constitution, created a free, independent state, with the right to international recognition by foreign Powers; but with a common connecting link between itself and Great Britain, centered in the King. This mutual connecting link should, therefore, be regarded as no more than an actual — de facto — personal bond, without any legal or constitutional sub- servience to any authority other than that of the sovereign will of the people of the Dominion concerned. According to that opinion, therefore, each Dominion, by virtue of the self-govern- ment granted it, would be on the same footing with Great Britain, as a sovereign, free, international state; and, apart from the personal bond of their common sovereign, there would be no bonds between them other than those which may from time to time be agreed upon. Therefore, all unity among the Domin- ions themselves and between the Dominions and Great Britain must originate in agreement and cooperation. This doctrine, to which I have subscribed ever since the establishment of the union, has not been without its opponents either here or elsewhere in the Dominions. . . . Before Versailles So far as I am aware, the principle of independence of the Dominions, binding themselves to Creat Britain by means of the personal bond of the King, was never accepted by any of the Dominion governments as such before 1919. Whatever may have been the opinion of individual ministers, in this or that Dominion, governments, like that of the union, carefully avoided advocating it, and never endeavored to put it to practical test; excepting in a few instances where, under force of circum- stances, they were compelled to move in that direction and act in accordance therewith. They were constantly possessed by the fear, to which I have just drawn attention, of the disruption of the Empire, and they knew of no means of avoiding this danger other than by the acceptance and even the defense (as was the case with the Gov- ernment here) of a status of subordination to and dependence on the United Kingdom. Not everywhere did this fear lead to the acceptance of the doctrine of subordination to such an extrava- gant degree as with us. But fundamentally the attitude taken up by the various Dominion governments has been the same, viz., rejection of individual state independence. One of the consequences of this has been that nowhere has any attempt been made by any of the Dominions to obtain formal recognition of its international status by foreign Powers. Britain's Attitude That no encouragement has been given thereto by Great Britain is a matter of course. What is more natural than that she should likewise harbor the fear which the Dominions and Dominion statesmen so obviously allowed themselves to be influ- enced by? . . . In all fairness we should admit that, considering the opinion of the majority in the Dominions themselves, the British Govern- ment in general took up a correct attitude toward the Dominions and acted patriotically toward Great Britain. Where justice has not been done in this respect to the Dominions, the responsibility rests with the Dominions themselves and with their responsible leaders, who, sometimes, as here in South Africa, took it upon themselves to declare that we were not entitled to a measure of freedom expressly assigned to us by eminent British statesmen. The result was that until the conclusion of the Versailles Treaty in 1919 it was in practice as well as in theory the general opinion in government circles that the Dominions, notwithstand- ing the possession of self-government, were, nevertheless, sub- ordinate to Great Britain and had no rights in regard to matters of foreign policy. It speaks for itself that there was no lack of experts and others to show that on legal and theoretical grounds this was exactly as it should be; that self-government to the Dominions did not in any way create these Dominions independent states, and that they could, therefore, have no right to an international status. Meanwhile this subordination of the Dominions to Great Britain drew more and more attention, and disclosed to an ever- increasing extent the dissatisfaction of the people of the various Dominions. When thus at the outbreak of the great World War the Dominions suddenly appeared on the battlefields as belliger- ents, fully armed, the international significance thereof could not be concealed either from the Dominions themselves or from the outside world, and as the full significance thereof increased it necessarily led to an awakening of the people, and no less of responsible statesmen, to a measure of international self-con- sciousness, such as never had been the case before. That it was therefore no longer possible to continue to accept the doctrine of Dominion subordination to Great Britain was generally felt and accepted when the time arrived for the conclusion of peace. The Dominions, by what they had achieved during the war, had not only become fully conscious of their international status but they had also been put on their guard, by their bitter experience and sacrifices, against being compelled to repeat these sacrifices, in the matter of a dispute to which they had been no party, and between Powers with whom they, as presumed subordinates of Great Britain, had no voice and en- joyed no right of expressing their views. When, therefore, the war was at an end and peace had to be concluded the Dominions had to decide whether, dominated by the fear of disruption of the Empire in case they accepted the status of sovereign states, they should continue to adhere to the

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July 14, 1926]- Tin- Nation 45 position of subordination or whether they should accept the inde- pendent status of international states. Urged on by the addi- tional fear which they had felt during the course of the war, namely, that their position of subordination might again plunge them into a war in the prevention of which they had no say, and spurred on by their awakening to national self-consciousness, the Dominions could no longer be satisfied with their former status, as hitherto exercised. To satisfy this new insistence on more right of action in matters of foreign policy, they had necessarily to take up their stand on the basis of international freedom and independence. This was, in fact, done by the statesmen who represented them at the Peace Conference. The course adopted by these statesmen is peculiar and de- serves our attention. 1919 and After This brings us to the second period — the conclusion of peace in 1919 and thereafter. It is clear to me that the unambiguous and sound course which our statesmen should have followed there should have been that of the recognition of the personal bond of a common King with Great Britain, without any other legal ties, but strengthened by such further ties as historical contact, common interests, and mutual agreements as the will of the people of each separate Dominion might have been prepared to approve of. The leaders of the Dominions at the Peace Conference were, how- ever, not able to carry their convictions as far as that. The furthest they would go was to effect a compromise between the viewpoint of Dominion independence and that of Dominion subordination. To obtain this, the idea of the unity of the Empire group was created, according to which the Dominions, in foreign affairs, would be on the same footing as Great Britain; while at the same time no one, not even Great Britain, should have the right to act as a separate state entity in international affairs. In order to arrive at any decision in international matters, or to take any action, it would be necessary that the group should dis- cuss the matter as a single unit, and as such arrive at a decision. A doctrine was, therefore, created according to which each of the Dominions, as well as Great Britain, would be individually subordinate to the group as a fictitious state Super-Power or supreme state authority. The question might be asked whether, according to that doctrine, the decision of the majority of the group was to be binding on the minority. There is no reference made to this anywhere. It seems to have been simply assumed that there would and could be no minority. The argument appears to have been: the group must decide as one unit: therefore, the group will be unanimous. Group Unity On this basis the Dominion statesmen, after consultation with those of Great Britain, arrived at an agreement during the Peace Conference, and accepted the doctrine of a "free and equal status"; and when the peace treaty itself had to be signed, an endeavor was made to give expression thereto, in different ways, one of which at once strikes the attention. This was the man- ner in which the treaty was signed by the Dominions. The idea of the unity of the group with subordination of the Dominions to the group had, of course, to replace the old theory of unity by subordination to Great Britain, which had to be sac- rificed as obsolete; and, as in the case of the rejected theory, the impelling motive for the adoption of this idea was — the fear of disintegration, accompanied by the all-too-anxious desire to find a preventive in what must necessarily, if adhered to, result in nothing less than a quasi-federal Empire, with the highest authority vested in the Imperial Conference; where in case of difference Great Britain would of necessity, by virtue of her powerful world influence and world interests, be the decisive voice; while in international affairs she would be considered as the only internationally recognized state of the group. Lei us now consider whether in practice the idea of the unity of the group has answered its original purpose, or whether matters followed h different course, as just indicated. The main objects it was intended to achieve were originally two: 1. The recognition of the Dominions as independent inter- national states. ■J. The assurance of the continued existence of the Empire by united action in foreign policy. What has become of these objects? I think I am not saying too much if I maintain that so far nothing more has been attained along the fresh path than a further obscuring of the status of the Dominions and an endangering of any desirable cooperation between the Dominions and Great Britain. In order to give you an opportunity of judging how far I am right, I may cite in the first place the following: First, concerning our status. We are informed in the press that in the Portuguese Senate a question was asked on the 4th instant concerning our international status, as the result of a statement on the subject which I had recently made in Parlia- ment. After a certain Senator had expressed the opinion that "the union could not be considered an independent country," the Minister for the Colonies stated that South Africa is "a colony with large autonomy but dependent on British sovereignty." . . . In other words, notwithstanding our free and equal status with Great Britain, we remain in the eyes of the outside world sub- ject to British sovereignty, i. e., a subordinate of Great Britain. In the second place, I wish to examine with you the question, in how far the group-unity idea proves to be conducive to the continued existence of the Empire, and therefore to what extent it answers its purpose as a remedy against disruption. Let me first of all refer to a contribution to the March number of the Round Table by a prominent Canadian politician, by whom in all seriousness the following question is put: Is there a place in the British Commonwealth of Na- tions for Canada, if she becomes a sovereign state pre- cisely as Great Britain is a sovereign state? To which question the writer answers as follows: This is the question to which Canadian nationalists want an answer. Obviously if there is room in the Brit- ish Commonwealth of Nations for Great Britain as an independent nation, but no room for any other inde- pendent nation, Canada and the other Dominions are not nations, are not equal to Great Britain, but are in fact glorified colonies pretending in the face of the world to be something which they are not. I feel convinced that when a public man of authority in a country such as Canada feels and speaks like this, all that can be said is that the principle upon which we have been engaged in building up the Empire since 1919 is more calculated to bring about its fall than to serve as a foundation for its future existence. Reality a Necessity It is clear that a Dominion such as Canada wishes to see in its equal status real international independence, and that if it is prevented under the regime of the existing group-unity idea from obtaining that independence it will be compelled to obtain it along a different way. The national aspirations of the peoples of the young Dominions are too forceful to be satisfied with mere appearance, where the reality has become a necessity. But apart from the question in how far the theory of the unity of the group satisfies the national demands of the Domin- ions, I wish to answer the question briefly as to what extent that theory has proved to be feasible in practice. The main idea of that theory is the united action of the group — i. e., of all the Dominions together with Great Britain — in treating with foreign Powers. No conference with a foreign Power, in which the group may be interested, may therefore take place unless all the members of the group, at least if they so desire, are represented thereon.

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46 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3184 But it has happened more than once that the most important international conferences have been held without proper repre- sentation thereat being granted to the Dominions. I do not wish here to examine the reasons for this. My intention is only to state that in actual practice the two main objects of the idea of the unity of the group have proved to be failures. Britain Recognizes Independence The most convincing proof thereof we find in the Treaty of Locarno, which was recently concluded. This treaty has been entered into by the British Government in such direct conflict with the principles on which the group-unity idea is based that it has been found necessary to exempt the Dominions from any responsibility resulting therefrom and also to give each of the Dominions separately the option of ratifying the treaty or not. . . . The British Government, by acting as it has done, not only has for good rejected the idea of group unity as being im- practicable but has also, by leaving it optional to each separate Dominion to be a party to the treaty or not, recognized that the Dominions cannot be prevented from acting in international mat- ters as independent states. Thereby it has finally broken with the idea of the unity of the group and group sovereignty, and we have fortunately re- turned to the recognition of the Dominions as international states. . . . "Independent International States" The fear that scared us from following this road of inde- pendence has been an idle fear. But not only idle. Dominated by that fear, we have taken recourse to a preventive against mutual conflict which today proves to be a Nessus shirt and which will tend more to wreck than to save the Empire. If we are called upon, in our own interest, to preserve the good and intimate friendly cooperation between tl. e Dominions and Great Britain, we are equally bound to maintain our inter- national independence. There is, however, no reason whatever why the possession and maintenance of the one should occasion less guaranty for the safe preservation of the other. I maintain that just the reverse is the case. According as the Dominions realize to a greater extent their international obligations, respon- sibilities, and dangers, the feeling of the necessity for closer and more cordial cooperation between the Dominions and Great Britain will grow and convert itself into practice. I have therefore no doubt that, if we have to return to a sound basis, we can accomplish this only by accepting the doc- trine of Dominion independence, based on our rights under the constitution and recognized at Versailles by the foreign Powers of the world; and by developing on that basis any further rela- tions between Great Britain and the Dominions, so as to give every guaranty that can be expected for permanent cooperation. In order to act for the future in conformity with this point of view and with full international effect, something more will be required from Great Britain and the Dominions than a mere declaration of constitutional rights among themselves. That declaration will have to be formally communicated by them to the outside world. Should any of the Dominions not be prepared to give adher- ence to the principle of Dominion independence, they will, of course, be free to remain constitutionally where they are or where they desire to be. But their fearfulness should not be an obstacle to those Dominions to which international independence has become an unavoidable national necessity. STUDENT WORKER CONTEST First prize $100 Second prize $50 Third prize $25 For particulars address The Nation 20 Vesey Street New York, N. Y. RECOMMENDED FOR SUMMER READING Fourth large printing William C. Bullitt IT'S NOT DONE This novel is a "best-seller." "Whoever reads it puts his teeth into thick slices of life."— .V. Y. World. $2.00 Sinclair Lewis By the author MANTRAP ■■'aZZAT'S, Babbitt goes off on a vacation to the north woods. "Better than the best of the thrillers." — Chicago Tribune. $2.00 Paul de Kruif MICROBE HUNTERS "It tells a story of thrilling and universal interest. Read the book!"— Atlantic Monthly. Illustrated, $3.50 Carl Sandburg ABRAHAM LINCOLN "Good for a lifetime." — Saturday Review. "Will become a permanent part of American literature." — N. Y. Times. 2 vols. $10.00 Harcourt, Brace and Company 383 Madison Avenue New York THE ROGUES' BOOKSHELF Edited by Ernest Brennecke, Jr. The world's picaresque classics are here made available for the first time in a uni- form format, in modernized English, unex- purgated, and at a popular price. Each vol- ume is printed in large type, on good paper, and is sturdily and attractively bound. rSEW TITLES THE ROAD — Jack London, Intro, by Glen Mullin $2.00 BARRY LYNDON Wm. M. Thackeray, Intro, by Joseph Wood Krulch 2.00 MOLL FLANDERS Daniel Defoe, Intro, by G. H. Maynadier 2.50 HAJJI BABA James Morier, Intro, by Samuel C. Chew 3.50 THE ROGUE — Wilkie Collins, Intro, by Frank W. Chandler 2.00 PRESS COMMENTS The Nation: Both the editors and the titles as announced are a guaranty that the library will be varied in what it offers and ex- pertly attended as it appears. . . . This is a superb beginning. The Brooklyn Eagle: The Rogues' Bookshelf restores color to a drab year's booklist. They don't come any better than these "perfect examples of knavery. Read them, unless vou want to cheat yourself out of as satisfying a literary enjoyment as can be imagined. The New York Times: This is one of the most appetizing (both in format and content) of series concerned with this type of letters. ... A collection of masterpieces that time has approved. The New York Sun : Rarely does a series of reprints begin so amaz- ingly well. . . . And strange to say, the Introductions are uniformly excellent. SFVO FOR PROSPECTUS GREENBERG, Publisher, 112 E. 19th St., New York When writing to advertisers, phase mention The Nation

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The Nation n 18i Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK. WEDN SD W. JULY 21, ' No. 3185 Contents BDITORl M. PARAGR \IMls EDITORIALS: Mot a Pence Department " What the Senate Says t.> Pennsylvania An Invitation to Revolution OON. By Hendrik van Loon.. IIKNKV FORD'S UTOPIA. Bj K\ mum; ri I K w VSHINGTON TREATY Bs Silas Bent GIVE GERMANY HER COLONIES. B> Philip Snowden TWO i \ pi BLISHED TALES. By Hans Christian Andersen IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter.... CORRESPONDENCE BOOKS: First Glance. By Mai k Van Doren An Early Master. By Talbot Faulkner Hamlin... \ By Robert W India's Struggle. By W Norman Brown G Stanley Hall. Bj >y Grattan Family History. By William Macl ' Drama: Four Notes. By Joseph Wood Krutch INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Hauptmann Declines an Honor Private Bersot's Trousers Pilsudski's Warning old standards of Americanism— Hungary, too, has stabil- ized her currency and gol a fresh si art. Still another task well done under the auspices of the League by an American is the settlement of a million Greek refugees from Asia Minor in the homeland, ably directed by Charles P. Howland of New York. OSWALD GARRISON VII. LARD, i Associate LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor iA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOI1SON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and ■ : to Canada. J"). ISO. and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $G.OO. THE NATION, 20 Vesey Street. New York City. Cable Address : Nation. New York. Chicago Office: SS So. Dearborn Street. British Airent of Subscriptions and Advertising: E. Thurtle, M.P., 36. Temple Fortune Hill, N.W. 11, England. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS drew into the summer with an illuminating credit and debit balance successfully withstood the ultimatums of the lesser Powers which demanded permanent seats on its Council; and al- though Brazil and Spain more or less withdrew from the League in consequence its prestige probably made a net gain. The June session of the Council saw two vast League undertakings brought to an honorable conclusion — the finan- cial reconstruction of Hungary and of Austria. It was nearly four years ago that the League, backed by the great banks of the world, floated a $50,000,000 loan for Austria and put that ruined country in charge of a Dutchman as its High Commissioner. Before the money was made avail- able Austria had to agree to a financial dictatorship com- parable to Mussolini's. The Parliament was, indeed, al- lowed to sit, but not to act. Under this stringent regime Austria has pulled through; she has a stabilized currency and a new hope for the future. That the "sanitation" has been accomplished at the cost of much unemployment and some social reform is true, and Austria's fundamental diffi- culty— that she is today, as a result of the peace treaties and post-war nationalism, a tiny industrial island cut off from her natural markets by high-tariff walls — continues. Hun- gary's problem was perhaps simpler, for she is a self-sup- porting agricultural country. Under her American finan- cial dictator, Jeremiah Smith, Jr., of Boston — who amazed the Hungarians by his characteristic action in refusing any compensation or even decoration for his work, a return to FOR LITTLE NATIONS the League can do much, when their interest coincides with that of the great financial and political powers of the world, and against their threats its defenses stand firm. But when a Great Power defies its principles and the world's peace, it yields with bowed head. In all its mixed history there is hardly a more pusil- lanimous act than the approval by its Mandates Commis- sion of French misrule in Syria. We cannot too often re- quote the pious phrase with which the League Covenant introduces the mandate system: To peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world [it says] there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant. The "tutelage" of these peoples is to be "intrusted" to "advanced peoples," and on that theory France holds Syria. That the origin of its claim lies in the secret war-time treaties the League does not recognize. To what extent does it live up to its high words? IN SYRIA, NOT A BIT. The Syrians have been fighting for their country's independence; and France, in the name of the League's "sacred trust of civilization," has slaughtered men, women, and children by the thousand, using for the purpose hired butchers from Turkey and virtual slaves, colored conscripts from her other colonies, raining death from the air upon defenseless villages, bom- barding on short notice residence quarters of the capital, Damascus, and generally acting as European peoples do when their darker-skinned subjects demand self-govern- ment. So lawless have the French been that even the Con- sular Corps was moved to violate its usual diplomatic reserve and to declare: Without any warning they [the French] subjected the city to a prolonged and widespread bombardment such as ordinarily only fortified cities must suffer. The Consular Corps . . . dares to express the hope that such a bombard- ment may be avoided and that should repression become necessary it be in accordance with the methods commonly used in case of disorders in cities, methods calculated to punish the guilty without striking the innocent, especially women and children. The protest has remained without effect. Recent dispatches report continued bombardments and more Schrecklichkeit. And when these stories of murder and rapine came before the League's Permanent Mandates Commission it listened to the French excuses and gave them its blessing. When a Syrian arose to protest, the League's private detectives sat him down again. "Sacred trust of civilization'* indeed!

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48 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3185 ONE MIGHT THINK that France had troubles enough at home without squandering millions on these sacred trusts of civilization in the Orient. The franc continues to sink; and Parliament, while it has voted semi-dictatorial powers to the new Briand-Caillaux Government, has not conferred upon these wizards of politics any new magic with which to stop the financial debacle. The advances to the Government by the Bank of France continue; Cail- laux seems to plan to use its gold reserves as a dam against the tide; but without more stringent economies and more biting taxes than any politician is likely to dare it seems impossible to arrest the falling franc. Like the old paper mark, it is slipping out of existence; but what kind of Dawes Plan can be established to safeguard a new gold unit? When the governor of the American Federal Re- serve System and the governor of the Bank of England spend their vacation in the same French seaside town one suspects that a new form of international financial super- government is in gestation; but it will be a harsh blow to proud France if she has to tread the pathway worn by Austria, Hungary, and Germany. The spirit of war days gleamed again when 20,000 cripples paraded her streets to protest against the American debt settlement, but whatever one miy think of the Mellon-Berenger debt set- tlement it is but a drop in the bucket of France's financial troubles. MUSSOLINI HAS OUT-BONAPARTED Napoleon so consistently that his name should supplant the Frenchman's in all future histories as the symbol of one- man power. He abolished the anti-Fascist press; then he abolished the eight-hour day; then he limited the Fascist press to six pages an issue, cutting to the bone all foreign, sporting, art, and literary news; then he made his cowering editors print three cheers for his journalistic wisdom. Now he has decided to suspend "indefinitely" all provincial and municipal elections. This last decree is scarcely necessary, but it will save the local Fascisti some bother. Since the beginning of the Fascist castor-oil crusade there have been no genuine elections in Italy. The new measure will simply confirm the dependence of local officials upon the central Fascist authority in Rome. TO THE PREPARATORY DISARMAMENT CONFER- ENCE which has just concluded its weighty deliber- ations at Geneva we are indebted for an enrichment of our vocabulary. Our dictionary tells us that "global" means world-wide, but the naval experts called together by the League of Nations have squeezed it into a narrower bed. To them it means at most nation-wide. Led by the French and Italians, they have decided that comparisons of navies for disarmament purposes shall be by their "global," or total, tonnage. To this the United States and Great Britain objected, thanks to those researches in metals lighter than steel which Mr. Bent describes elsewhere in this issue; they would have preferred to compare tonnage by classes of ships, and they prevailed on the Argentinian and Chilean delegates to join them in this minority report. Japan. although she voted with the majoi ity, announces gravely that she has no objection to comparison by classes: for Japan, joyful at the deadweight-tonnage joker in the Wash- ington Treaty, has also made her experiments with light metals. Obviously France and Italy, who expect to fight their next war from the air and undersea, wish to put most of their naval tonnage into submarines, and for that rea- son insisted on the "global" clause. Washington assures us cheerfully that it doesn't much matter, because this is but a preliminary conference, so that its reports are not binding. But now that we know that none of the prin- cipal naval Powers is observing the spirit — or the osten- sible spirit — of the Washington Treaty, none of us can hope for much from Geneva. WU PEI-FU and Chang Tso-lin, the two great warlords of China who were so long enemies, have ridden in triumph through Peking streets carpeted with golden sands; they have shaken hands and sworn eternal brotherhood. But they have not been able to agree on any division of the spoils. Dr. W\ W. Yen, Wu Pei-fu's man, served a month as Premier without a Cabinet (the gentlemen he named prudently remained in distant cities) and then resigned; the cables have not reported his successor. Meanwhile the National Army which in March abandoned Peking to Wu or Chang — whichever could get there first — has reformed itself behind the Nankow Pass and is spreading down into what was once known as the model province of Shansi. Shansi's "model governor," Yen Shi-shan, is the only tuchun in China who has held office since the Revolution of 1911, but he acquired military ambitions last year and turned his mint into an armory ; now China's last peaceful province is sinking into the quagmire of militarism. The most hope- ful spot in China is still the radical province of Kwangtung (Canton) in the South, and the Nationalist Party which centers about it. Canton is having its usual share of ex- citement. General Chiang Kai-shek has driven out some of his too obstreperous Russian advisers; the strike pickets violently closed the old and excellent Canton Hospital ; there has been fighting to the north, in Hunan; and there have been occasional shooting affairs with the British launches that smuggle passengers to the boycotted British boats. But Canton has a government, and a passionate nationalist spirit that radiates over all China. THE STATE OF LOUISIANA has never been known as the abode of sanctimonious reform. It has allowed its citizens to think and largely to behave about as they pleased, and has upheld a policy of private ownership and control of morals and beliefs. But no State is safe, it ap- pears, when rural virtue and piety organize for an attack. Two bills were introduced in the last legislature. One made il a misdemeanor to teach "the theory of evolution or any theory pretending to trace the descent of man from a higher or lower order of life." The second bill was more sweep- ing; it prohibited the teaching of "any theory or doctrine subversive to the creed or belief of any pupil." The press opposed the bills, the president of the State University spoke against them, people treated them as a joke. They were finally defeated, but they were no joke. The Bible Crusad- ers and other fundamentalist reformers came down from the northern hills and established an active lobby; their ad- herents in both House and Senate did not hesitate to threaten the defeat of salary bills affecting politicians great and small if their anti-evolution bills were rejected. Both ! ills were passed by the House. Both bills were rejected, each by exactly two votes, in the Senate. The Bible Cru- s aders and their representatives have presumably retired to the hills defeated but not, we fear, disheartened, and I ouisiana's freedom is safe — until the next session of the legislature.

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July 21, 1926] The Nation 49 CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, was recently the scene of a battle of words, eggs, vegetables, and ideals in which a number of town hooligans undertook to break up a conference of the Fellowship of Youth for Peace. The students who were attacked on their way home, instead of resisting the attack, fraternized with their enemies, ex- plained their ideals, and within twenty-four hours pacifists and hundred-percenters were dancing together. So the Fel- lowship of Youth for Peace gave an effective demonstration of its principles. In spite of a hostile mass meeting which denounced the F. Y. P. the American Legion repudiated the violence of the hooligans, and even the Boston papers were not altogether cordial to the jingoes who used the name of the Massachusetts Public Interest League to attack the speakers. The hero of the fracas was the Rev. Smith Dexter, Episcopal clergyman, who opened his church to the conference after the Unitarian church had refused. His courageous stand was worthy of the traditions of old Concord. THE SUPER-PATRIOTS are particularly unfortunate in the kind of men who represent them before the public. One of the speakers who attacked the Fellowship of Youth for Peace at Concord was Fred Marvin of the New York Commercial. Mr. Marvin has an infinite capacity for becom- ing alarmed. His chief claim to distinction is that he traced the attack on Harry Daugherty to Moscow. His Concord speech led even the reporter of the conservative Boston Herald to comment: He aroused some surprise when he declared that the Fellowship was a lineal descendant of the secret order called the Illuminati which was founded in Austria 150 years ago for the purpose of overthrowing all government and religion. . . . The six tenets of the Illuminati included the destruction of all government, of all inheritance laws, of religion and the home. . . . Although Mr. Marvin was repeatedly warned by Judge Keyes [the chairman] that his allotted time had expired, he proceeded with an attack on the New Masses, a radical pub- lication, from which he read a questionable joke. He con- cluded with a eulogy of his mother. WE HAIL THE BATHING SUIT as the summer cos- tume of the future. It never bags at the knees and rarely shines on the seat. It is reasonably cheap, can be rolled in a small bundle, and is easily washed. It reveals feminine softness and manly muscle. It puts the daughter of a subway motorman on the same sartorial plane as the daughter of a Pennsylvania politician. We know that Ber- nard Shaw dressed his Utopian ancients in "Back to Methu- selah" in amorphous, sack-like things, but he was wrong. The human form was never made to be hidden or boiled. We are not sure that it was made for clothes at all — in the summer-time. Certainly it was not made for the furnace- model sack-suits affected by our conventional males. Why Not a Peace Department? OUR federal, State, and city governments spend many million dollars every year to prevent fire, crime, and disease. Everybody accepts this preventive policy as sound common sense. Now comes Kirby Page, effective peace pamphleteer, with the question: Why not apply this notion of governmental prevention to war? Why should government be captured by the militarists? Why not a Peace Department alongside the War Department? Propaganda has become one of the chief functions of our government departments. Mellon preaches against large taxes; Kellogg preaches on the dangers of Soviet recognition; Hoover preaches on standardization; all the generals preach on preparedness; the White House spokes- man preaches on "economy." This national homiletical i horns is nearly always special pleading of the rankest sort. It shouts invest ing-class economic creeds and old-party nostrums. Done in the name of community welfare, it is no more entitled to the public frank than, let us say, the preaching of Aimee Semple McPherson. If we must con- tinue to pay for the preaching of generals to make us more military we might as well pay some one to make us more pacific. Why not have a Peace Department to preach peace at us? Mr. Page has put down in businesslike figures a plan for spending $100,000,000 a year (less than the annual pay roll alone of another army or navy) for a national Peace Department. His results are rather astonishing. For one- third of the cost of the battleship Colorado we could have a Federal Department of Peace with a cabinet secretary, as- sistants, clerks, and stenographers; ten regional secretaries at $6,000 salaries; forty foreign offices with five foreign secretaries each and liberal allowances for running ex- penses. For thirteen million more there would be peace publications galore, an International Peace Review with a circulation of a million, twelve million peace pamphlets, five million dollars' worth of posters, twenty peace films a year, and peace libraries distributing a million books a year. Add five million for an International University; then forty million for 10,000 American students abroad and 10,000 foreign students coming to America at $2,000 a year each. Take a million for an annual Peace Day, a few millions more for exchange professors and "Citizens' International Friendship Camps," and there are still five of the hundred millions left for disaster relief funds and international health service. Every item of this Peace Department program offers a peace counterpart to some military institution which is considered necessary. An International University is to stand over against West Point and Annapolis ; world friend- ship cruises would be designed to offset the flourishing of our navy in the Pacific; peace monuments would compete with our war-memorial atrocities. Our military leaders have been acting on the assumption that if they talk mili- tary ideas long enough and lustily enough the new gen- eration will succumb to the volume and repetition. They ore quite right; so is Mr. Page. Official propaganda may be the best thing with which to kill official propaganda. When M.'. Page's Peace Department is established we would like to be assigned the task of spending the five mil- lion a year on posters. We recall those posters in front of our federal buildings which picture trim young gentlemen writing letters under palm trees, the caption being, "Where Will You Spend the Winter? Join the Marines and See the World." Our posters would be more realistic. We would have pictures of marines cleaning up a native village in Haiti with rifle fire or breaking a strike of Chinese stu- dents in Shanghai, and perhaps a marine peeling potatoes. Underneath there would be statistics of the proportion of marines who never reenlist. Then if some unemployed youngster joined the marines he would know what he was getting into.

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50 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3185 What the Senate Says to Pennsylvania $2,793,587.02 is the latest total announced for the ex- penditures in the Republican primary election in Penn- sylvania. Governor Pinchot and his friends spent $188,- 866.23; Mr. Vare and his friends $800,114.60; and the Pep- per-Mellon gang spent $1,804,983.25. Is the country satisfied to let its elections thus become an auction game for millionaires? Are the people of Penn-. sylvania hopelessly "corrupt and contented"? Do the mem- bers of the United States Senate feel any responsibility to speak out against this degradation of their body? The Nation, following its publication last week of Senator Nor- ris's appeal to his fellow-Republicans in Pennsylvania to deanse their party by this year voting Democratic, tele- graphed every Republican in the United States Senate, stat- ing Senator Norris's position and asking their views. The answers are illuminating. One bit of history. Six years ago Truman H. Newberry defeated Henry Ford for the Republican nomination for United States Senator from Michigan. It was charged and proved that what was then regarded as the colossal sum of $195,000 had b.en Lpent in Senator Newberry's behalf in the primary. Senator Newberry and his associates were accordingly indicted under the federal Corrupt Practices Act, and convicted. The Supreme Court, however, held that Congress had no power to legislate regarding the primaries, which are the affair of the States, and that the act was therefore unconstitutional. On that technical basis Sen- ator Newberry escaped jail. The question came to the Senate: Should it, being, according to the Constitution, "the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members," admit Senator Newberry? The result was long in doubt. Senator Newberry was finally admitted by a vote of 46 to 41, upon a compromise resolution, devised by Senator Willis of Ohio, which concluded : Whether the amount expended in this primary was $U5,000 as was fully reported and openly acknowledged, or whether there was some few thousand dollars in excess, the amount expended was in either case too large, much larger than ought to have been expended. The expenditure of such excessive sums in behalf of a candidate, either with or without his knowledge and consent, being contrary to sound public policy, harmful to the honor and dignity of the Sen- ate, and dangerous to the perpetuity of a free government, such excessive expenditures are hereby severely condemned and disapproved. The only Republicans to vote against that resolution voted to unseat Newberry. They were Senators Borah, Capper, Wesley Jones, Kenyon, Ladd, La Follette, Norbeck, Norris, and Sutherland, and of that honorable list not one has since been defeated at the polls. Two have been raised to federal judgeships; two have died; the other five still sit. Of the forty-six who voted to seat Newberry seven have died, eight have been defeated in primary elections, and nine at the regular November elections. There is ground for renewed faith in the American people in those facts. And now we come back to 1926 and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has twice as many •■ oters as Michigan, but nearly fifteen times as much gold was poured out to buy the nomination there as led the Senate in 1922 to condemn the Michigan outlays. In all the sordid history of political corruption there is nothing to compare with Pennsylvania's colossal expenditures. It is nonsense to contend with Sen- ator Reed and Mr. Mellon that this money was spent in honest propaganda; we have had honest propaganda in other States. Postage has not gone up; the cost of print- ing has not materially changed; but the Republican leaders of Pennsylvania spent millions where two hundred thou- sand had seemed high. As Senator Norris points out, there is no time to be wasted. Senator Vare may, if elected, be unseated by the Senate — although the record in the Newberry case is not encouraging; but if he is unseated it is probable that the Mellon henchman who was Pepper's running-mate in the primary will be the Governor to name Vare's successor. And what does the cause of honest government gain if Vare is replaced by a tool of the men who spent $1,804,983.25? If a United States Senator cares about honest government in Pennsylvania and the nation, the time to speak his mind is now. Robert M. La Follette, Jr., in his reply to The Nation's poll of Senators, spoke clearly: The disclosures of tremendous sums of money used in the Pennsylvania primary in an effort to debauch the elec- torate have staggered the country. Unless the citizens of Pennsylvania take drastic action the corruption in that State will destroy representative government within that commonwealth. Every citizen in that State who holds dear the fundamental theories upon which our government was founded has an opportunity to register his protest against existing political corruption in Pennsylvania by voting for William B. Wilson, Democratic nominee for the United States Senate. Not another Republican Senator could be found to set principle so clearly above party. Senators Frazier and Nye of North Dakota had left Washington, and telegrams sent to them in the West were returned undelivered. Twenty- one others could not be found in the closing days of the session. Senators Greene and McKinley were reported ill. Senators Borah, Butler, Ernst, Gillette, Hiram Johnson, and David Reed were interviewed, but declined to make any comment for publication. (Senator Reed may have been appalled by the criticism of his earlier defense of the pri- mary expenditures.) Senator McNary said he had been too busy with farm relief to consider the matter, and Sen- ator Cameron solemnly asserted that he had "had no time to give the subject thought." It was Senator Cameron who filibustered to death, in the last hours of the Senate, the La Follette and Neely resolutions limiting campaign expendi- tures! Following that successful action to stave off dis- cussion of Pennsylvania corruption, it may be added, Sen- ators Butler, Fess, Wadsworth, and Watson stepped for- ward and publicly congratulated the Arizonan. Senators Goff, Willis, Harreld, Fess, and Couzens felt that it would be "unethical" for them to comment upon the matter at this time — some of them because the Senate might later be called upon to act as judge. Senator Willis's remarks de- mand quotation : I myself am a candidate for reelection to the Senate this year. I think, therefore, that it would be indelicate and improper for me to discuss candidates and conditions in other States with which I am not particularly acquainted.

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July 21, 1926] The Nation This from the author of the resolution that so eclectically seated and condemned Newberry ! Five of the Republicans dared, in more or less precis.' terms, to condemn Vare without indorsing Wilson. Sen- Howell of Nebraska said that "The situation pre- sented to the voters of Pennsylvania demands their atten- tion and they should act in no unmistakable manner." Sen- ator Cummins, just defeated by Mr. Brookhart in Iowa, cryptically remarked: "I am a Republican but I have not always voted for Republicans." Senator Norbeck first thought he had nothing to say for publication, then added: "You know, 1 voted against Newberry." His fellow-Senator from South Dakota, W. H. McMaster, said: There are no grounds for the assumption that the Demo- crats will spend money less lavishly in the coming election in Pennsylvania than the Vare combination. The election of an independent candidate would have a wholesome influ- ence in Pennsylvania politics. Arthur Capper of Kansas also suggested a new candidate: In view of the disclosures in connection with the recent Senatorial primary in Pennsylvania [he said] it seems to me that the Republicans of the State owe it to the party and to the State to present a new candidate for the United States Senate, who shall be nominated in such a manner as to represent the honest sentiments of the rank and file of the party and to leave no possibility of interest-control or corruption in his selection. A few of the standpat Senators were as frank. Sen- ator Moses of New Hampshire ducked the issue with the remark "Why should I tell the voters of Pennsylvania what to do? I have troubles enough in my own State," bu; ator Smoot of Utah said flatly "If I were a voter in Penn- sylvania 1 would not vote for Wilson." Senator Wadsworth's secretary predicted that he would say "A Republican is a Republican; to the devil with the Democrats," but the New- York Senator, informed by telegraph of this prediction, replied "The people of Pennsylvania are competent to man- age their own affairs without advice from me"; Senator Keyes of New Hampshire sang the same song. Senator Shortridge of California asked "Are the Democrats any better?" and added boldly "No corruption has been proved against the Republicans." Senator Edge (New Jersey) said: The Republicans of Pennsylvania have nominated Congressman Vare for United States Senator and should and will elect him. While I am in favor of consistently limiting primary as well as election expenses the utter r;diculousness of permitting Nevada $10,000 with a popu- lation of 77,000, and Pennsylvania, with a population of 9,000,000, $25,000, as proposed, is inconsistent and dis- criminatory. Senator Pepper himself in a letter too long to quote ex- pressed his hope that the expressions of opinion, "even when emanating from Senators who know little or nothing about the State [Pennsylvania], will be considered with respect by our electorate," but he doubted if they would "prove helpful." Unlike the Senators who avoided the issue because it might be "unethical" for them now to express an opinion on a question upon which they might later have to vote, Senator Pepper suggested that since he would "not be a member of the Senate when and if [the seating of Mr. Vare] comes up for consideration," he ought not to be included in our poll! Senator Curtis, the Republican floor leader, when asked if he would advise Pennsylvania Republicans to vote for a Democrat, replied with emphasis "That is a foolish ques- tion"; and "Jim" Watson of Indiana said, characteristically, "I don't advise folks to vote for Democrats. 1 never have yet, and I shan't begin to now." And that is how the Republican Senators, faced with million-dollar primary expenditures, stand. An Invitation to Revolution THE British coal-owners seem determined to have their pound of flesh. They are seeking to defeat the miners on all three issues of the miners' strike — to reduce wages, to lengthen hours, and not to reorganize the industry. Since the end of the general strike it has been evident that the miners must lose on at least one of these issues. But which loss will they accept with the least disturbance? Baldwin decided that the eight-hour day was the least bitter pill he could ask the miners to swallow. Amid scenes of wild disorder a bill was passed by the Commons and Lords allowing the mine-owners to lengthen the working day from seven to eight hours. Most of the owners posted notices inviting the miners back to work at the old scale of wages for the lengthened day. But the workers did not come; for laws do not dig coal. The miners are being denounced as stubborn for re- fusing to yield temporarily in order to save a bankrupt industry, but if they yield on hours there is no guaranty against defeat on wages and reorganization also. The mine-owners may cut wages after a return to work and they can doubtless stave off any reorganization of the in- dusti'y for many years. The miners have just one weapon, the strike, and when they lay that weapon down the most stubborn and stupid employers in Great Britain may take advantage of their disarmament. The tragedy of the situation is that the strike is taking the life-blood of an already anemic industry; the miners are doomed to defeat no matter what the official settlement may be. Their one hope is that they can compel sufficient reorganization of the industry to recoup their temporary losses. The hope of such gains from new efficiency is slight. The Baldwin Government has proposed a bill for the amalgamation of some collieries, but it is far from the nationalization which the coal industry needs. What shall a minority group do when it is suffering from almost intolerable conditions and the rest of society refuses to heed its logical demand for change? The answer made by the Trades Union Council in the general strike was: Make it so uncomfortable for the rest of society that they will be forced to listen to the minority's case. But what if society still refuses to give due weight to the miners' case after several coal commissions have reported and after a general strike as well? The British Labor moderates reply: Elect a Labor Parliament. But a certain impatience with the slowness of democratic machinery is spreading rapidly; Labor does not want revolution, but it may be goaded into a revolutionary position by the stu- pidity of the opposition. It is difficult to see how the mod- erate leaders of British labor can prevent a sharp swing to the Left. There was something portentous in the scene in the House of Lords when the Labor members from the Commons shouted "murderers" at those very well-fed gentlemen who had never tried to support a family on $10 a week.

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52 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3185 ^

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July 21, 1926] The Nation 53 Henry Ford's Utopia By STUAIIT CHASE IT is impossible to overrate the importance of Henry Ford, of his tangible achievement and his industria. philosophy. The man who can persuade oilier men to do the things which he records in his textbook of life, "Today and Tomorrow";* who can turn tradition upside down and from the inverted structure wring thousands of horse- power, mi!lions of tons, and tens of millions of dollars; who trong enough to tell bankers that they are a set of swindlers, and brokers that their occupation is vicious non- ; and who has the unheard-of audacity to say that his buildings and machines I billion dollars' worth - belong to the public who paid for them, and that his trustee- ship is only valid so long as he makes a sound and useful product on the principle of the highest possible wage and the lowest possible price — when this man speaks, if we are more than the shallowest of moonbeam-chasers, it is our duty to listen to him. (.Incidentally, he is today by all odds the most popular writer in Soviet Russia.) What he has to say, whether we like it or not, is influencing our common life in America to a profound degree, and is destined to influence it more and more as the years go by. And the leaven is working around the margins of the Seven Seas. For Ford is the first great industrialist who has followed the deliberate policy of making the machine serve man, instead of man machine. That this policy has led inevita- bly to an open rupture with the whole intrenched frame- work of capitalism, profit-taking, and price-economics dis- turbs him not in the least. He welcomes the battle, and delivers another broadside at the "scavengers of finance." If he were shooting spitballs out of a faculty-club win- dow, or even out of union headquarters, his assault might be amusing enough, but we sober citizens would regard it as impractical and unimportant. Sober citizens of the Right and sober citizens of the Left would so regard it — apple- sauce! But it is the richest man the world has ever seen w7ho is denting plug hats, and what is ten times more im- portant, he has an organization behind him that works such miracles as leave us gaping like village idiots — miracles in power-generating; in revising the whole methodology of lumbering; in showing railroad men how to run railroads; in by-product reclamation; in keeping inventories on the move and never frozen in storehouses; in eliminating the bulk of bookkeeping; in showing farmers how to farm and how to coordinate farming and manufacturing; in making transportation per unit of output ever shorter, lighter, less bulky; in never giving a man a job a machine can do; in realizing — and acting thereon — that waste-elimination means prevention, not recovery — preplanning, not salvaging the breakage; in utilizing waterways as no industry before has ever had the intelligence to utilize them; in taking pride in the fact that "we have no trade secrets"; in build- ing hospitals around a standard room instead of jamming rooms into a predetermined wall space; in keeping every square inch of his immense holdings spotlessly clean, sani- tary, and, so far as may be, comfortable for the human beings which must inhabit them. "One cannot hope to live on a community but in a com- • "Today and Tomorrow," by Henry Ford. Doubleday, Page and Company. munity. . . . We have never put in a plant without raising purchasing power ;:iul standards of living." When, : ccord- the behest of supply and demand, local tradesmen and landlords seek to cash in on Ford's high wages, the company proceeds to knock the bottom out of their laudable schemes and to insure higher living standards by opening stores or building houses itself. Three-quarters of the book is factual description of what Ford has done, what changes he has wrought in the crust of this planet. There they stand for anybody to see — and I suspect no engineer can see those new Fordson tur- bines without weeping for joy. The other quarter is prophecy, statement of policy, and assorted general philoso- phy. The latter is mostly pretty terrible and need not detain the careful reader. The heart of the matter is policy, the new industrial synthesis, the new way of organizing economic life, which Ford earnestly and impressively advo- cates, and to which these stupefying concrete achievements in horse-power, steel, and high living-standards bear wit- ness. Upwards of three million human beings, and three hundred times as many dollars, bear witness. The policy is this: "The face of business is bowed toward the stockholder and not toward the consumer, and this means the denial of the primary purpose of industry." "Money men" make dividends, but engineers make goods. Business has fallen into the hands of money men, and they are doing their best to ruin it socially and financially. They make often a dubious product, and their costs are prohibi- tively high. "The profit motive, although it is supposed to be hard-headed and practical, is really not practical at all, because it has as its objectives the increasing of prices to the consumer and the decreasing of wages, and therefore it constantly narrows its markets, and eventually strangles itself." Hence business depressions. All this is wasteful ; these muddle-headed bankers must give way to captains of industry, engineer-minded — such, for instance, as Mr. Henry Ford. They will run industry as it ought to be run, without waste, without speeding up, without adulteration, without "illth," and with the satisfaction of the public as the sole criterion of their stewardship. "A machine does not belong to the man who buys it or who operates it, but to the public. We do not regard the public's money returned to the business (in the form of profits) as an investment on which interest should be charged. That money is the public's money, and the public, having confidence enough in our product to pay the money to us, is entitled to benefit by its confidence. We have no right to charge the public interest on its own money." (If the doctrine of private property ever received a more re- sounding wallop than this, I never heard it.) In other words, profit is not to be abolished, but its function is nar- rowed to financing plant improvements for the elimination of more waste, for higher wages and lower prices. Profit becomes the price paid for necessary improvements in keeping up with the technical arts. Ultimately all goes back to the consumer in the form of lower prices. And to insure the balanced working of the system, wages must always be a jump ahead of prices in order to liberate sufficient pur-

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54 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3185 chasing power to keep the industrial structure operating at capacity. This is what Ford calls the "wage motive," which must supersede the old private-profit motive. "Is the manufacturer going to create a thing that will help people, or only something to sell to people?" If the former, he belongs with the true captains; if the latter, he is proscribed. There is no place in Ford's Utopia for the higher salesmanship. Money returns to its function as a medium of exchange and ceases to blind men's vision to underlying physical realities. There is no virtue in money as such. Unemployment, except for necessary shifts from one activity to another, becomes unthinkable, as do all attempts at restriction of output by either management or worker. Ford hates the "make-work" theory as he hates the investment banker. "All our efforts to reduce the num- ber of men on a single job have resulted in more jobs for more men." With the need of America for unlimited quan- tities of consumable goods, and with unlimited natural re- sources with which to supply those goods, there are always more jobs than there are men to fill them — granted the engineer-manufacturer in control. Henry Ford is very specific as to the technique of man- aging men under this dispensation. It is the technique of his own company. Perhaps 5 per cent of employees are skilled craftsmen — designing, planning, blue-printing, tool- making, repairing, inspecting. The 95 per cent are "taught in a day" the simple duties and motions which operate the machines and the processes already planned. Tools arc de- livered waist high to obviate the labor of stooping over to pick them up. Any worker who shows the ability will readily be taken into the planning division. As for monotony, "we find that many workers prefer simple auto- matic tasks," which, combined with short hours, and plenty of time for leisure and the cultivation of hobbies outside the shop, reduces the danger to the vanishing-point. This is particularly noticeable in the decentralization experiment- stations along the River Rouge, where farmers and farm women put in their spare time making valves, taps, and generator cut-outs. . . . However wild, improbable, or treas mable the theory laid down, it is invariably supported with the fait accompli. It is working; nay, it is working well. Come, you scoffers, and see it work ! And there we are. The machine brought to heel at last, but run by engineers subject only to referendum of the public as reflected in its buying power. The govern- ment is invited to keep out and stay out, along with bank- ers, trade unions, reformers, charitable undertakings of all kinds, and, perhaps not so surprisingly after all, "experts." Our author hates experts and outside efficiency men of all kinds. He apparently works on trial and error within his own organization. This control, he thinks, should embrace not only manufacturing proper but agriculture as well. Farming must be coordinated, its units greatly enlarged, and locked with manufacturing, as in the River Rouge plants. One gathers that most public-service industries — gas, water, power generation, local transportation — must be taken from the government and put under the new con- trol. As why should they not, if public service be the sole motive of the controllers? The industrial Utopia of the modern Croesus is before us. We first have to ask whether it is a serious one, or whether it constitutes an unconscious rationalization on the author's part to defend his billion, and to convince himself and us that the services he has rendered warrant the title- deeds which still stand in his name — however much thev may in theory "belong to the public." The cohorts of Rotary make obeisance before Service largely on such grounds. How does Ford differ from them, if at all? I think there is an important difference. Few Rotarians are paying a minimum of $6 a day for their common labor voluntarily, few reduce prices as Ford has done, few labor so single-heartedly in conforming themselves to sound and useful products, and none has ever dreamed of such appli- cations of applied technology. This man, in my opinion, is not sublimating greed, despite the size of his fortune. The bulk of his profit has gone back into plant and not into personal swank. He means what he says, and his amazing organization is proof of it. Our next and final question drives deeper. Granted the policy has worked for Ford, and that the American people have won great benefits therefrom, is it applicable to Amer- ica— to Western civilization if you please — as a whole? Can we resign ourselves without further scrutiny to the stewardship of the engineer-business man? Is this indeed, as Mr. Filene has dared to hope, the Way Out? This is a question not lightly to be answered. Furthermore, while we are conning it, it may be answered for us. But I for one would be profoundly hesitant of giving it an unreserved affirmative. To begin with, Ford was himself the product of circumstances over which he had little control. The times demanded a cheap and dependable motor car. He hap- pened to be the man that first met that demand — and was raised to unlimited power on the strength of it. If it had not been Fnr(j it would have been somebody else — with the chances, to be sure, in favor of a greedier man. Old-line businesses, like shoes and soap and coal, have had, and will have, no such opportunity thrust into their hands. No such opportunity will probably come again until somebody makes a cheap and foolproof airplane. To generalize too broadly from a special case is always dangerous. And other questions come on the run. What earnest have we thai the Ford tradition will animate all our engi- neer overlords after we have meekly handed over the earth to them? What earnest have we that Edsel will carry on; that inheritance will work any better here than it has worked with Romanoffs and Hapsburgs? What is the true danger of monotony implicit in the plan? Ford's experi- ence on this point is conflicting and far from conclusive. What are the psychological imperatives for turning the profit motive upside down ; why should public service take the place of selfishness in the general run of large manufac- turers, almost overnight? Ford, due to the fortunate cir- cumstances recited above, was made rich enough to afford the public-service point of view. Can we put all our cap- tains through the same training? Finally, and most important of all, I find nothing in his book or in his Utopia which contemplates any industrial general staff for coordinating national requirements with production. That vital necessity remains in the hands of free competition. A thousand Fords might make untold savings within their own organizations, but, lacking any community synthesis, they might well waste in the aggre- gate— due to their wars and reprisals — more than they saved. Purchasing power forms no very effective check against competitive waste, particularly when the competi- tors are giant vertical organizations. Coal and oil and lumber and minerals — aye, and man-power — may go faster down this chute than they do even under the prevailing rules of the game. If the captains can agree not to step on each other's toes, and can set up, furthermore, a coordi- •

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July 21, 1926] The Nation 55 nating overhead machinery, there might be something in it. But this contingency Ford never mentions, and 1 Buspect would refuse to indorse. He has the usual mystical faith in "my business." He has never placed his business, with all its implications, in the whole economic framework of the nation. 1 might be willing to vote for Ford as industrial Czar of America during good behavior; but his Utopia of com- petitive giants Hares, dims, and turns to ashes before my eyes. Which is not saying that my children will not live under it. Evading the Washington Treaty By SILAS BENT Treaty for the limitation of armament adopted al Washington in 1921 was heralded as putting an end to naval competition among the Great Towers. It did no such thing. Competition continues, with only a change o( direction. The treaty merely limits tonnage, ami to evade it metals lighter than steel are being used in the naval craft of the United States, Greal Britain, am! Japan. The covenant became effective August 17, 192:!; but ever. before that time the chief signatories, which had volun- tarily met to frame it, had set about finding ways of wrig- gling out from under its provisions. The United States Navy, for example, has just let a contract to the Cramps for the construction of a cruiser, tht Salt Lake City. The treaty limited cruisers to a weight of not more than 10,000 tons; and this craft is no heavier. But consider, if you will, its dimensions. It will have a length over all of 585 feet 8 inches. We have four battleships of the first line not so long as that, although they have greater draft and beam. These are the Arkansas, 562 feet over all, built in 1912; the Nevada, 58:1 feet, built in 1916; the New York, 573 feet, dating from 1914; and th • Utah, 521 feet, from 1911. The answer is that this giant cruiser is not built of steel. A companion cruiser, the Pen- sacola, about to be constructed at the New York Navy Yard. promises to be even bigger and better. And in future struction, as the navy's research unit proceeds with its experiments in compounds of aluminum and duralumin, the use of lighter metals will be extended. The goal is to get warcraft which, weighing but two-thirds as much as if built throughout of steel, can be proportionately larger and more powerful. Such floating fighters, although within the precise wording of the treaty, will, in fact, give the lie to those terms. Hailed as a magnificent achievement in the cause of world peace, the treaty proves to have been but another international pleasantry. The joker is that naval v i are not limited as to size, but only as to deadweight (and. in some cases, in number). A post-treaty battleship may not weigh more than 35,000 tons; but when its interior struc- ture is of lighter metals, a much more formidable man- slayer becomes possible. Whether the convention was framed with a tongue in the diplomatic cheek I cannot say. But it seems unlikely that all the naval experts who fore- gathered in the Pan-American Building while the treaty was being drawn could have been blind to the possibilities latent in that joker. Certainly many of us who watched the pro- ceedings saw well enough that not peace, but temporary governmental economy in a world shattered by war, was the motive of the conference. The United States Navy Department has been experi- menting for years with light-metal compounds, and it is ■ ret in Washington or in London, whence I recently returned, that Great Britain and Japan have been doing the same thing. The results of these experiments are "military secrets." It is a fact, however, that, although the task of research has been by no means concluded, our own navy has found a light-weight metal compound suitable for battleships which is less subject to corrosion than steel, and recommends itself as an economy in that way aside from its weight saving qualities. Reducing weight also makes possible a higher freeboard, and so makes possible greater speed. Destroyers, for instance, have a rating of thirty-five knots. but they can make no such rate in heavy seas. The figure is an ideal maximum. Constructed within the treaty limi- tations, but of lighter metals, they may overcome the speed handicap to a great extent. (ireater size, even without increase in weight, requires more powerful engines. Thus another innovation for post- treaty craft is under consideration by the United States Navy : the utilization of higher steam pressure. The pres- sure now accepted as standard is 300 pounds; the pressure sought by our naval engineers is 700 pounds, which is with- out precedent in naval construction. Such craft would be driven by geared turbines, and the contemplated higher ure means, when achieved, wholly new designs of boil- ers, packing glands, and other parts. The ostensibly pacific gesture at the Pan-American Building means, therefore, not only a revolution in the structure of sea warriors but a revolution in their motive power. It means, possibly, greater manslaughter. The United States Navy, so steel experts say, has exercised an influence on the development of the industry in this coun- try out of all proportion to the metal it has used. The construction of steel ships began in 1889, and since then the navy has used somewhat more than two billion tons of steel and iron — mostly steel — or about one-fourth of 1 per cent of the enormous output. If that has been true of steel, we may seek to comfort ourselves with the ironic reflection that a corresponding influence in the improvement of tur- bines and light metals will compensate for the potential greater manslaughter at sea. For men of war which must take the first line of battle nothing has been found to replace steel as an armored sheathing. They must be built to withstand a gunfire capable of penetrating eighteen inches of steel before the shell explodes. They must have heavy protective decks and be secure against under-water projectiles. For these pur- poses steel must still be used. But all the furniture, all the watertight inner compartments, all the cross-bracing is of metal too; and by the use of the new compound enor- mous economies in weight can be effected. And cruisers,

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56 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3185 which are not meant to take the first line of battle, do not require the heavy steel sheathing of dreadnaughts. The Pensacola and the Salt Lake City will not be expected to withstand a broadside. The Cramps, who are to build the Salt Lake City, will provide engines both for her and for the Pensacola. Their bid was ten million dollars for the whole job, almost a mil- lion lower than any other. The Salt Lake City is to have a speed of at least 32 V2 knots, a beam of 65 feet 2 inches, and a draft of 19 feet 6 inches. Each cruiser will carry a main battery of not less than ten eight-inch guns. It is interesting to note that Congress was persuaded to appro- priate $11,100,000 for each of these ships, as a maximum. Having saved more than a million on the first, with the engines provided for the second, the Navy Department is \ve!l-set for its experiments in light metals to use in the second. That is why we may expect a bigger and better c -aft in the Pensacola. The money is available for more expensive alloys in a brand-new compound, if necessary. Truly, our naval competitors may well sit up and take notice! Not merely greater size but heavier batteries become possible through the use of lighter metals in naval craft. The Washington treaty specifies how many guns ships of each class may carry, but not their caliber nor their range. Our best anti-ai.eraf* gun will shoot five miles vertically. and our naval officers were rather chesty about it until they heard that the British had a new gun, around the construc- tion of which a great deal of mystery was thrown, which would throw a projectile six miles vertically. These are the most powerful of their type so far devised, aid are of five-inch caliber, whereas four inches had been the limit theretofore. It was disquieting news, and the ordnance branch of our navy, we may be sure, is a-tiptoe. About ordnance some secrecy may be maintained, but about the main facts as to the dimensions and type of motive power, in the great navies of the world, there is a general knowledge. Why, then, this secrecy about the use of light metals? So far as I know nothing has ever been printed about it, and I am unable to offer official confirma- tion of the facts I have set down here. Our Navy Depart- ment has made no public statement, and Secretary Wilbur declines to be interviewed. A naval officer, undertaking to explain the general silence, told me this bit of history : "When we went into the World War," he said, "we heard that the German battleships were equipped with more powerful guns than we had, and we worked night and day to bring our ordnance up to that standard. Finally we succeeded. We even built guns a little better than the armament we supposed the enemy to have. But when the German fleet was raised from Scapa Flow we learned that we had been misled as to the power and range of their armament. The guns were no better than those we had when first we heard the rumor. "Now, if it becomes known what metals we are using in our post-treaty ships, and how we are using them, it will stimulate other governments to surpass us if possible." But in view of the excellent system of international espionage which I understand to be maintained, this ex- planation seems to me hardly to hold water. Possibly the truth is that the Great Powers are a little shamefaced at evading the terms of a treaty into which they entered freely and voluntarily, with such grandiloquent mouthing of world peace. Give Germany Her Colonies By PHILIP SNOWDEN JF Germany enters the League of Nations, with a perma- nent seat on the Council, she will be entitled to all the rights of a Great Power. She cannot then be regarded as disqualified from exercising mandatory powers over back- ward areas, such as are enjoyed by other members of the League. The Treaty of Versailles deprived Germany of all her overseas possessions. This was one of the gravest of the many injustices of that treaty, and one which, if left unre- dressed, is bound to lead to serious consequences. There is little danger of another war arising out of conditions in Western Europe. But if the legitimate economic aspira- tions of a great commercial nation like Germany are sup- pressed, and if her trade rivals are permitted to monopolize the wide areas which supply essential raw materials and provide an outlet for surplus population, an economic con- flict will arise which will sooner or later inevitably lead to another war. Such a calamity must be avoided. The Treaty of Locarno was an effort to remove the possibility of war through the conflict of interests and ambitions in Western Europe. The spirit of international amity and conciliation which prompted that treaty must extend its preventive measures to cover the whole field of international relations. That part of the Treaty of Versailles which deprived Germany of all her colonies was not merely a distinct breach of the pledges given by the Allies during the war but it was a deliberate attempt to cripple the economic development of Cermany for the trade advantage of her commercial rivals. President Wilson declared that when peace came to be made he "would eschew anything that might lead the German na- tion to think that he contemplated a peace which would contravene its legitimate economic aspirations." Other Allied statesmen gave utterance to similar intentions. But in the vindictive spirit which dictated the treaty these pledges were forgotten or ignored. To excuse the seizure of the German colonies a widespread propaganda was car- ried on to give the impression that Germany had proved incapable of good colonial government. There was no real foundation for such a charge. It is true that in the early days of German colonization there were incidents which could not be defended. But that can be said with truth of every colonizing Power. After Ger- many had gained experience her colonial government be- came a model for the admiration and emulation of Great Britain. British Foreign office reports published before the war bore testimony to that fact. Mr. Winston Churchill, when Colonial Secretary, sneaking at the Imperial Conference on June 21, 1921, said:

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July 21, 1926] The Nation 57 We have endeavored to equip it [German East Africa] with a government not inferior to the German administra- tion which it has replaced. ... I am afraid for a year or two this territory will compare unfavorably with its p ress and prosperity when it was in the hands of our late opponents. The present Under Secretary for the Colonies said two years later of this territory: It is absolutely incumbent upon us to give that vast territory at least as good and complete an administration as was given by the Germans in that country before the war. This testimony disposes of the war-time propaganda about the unfitness of Germany to administer backward areas. On the ground of fitness it places Germany at least on an equality with Great Britain as a colonizing Power. Two other important facts about German colonial pol- icy may be noted, which were in striking contrast to the colonial policy of France. Germany adopted the policy of the "open door" for the trade of other countries and she did not train the natives for military service. France, in the exercise of her mandate from the League of Nations, and in violation of the spirit and letter of the Covenant, is militarizing the natives. Apart from the moral aspects of this question of de- priving Germany of her overseas possessions, and the impossibility of denying her rights when she joins the League which other Powers possess under the Covenant, there is the imperative need of Germany having access to essential raw materials and having the means of expan- sion. It is inconceivable that good relations can be main- tained if Great Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, and Italy have vast colonial possessions and such a nation as Germany is denied such possessions and opportunities. France, with a population of thirty-eight millions, has a colonial empire of nearly five million square miles; Bel- gium, with a population of seven millions, has colonies with an area of a million square miles; and Great Britain has an empire which comprises about one-fifth of the world's surface. Peace cannot be maintained permanently if Ger- many, the third greatest commercial country in the world, is excluded by her rivals from colonial expansion. By the loss of her overseas possessions Germany was deprived of some of the most productive parts of her ter- ritory. At present she is obliged to import from foreign countries one-third of her essential food and raw materials. Her population is increasing. The need for expansion in- creases with her growing population. Great Britain has no interest in opposing the claims of Germany to colonial mandates. Great Britain has an empire large enough to satisfy the most voracious ap- petite. Her task is the development of what she has, not the addition of more territory to her responsibilities. The settlement of Germany's claim to colonial mandates must be the outcome of friendly bargaining. The mistake made in 1919 will have to be tacitly admitted. Some of the ter- ritory then seized had been acquired by Germany by pur- chase, other parts had been ceded for concessions else- where. Some of the areas now administered under man- date by other Great Powers would have to be transferred to Germany. When Germany enters the League the whole question of colonial mandates will naturally be reopened. Mr. Asquith said in the early days of the war: "The aim of the Allies in this war is to smooth the path to an international system insuring the principle of equal rights for all civilized nations." That must now be the practical aim of the late Allies, who, in the matter of extending equal rights in regard to colonial mandates, will be sup- ported by the smaller nations. The peace of the world, which is a vital interest of every nation, demands the just settlement of this problem Ionization. It will involve the surrender of mand now exercised, but that is a small matter compared with the denial of equal rights to Germany and the certain con- sequences which would eventually follow a policy of ex- clusion. There are precedents of recent date in transfers by Great Britain to Italy and Belgium. It is of vital international concern to bring the spirit of amity and conciliation to the solution of this perplexing and menacing problem of colonial mandates, assuring al- ways that the mandatory Power exercises its trusteeship, first of all, for the well-being and progress of the native peoples. Two Unpublished Tales By HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN [Georg Brandes once wrote to Hans Christian Ander- sen: "You ore the writer who has done more wrovn t>> criticism than any other, who has supported all popular prejudices against this art and has brought upon it con- tempt and scorn." These two hitherto unknown tales illus- trate what Brandes meant. Andersen, however, thought so well of them that he made three versions of one, though they were never published during his lifetime and wt re only recently discovered. They illustrate not only Ander- sen's charm, but also his almost morbid sensitiveness to criticism. The translations printed below are from the German of the Berliner Tageblatt of April 5.] Quack THE birds of the forest sat on the branches of the trees where they really had leaves enough. But there were some who insisted on having a new good leaf, a leaf which they fervently desired, a critical leaf* of the kind which men have in such abundance and of which half would be more than enough. The song-birds wanted musical criticism, each for his own praise and for the censure of others — where there was cause for censure. But they could not agree where an im- partial critic might be found. "It must be a bird," said the Owl, who had been elected chairman of the meeting — since she was the bird of wisdom. "He can hardly be chosen from another species of animals, unless perhaps he might come out of the water. There the fish fly about as the birds do in the air; to be sure that is the only family likeness. But there are other animals which are neither birds nor fish." Here the Stork asked for the floor. He clattered: "Yes, there are beings between the fish and the birds, creatures of the swamps — the frogs. These I nominate. They are very musical; they sing in chorus like chimes ' There is a play on words here which cannot be reproduced in English. Matt, means "leaf," but it also means "journal," and is so translated throughout the remainder of the tale.

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>8 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3185 in the lonely wood. My peace is gone and I grow very restless when I hear them sing." "I am for the frogs, too," said the Heron. "They are neither birds nor fish, but they dwell with the fish and they sing like the birds." "That would settle the musical end," said the Owl. "But this journal must deal with everything beautiful in the forest. There must be collaborators. Let each review his family for possible candidates." Then the little Lark sang, beautifully and unconcerned : "The Frog must not be editor-in-chief. Oh no! The Night- ingale must be that." "Stop that squeaking!" said the Owl; "I hoot for order! I know the Nightingale. We are both nightbirds. Each bird sings according to his bill. Neither she nor I must be chosen. Otherwise this journal would take on the character of an aristocratic, a philosophic, a beau- monde sheet, in which only the distinguished had a part. But it must also be the organ of the common man." It was proposed to call it Morning Quack or Evening Quack or merely Quack. The last was finally agreed upon. Thus a long-felt need of the woods would be relieved. The Bee, the Ant, and the Mole promised to write about in- dustry and engineering. They were experts in that. The Cuckco was a nature poet. He was not really counted among the song-birds, but was of the greatest importance for the common man. "He is advertising his own work everywhere; he is the vainest of the birds and yet he looks so plain," said the peacock. Then the Blue-Bottles came to the editor: "We offer our services. We know men; we understand thi. business of editing; we are well versed in criticism. We sit down on fresh meat, soil it with filth — and it is spoiled before a day is past. We can annihilate a talent, if necessary, in the service of the editor. As a partisan sheet, one may attain such a position of eminence that one can afford to be vulgar. If one subscriber is lost, sixteen others will lie gained. Be blunt, call vile names, place in the pillory, whistle with your fingers like the gamin of the str- and ,'ou are a power in the state." "Such a windbag!" the Frog said about the Stork. "To think that. I actually thought myself the smaller and looked up to him and felt a trembling veneration for him! And when he paraded about in the swamp and spoke of Egypt, how my horizon was widened to extend to far- distant, wonderful lands! But now he does not impress me any more. All that was but plagiarism and imitation. I have grown wiser, more thoughtful, more important. I write critical articles in Quack. I am what is called in good English a quack-mouth! The species is also found among men. I wrote a feuilleton on that in our last issue." The Copy Clerk THERE was an official, part of whose duty it was to be also a good penman. He was well fitted for his office, but he could not write very legibly. He therefore inserted an advertisement in the paper to obtain someone who could. So many answered tht advertisement that he could have filled a barrel with the applications. But one was sufficient, and he employed the first that came. This person wrote a hand that was as beautiful as that of a calligraphic machine. The official had the brains to write intelligently. And since his documents were done in such beautiful script all the people said: "That is very well written." "/ did that," said the copy clerk, whose mind was in fact not worth a farthing. After he had listened to praise for an entire week, he grew vain and wanted to take the place of the official. He might really have been an excellent teacher of penmanship and looked well at tea parties with a white neckerchief. But now he wanted to excel all other writers. So he wrote about painters and sculptors, about the theater and music. He published terrible stuff, and when it became too stupid, he stated the next day that it had been a printer's error. Everything he wrote was a printer's error, and in print one could unfortunately not see the beautiful hand- writing which was his chief asset. "I can annihilate; I can raise to the heavens! I am a devil of a fellow, a little god — and not such a little one at that!" That was the raving of a megalomaniac. He died of it and received a handsome obituary notice in the papers. Now, was that not a sad thing, to be praised by a friend who really knew how to invent tales, when his whole life, with its brag and blow and bluster, was nothing but a miserable invention itself? In the Driftway THE Drifter has a friend, skeptical by nature and by training, who teaches history in a large Eastern uni- versity. There is one story he always tells his students in American history — a story which he recently also told the Drifter. As a boy, so it goes, the Drifter's friend was taken to visit a churchyard in northern New York. On an elegant headstone, placed there by the Daughters of the American Revolution, he read that his illustrious fore- father, Peleg by name, had been a Major in the War for Independence; that he had been close friend and companion of Washington, and finally, at Valley Forge, aide-de-camp of the General. The boy descendant of this glorious war- rior was mightily impressed. As he grew older his in- terest in Peleg increased, and he decided to consult the records and learn the thrilling details of this courageous career which had long been one of the most honored of the family traditions. ***** PELEG, it seemed, lived in the old family home in a New Hampshire village when the Revolution broke out. Early in the war he served two enlistments, five months in all. He spent this period in Boston, where he may have seen Washington. By the end of the five months he had reached the rank of Sergeant Major, in the Quartermaster's Corps. When his second enlistment expired, Peleg returned tc the farm in New Hampshire and, like his neighbors, forgot all about the war. Two years later, when it seemed likely that Burgoyne, on his way down from Canada, might choose a way through New Hampshire, the State woke up to the fact that a war was going on, and assigned quotas to the towns of the State. Peleg's home village was asked to contribute six soldiers. A town meeting was convened —

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July 21, 1926] The Nation 5 all this is a matter of record — and volunteers were asked for. Two men volunteered. But six had to go. Consterna- tion reigned. Finally, the meeting voted to give one hun- dred hard dollars to each of four men who would go to war. In those days a hundred hard dollars was a good- sized fortune — an excellent farm could be bought with it— and four young men, among them Peleg, consented to fight for their country. Then, however, the two volunteers struck. They refused to enlist unless they too were paid one hundred hard dollars each. The town meeting could not refuse. So six young men with six hundred hard New Hampshire dollars to their credit set out for the war. Some- where in New Hampshire they joined the SI iment and Peleg at once took his former rank of Sergeant Major in the Quartermaster's Corps. The regiment finally pushed on to Fort Ticonderoga. On the way they fought a few skirmishes with the British but, to quote his descendant, "since Peleg was probably sorting peas it is doubtful whether he ever saw a red-coat." For a year and a half Peleg stayed safely at Ticonderoga, a Sergeant Major in the Quartermaster's Corps. At the end of that time he obtained a discharge on the ground of ill health and re- turned to New Hampshire. Less than a year later there is recorded a letter from the town clerk protesting Peleg's discharge. The clerk stated that because of the discharge the town meeting had had to vote another hundred dollars to provide a substitute, while Peleg, whose health seemed unimpaired, had married and was raising a family. The protest came to naught. From here on the records are voiceless until years later when Peleg's application for a pension, sent from somewhere in New York State, is re- corded. It was granted without protest. The Revolution was already taking on the aura of glory, which has become blinding with the years. "M Y students," concluded the Drifter's friend, "laugh heartily at my ancestor. But I have my inning too; for the laugh gives way to rather resentful consternation when I remark at the end of the hour: 'Remember, please, that that was the Spirit of '76.' " The Drifter Correspondence Our Airfleet a Century Ago To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: War with Japan is again predicted in the daily papers and in magazines, and in Hector Bywater's "1931: The Great Pacific War" a whole book is devoted to the anticipation of this calamity. Perhaps the writers of these modern fantasies, as we would fain hope their productions will turn out to be, and some of your readers will learn with interest, if they do not already know of it, that a war between Japan and the United States was foreseen one hundred years ago; not only that, but the destruction of Tokio by an "imperial American airfieet" (Kaiser- lich Amerikanische Luftflotte) was also foretold. This predic- tion, with an illustration showing what the prophet conceived an airship to be like, may be found mentioned in an interesting volume: "Johann Konrad Friederich, ein vergessener Schrift- steller," by F. C. Ebrard and Louis Liebmann. Frankfurt, 1918. Page 112. San Franrinco, June IS L. N. Is Grammar Hunk '. To the Editor of The Nation: Sib: "A Young Conservative" writes you in protest against "a rebel who states that usage alone determines cor- rect English and that rules of grammar are the bunk." Who's a rebel and who's a conservative? The "Art of Poetry," con- taining the words "usus, penes quern est jus et norma loquendi," was written by Horace, who died before the birth of Christ. This "Art of Poetry" immediately took rank as one of the most classic manuals of the rules of style, and has maintained that rank to this day. Does this Conservative know of any equally early attempt to propagate the heresy that rules of grammar were the thing to look to? Ballard Vale, A/ass., April 20 Steven T. BYINGTON They Starve in Bulgaria To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have received a letter from a friend in Bulgaria giving facts which will, I believe, interest readers of The No. If anyone should care to send money for the relief of the per- sons whose plight is described and others in similar circum- stances, I can guarantee that the author of this letter will handle such funds wisely and conscientiously. Now I have a special question to ask and a request to make The widow of the poet George Milefif, who disap- peared— killed without a trial — is in desperate need. She has heard through a sister-in-law in America that Bul- garians in Chicago are interested in his writing. He wrote in behalf of the oppressed people and against the political slaughter we have here from time to time. I wonder whether some help would come to her if one were to have some of his poems translated and printed as a little booklet. Then I wondered whether you have any way of making an appeal for funds or small gifts to help these destitute widows of writers, journalists, and other intelligent men who were killed so unjustly. A committee from the Eng- lish Labor Party came last summer and raised quite a fund in England to help sufferers through the winter. But now the fund is exhausted, and yet there is a great eco- nomic crisis, shortage of work, low wages, people failing in business, etc. There is a girl taking meals at whose father has been sentenced to lifelong imprisonment and whose mother has gone crazy and is being taken care of by her mother. Judging by the girl and her aunt, a medical doctor who was also interned for a while, her father is probably as innocent as you or I. His mistake lay in hav- ing belonged to the "accused" party. The girl has been helped by the committee, but she is a schoolgirl and one wonders what will become of her next. Recently I heard of a whole family's having disappeared last spring except- ing the old grandmother, whom they did not see and who was too deaf to hear the commotion. Those who have lost the bread-winner have not even been given a death certifi- cate so that they might draw on their insurance money. I know a former minister's wife who manages to sew five jersey blouses a day and receives 50 leva, or about 35 cents, for all this work to support her two children. . . . New York, June 20 Anna Rochester [Contributions sent in care of The Nation will be for- warded to the writer of this letter. — Editor The Nation.] Listen ! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Permit me to congratulate you on the book number just at hand. Your book reviews are always fearless, honest, and dependable. One is always safe in going by them in the purchase of new books. Bay City, Michigan, June 9 Willard E. King

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Books First Glance I T OW much of the Pepys who is familiar to us through ** the "Diary" is to be come upon in the two volumes of the "Private Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys: 1679-1703," edited by J. R. Tanner from the Pepys Cockerell Collection (Harcourt, Brace: $12.50), may be gathered from three facts: that most of the letters published therein are by others than Pepys himself, that a great many of the subjects discussed have only a remote connection with his familiar life, and that when he does speak he speaks chiefly out of his seventh decade. The "Diary" was kept between his twenty-seventh and thirty-sixth years; the present papers, although they i Produce him at forty-six, really become consecutive as he is nearing sixty. The Pepys of a hundred amours, then, and the Pepys who bickered with his dear wife, and the Pepys who ran literally everywhere after news and seemed to have the knack of appearing in ten important parts of London at once — this Pepys is gone. In his place we have a man already old, a man frequently in pain from the same stone which caused so much comment in the "Diary," and a man so sobei as he looks at life that he has little patience with the generation growing up around him. The most charming portion of the correspondence printed here is composed of the letters which passed between Pepys and the even older John Evelyn; and the bond between these gentlemen was more than anything else, I am srre, their agreement upon the badness of the age. "Never was this Nation," wrote Evelyn to his friend in 1701, "so atheistical, false, and un-steady; covetous, selfe intrested, impudently detracting and uncharitable; ingratefull, lewd, and luxuri- ous; in summe, so universaly vitious, dissolute, and per- verted." Pepys was milder than that, but he could write to Dr. Charlett of "gross, contagious, and destructive pleasures" which contemporary youth in his view found too attractive. Gone is the Pepys who sat up late at night confiding to himself that he had kissed more than one willing cheek that day. Yet he is not gone either. Pepys, examined closely enough, seems after all of a piece. The significant fait about the earlier man was that he did keep a diary, that he did make his entries in it secret. The world knew him then as one curious after respectable knowledge and ex- perience. It is as such a one that he appears in these letters, and it is certainly as such a one that first and last he liked to think of himself. Here, at any rate, is the Pepys who was both curious and respectable — the historian of the British navy, the antiquarian, the collector, the bibliophile, the amateur scientist and mathematician, the poker into mysteries. Here, in a word, is the "virtuoso"; a virtuoso being by Evelyn's definition one with the capac- ity to "know, and (which is more) effect, a world of in- genius things without vanity," and by Pepys's own defini- tion one aware of the blessed fact "that nothing that brings knowledge with it can be either tedious, unprofitable, or unpleasant." Pepys as correspondent with the astronomer Wallis, with the antiquarians Wai ley and Hickes, and with Isaac Newton; Pepys as inquirer into the "second sight" of Scotch Highlanders; Pepys as encourager of new schemes in education; Pepys as collector of prints, portraits, manuscripts, medals, and historical evidences; Pepys as monitor to his nephew John Jackson, who on his tour of Europe must "pry and ask questions" and wrrite home every particular — this Pepys is abundantly here. And he is less interesting than the immortal Pepys only in so far as learning is less interesting than love. Mark Van Doren An Early Master Charles Bulfinch, Architect and Citizen. By Charles A. Place. Houghton Mifflin Company. $15. HP HE life of Charles Bulfinch bridged a great historical chasm. *■ Educated in Boston during the Revolution, he knew it as a small colonial port city whose architecture was dominantly Colonial English; by the time of his death, in 1844, American architecture had set out on its own eclectic course, American life had begun to develop those special characteristics that we recognize as ours today. Mr. Place's book gives a new oppor- tunity to evaluate the part which Bulfinch played in this change, and some little insight into the reaction those changes produced in him. In addition it is indispensable to anyone interested in the origins of American taste. Bulfinch was more than an architect; he was by inheritance as well as by experience a public character. His family was wealthy, distinguished — one suspects, at heart rather Tory. His father was a financier as well as a doctor; in 1787 he contrib- uted largely to the fund that sent Kendrick and Gray cruising on the Pacific Coast; his money helped buy and equip the Columbia, whose name was given to the river Gray discovered. Thus from an early day Bulfinch must have been in close touch with the excitement and later the inflation due to the sudden expansion of the new nation. And it would seem that this ex- citement, with its consequent urge to speculate, penetrated and tired his imagination. Mr. Place gives a detailed and valuable account of Bul- finch's public service. He was particularly interested in the question of new streets, new land, new bridges. He was an ardent town planner. He designed the development of the old Mill Pond; he assisted in planning the newly made land around Washington Street. He recognized the practical as well as the aesthetic basis of town planning in almost a modern way; his scheme for Broad Street and the India Wharf Development proves this, just as the dignified simplicity of the India Wharf stores show his skill in the straightforward design of industrial buildings. It was this interest in the physical betterment of Boston, combined with a thirst for speculation strange in a man so retiring, that brought Bulfinch twice into disaster. First, there was his scheme for Franklin Place, a crescent of simple con- nected houses in the English manner. This "Tontine Crescent" was an ambitious design for twenty-four houses of large and ample dignity. Bulfinch had not the capital to swing it himself, and one by one his partners and backers withdrew. The result was inevitable bankruptcy, in 1796, and the loss of the entire family fortune. But the houses were built; for years they were among the pleasantest and most-sought-after dwellings of their type in the town. And fifteen years later he again ran into trouble with real estate. His acquaintances were making for- tunes in filled Back Bay lots; he owned a tract, spent a great deal of money in it, could not sell at once, was pressed by his creditors, and actually spent a month in a debtors' jail ! The moment one examines the designs which Mr. Place so lavishly illustrates, the inexplicable mystery of the creation of beauty in art arises. For Bulfinch was never a great architect in the sense that Brunelleschi or Michelangelo or Bertram Goodhue were great. His originality was strictly limited, his taste at times at fault. And yet building after building lasts

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July 21, 1926] The Nation M today not only as a monument to its time but also itself living inspiration; the west facade of the United States Capi- tol— Bulfinch's contribution — is one of its loveliest features. Bulfinch seems rather the careful craftsman than the bril- liant creator. Mr. Place shows his debt to Somerset House in London for the Boston Capitol; at Washington he merely im- proved upon that. His houses are monotonously similar. His use of a square-headed window under a brick relieving arch became an obsession. And yet the whole lasts — and lasts, it would seem, for two reasons. The first is a prophetic sensitive- ness to the popular taste of his time which makes his work al- most impersonal in its perfect expressiveness. But if this sensi- tiveness kept him from aberrations and pave to all his work its peculiar appropriateness, it was another factor that raised it to a high plane — a deep and quiet reverence for beauty. This took the place of genius and sometimes it was genius. It was a little thin, perhaps, a little retiring and aristocratic, this beauty which Bulfinch so carefully and seriously served, but it was none the less real for that. It makes even the austere simplicity of his Boston houses a precious satisfaction. When the style and the problem were familiar the beauty be- comes, with Bulfinch, the more sure; yet even the labored effort of his Gothic church and the queer complexities which his lack of technical skill sometimes produced are witnesses of his con- stant struggle to achieve perfection with an uncomprehended medium. And when the medium was perfectly comprehended at last Bulfinch achieved definite greatness. The church at Lancaster, Massachusetts, is the climax. Not seeking oripinality as an end, it achieves intense personal oripinality in spite of it- self. In every line of it, from the slim brick arches of the porch, or the plain solid railings of the gallery stair, to the restrained grace of the cupola and the richness of the white pulpit, the spirit of living beauty is incarnate, come down to dwell in a Massachusetts town. The worshiper has created his god. One wonders what sort of man this was, actually, in daily life. And it is here that Mr. Place is disappointing. It is the one fault in a volume otherwise exceedingly valuable. From this careful, stimulating study of backpround, of public service, of architectural desipn, there comes no sense of a livinp char- acter. A mass of contradictions around a continually elusive personality — this is how the story reads. Talbot Faulkner Hamlin Asia Mesopotamia: The Babylonian and Assyrian Civilization. Bv L. Delaporte. Alfred A. Knopf. $5. The Aegean Civilization. By George Glotz. Alfred A. Knopf. $6. The Peoples of Asia. By L. H. Dudley Buxton. Alfred A. Knopf. $5. HP HE book named here in the third place is an excellent * justification of the Kahn system of fellowships, for that system gave Mr. Buxton his first-hand acquaintance with Asia and enabled him to produce the best general book on the com- plex humanity of the continent which has yet appeared in any language. I disclaim all ripht to estimate either his thorough- ness or his adequacy in the elaborate discussion of the races of Southeastern Asia, but I am satisfied that the peoples of West- ern Asia are well and soundly discussed. One is interested to see that he stands bravely by the Arabian origin of the Semites, but avoids a decision as to the oripin or ancient home of the Sumerians, whom he would include in his special classification of Armenoid types — which I doubt very much. If there be any lack in the anthropolopical description and classification I should say it must be soupht in the treatment of the Semites, for the discussion is both scattered and sketchy. The other two volumes, translated from the French, origi- nally appeared in the "Bibliothei.ue de Synthe.se Historique" and in tin "L'Evolution de rilumanite," of which the brilliant Henri Berr is editor. The French series is conceived upon a larpe scale, for no le-^s than twenty-six of its volumes -signed to antiquity. They are marvels of cheapness at twenty francs each, nre well printed on a touph paper, and are adequately if not elepantly illustrated. The English series, edited by (". K. Opden, with Harry E. Barm a American consulting editor, are much handsomer books than their French originals, and the price has accordingly risen to five or six dollars a volume. The two which here come under notice are fortunate in their authors, since Gustave Glotz is one of the foremost Hellenists of our day and none of the distinguished company of French Orientalists is better lit led to discuss the tangled problem of Babylonian and Assyrian civilization than is M. Delaporte. M. Glotz has written a big book on the splendid civiliza- tion which preceded the Greek. The basis for all his work is prevailinply archaeolopical, for he bepins with Schliemann in 1875 at Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns, and finds his climax in Knossos under Sir Arthur J. Evans from 1900 to 1905 and 1924. After a peneral introduction he divides his material into four books: Material Life, Social Life, Relipious Life, Artistic and Intellectual Life. In these he finds space to pic- ture the physical type; dress; arms and armor; the house and the place; the social system and government; agriculture; industry; trade; international relations; fetishism; the an- thropomorphic divinities; places of worship; religious cere- monies; the cult of the dead; games; art; writinp and lan- puape. It is, indeed, a comprehensive survey of all that is at present known of a civilization which bepins more than 3,000 years before the Christian era. The story is exceedingly well told, with characteristic French clarity and warmth. To M. Glotz the people who made Crete so glorious in a period so remote become living human beings whose achievement must be celebrated as not merely equal but far superior to the best that the Orient had to offer. Here and there one may see evidence of exaggeration, of an unintentional effort to belittle some other civilization that the Aegean may come to greater honor. A very interesting sign of this is to be seen in the men- tion of the Phoenicians, whose achievement M. Berr in the fore- word thinks much exaggerated; and M. Glotz supports him. M. Berr says that "Phoenician supremacy in the Mediterranean dates from about 1100 to 800," and M. Glotz disparages the race as alphabet-makers, sayinp boldly: "The Phoenicians have shown no inventive penius here any more than in other things." But, alas! for too much confidence, for in a chapter of Correc- tions and Additions M. Glotz must needs record Montet's dis- co\ery at Byblos of a tomb contemporary with Rameses II, with an epitaph of King Ahiram in Phoenician characters. This car- ries the Phoenician alphabet two hundred years earlier than either author would apparently have placed it. But it is a small matter in such a distinguished book. M. Delaporte has also produced a book of hiph quality, but the subject is much too larpe for even so larpe a canvas. M. Delaporte surmounts the difficulties by scampinp those portions which have received most attention from his predecessors. His introduction gives a sketch of the processes of excavation and decipherment which is too thin to be intelligible to any reader not previously informed. In the same way he has sketched the political history far too briefly to present any real picture. He har. forty-four pages for Babylonian and twenty-seven for As- syrian history, and the reader will therefore still be compelled to turn, for this side of the matter, to King, Rogers, or Olm- stead. But the space which he has thus saved is admirably and adequately used to describe institutions, beliefs, craftsJ arts, letters, and sciences. Nor is there anywhere else a survey so excellent, a picture so vivid and so soundly based. The maps are poor and the illustrations ill produced. One must go for these to other monographs and be here content with a bibliogra- phy that is comprehensive, accurate, and extensive. Robert W. Rogers

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62 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3135 India's Struggle India in 192U-25. A Statement Prepared for Presentation to Parliament. By L. F. Rushbrook Williams, Director of Public Information, Government of India. New York: British Library of Information. 3/. '"PHIS statement treats of local administration, economic de- * velopments, social problems, political cruces — in short, everything that touches India materially and some things that concern her spiritually. It would not satisfy, and is not meant to satisfy, the specialist who wants to see statistics, sources; it usually restricts itself to generalities and conclusions. For the non-specialist it should prove adequate in its account of recent economic history and its description of administrative development. But when it comes to political dissension, par- ticularly in the chapter called Parties and Politics, opinions may well differ, even on generalities. In such a controversial Leld the Government's spokesman is in the nature of things likely to view matters from the Government's point of view. This portion of the book, in our opinion, is not trustworthy. We may take up a few points as illustrations. First, we cannot agree that the Hindu-Mohammedan outbreaks in 1924 and later are the result of Gandhi's emphatic preaching of the prime need for a spiritual regeneration of India. Such outbreaks have been common for the last thousand years. It is as unfair to blame them on Gandhi as it is to ascribe them to government intrigue. Gandhi preached and practiced religious toleration and, in 1921-22, for the first time in India's history, united the two warring communities. He is even now the most powerful voice calling for quiet upon those troubled waters. The political leaders of the two communities are in essential agreement, for they, like the British, realize that this strife is the me thing that makes easy the foreigner's grip; it is the rank and file that cannot see the value of compromise. Religion to them is more important than politics. Again, Mr. Rushbrook Williams's disapproval of the Swara- jist obstructionist tactics in the legislative bodies is not shared by the majority of Indian Nationalists, as events showed last August when all the elected Indian members of the Legislative Assembly united to defeat the Government. These tactics have placed the Government in the illogical position of enforcing measures that have been formally repudiated by the country's properly elected representatives, of perpetuating a system of government whose unpopularity cannot be denied. They may be injurious to the Indian constitution, but they are at the same time an effective political weapon. Or again, he speaks of the Sikh situation, referring first to the "dramatic" events at Jaito in February, 1924. (These events culminated in the soldiery shooting down Sikh pilgrims — 19 killed, 32 wounded, no casualties among the soldiers. We should have used a different adjective.) He tells us that "as the year proceeded ... a sense of discouragement set in [among the Sikhs]." This discouragement, we might comment, was of such a sort that about every four weeks after the "dramatic events" at Jaito a new body of pilgrims, 500 strong, set out for the shrine, financed by the Sikh community, each body aware that it would be arrested when it neared Jaito and thrown into indefinite confinement. About eighteen months later the discouraged Sikhs found their question settled by a statute in the Punjab Legislative Council that granted all their religious demands, and they were many — although ignoring po- litical matters — and last August the seventeenth pilgrimage was finally allowed to enter Jaito and perform its ceremonies. If this be the conduct of a small Indian community when suffering "a sense of discouragement," we gasp to think what the re- sult will be if ever the Indians as a whole come to feel encouraged. But let us not be misunderstood. The British are no dis- interested party in India. Yet their exploitation of the coun- try is far less ruthless than is frequently claimed. India has always been more than 90 per cent agricultural, and still is. The British occupation has affected the economic order of the land chiefly by destroying many of the ancient handicrafts, but these were bound to perish anyhow as soon as they came into conflict with any machine industry, British or other. The pres- ent issue in India is not a struggle between the Indian people and the British; it is a struggle between the Indian bourgeoisie and the British for the control of the country. Just a little less than 3 per cent of the population have the franchise, and neither the Nationalists nor the Government seems definitely to plan increasing the number. The struggle is important, but it is nothing like so fundamental as was that between the Russian proletariat and the Czar's government. W. Norman Brown G. Stanley Hall G. Stanley Hall. A Biography of Mind. By Lorine Pruette. D. Appleton and Company. $2.50. jl/JISS PRUETTE has performed a difficult task very skilfully. *■ * Dr. Hall not only provoked a weird variety of reactions from his contemporaries, professional and lay; he was a complex man and a productive scholar. This psychograph seeks to pre- sent a rounded and accurate picture of the man. He was not able fully to reveal himself even in his "Life and Confessions of a Psychologist." He inevitably swung, in that book, from himself to his ideas, and a more accurate title for it would have been, perhaps, "A History of the Ideas of G. Stanley Hall." To be sure the early chapters dealing with his boyhood are vivid and memorahle, but I do not recall that he gave his intimate reactions to his disastrous marriages, to his troubles with Jonas Clark, the financial founder of Clark University, or to the decline of the university under W. W. Atwood. Miss Pruette manages to tell or suggest the whole story. Her book is an admirable piece of work. Dr. Hall was a New Englander by ancestry, birth, and training. He was born in the forties of the last century of a deeply religious mother and a stern, exacting father. His higher education was obtained at Williams College, then under the control of Mark Hopkins. He studied for the ministry. After two periods of study in Europe, the first devoted chiefly to philosophy and the second to psychology, he founded the first psychological laboratory in the United States at Johns Hopkins. From there he was called to Worcester, where he undertook the role of intellectual founder of Clark. In spite of his disastrous relations with Jonas Clark and his domestic troubles he suc- ceeded in making Clark internationally known in the field of psychology. His own labors were stupendous, and his able faculty were equally laborious. Almost to a man they were pioneers. Rarely has any intellectual worker so completely transcended his personal and administrative troubles as did Dr. Hall. Behind these bare facts there was, naturally enough, an amazing man. Dr. Hall was caught up by the evolutionary optimism of his time. His great contribution to psychology was the genetic principle, which, however much it may be assailed, can never be ignored. But he was not a laboratory worker, for the whole bias of his mind was toward the problems of life. His psychology tended therefore to lead him into a wide variety of fields otherwise separated by the rampant specialization of the time. Perhaps his most highly regarded work is "Ado- lescence." His book on Jesus Christ summed up his explora- tions in the field of religion. He dealt with the problems of sex at a time when the taboos against a discussion of it were extremely active. It is significant that he was the first Amer- ican academician to recognize Freud. Not only did he ardently sei k to discover values but he earnestly strove to put his dis-

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July 21, 1926] The Nation coveries at the disposal of others. He wanted to improve the world. Both from his New England heritage of deep serious- ness and from his ministerial training he pot a hortatory turn of mind that frequently alienated his most ardent admirers. In spite of the fact that he was notably a pioneer in the field of sex, his views on the subject are now outmoded. 1 characteristic of him that he placed the emphasis on the de- sirability of sublimation either into scholarship or into What will undoubtedly sustain his fame for many years to come is his very great service as an adventurous iconoclastic pioneer. This quality connects him with what is finest in the New England tradition, with Emerson and Thoreau. Both his greatnesses and his defects are rooted in his New England background. Nevertheless what he gave to the world was peculiarly his own. HARTLEY Grattan Family History Factors in American History. I>y A. F. Pollard. The Macmil- lan Company. $2.50. PROFESSOR POLLARD'S book is entitled to be judged by its purpose as well as by its contribution to a knowli of American history, but the two standards are not the same. and their application leads to somewhat different conclusions. Delivered in the first instance as lectures on the Sir George Watson Foundation for American History, Literature, and In- stitutions, the book aims primarily to inform and interest Eng- lish readers in American history. The task is a considerable one, for the study of American history has practically no place in the curricula of English schools, and what has been at- tempted in recent years in the universities does not reach far. Whether the point of view which Professor Pollard expounds, however, or the method which he adopts will greatly stimulate the interest which he would like to see aroused is a matter re- garding which English and American readers are possibly not of the same opinion. '•American history," Professor Pollard declares, "is as much a continuation of medieval English history as is the modern history of the mother country; since 1776 they have developed on independent but parallel lines. We can no more understand them in isolation than we can write a family history by follow- ing the fortunes of one of the sons alone." Professor Pollard is too sound a scholar to warrant a critic in saying lightly that he has used the term medieval in a loose sense, but the nection which he emphasizes nevertheless seems forced. Medi- eval England, at least in the usual scholarly acceptation of the term, had been left far behind before the permanent English settlement of America began, and it was a distinctly modern England whose institutions were, to some extent, transplanted to the New World. Almost equally forced seems the attempt to emphasize the "parallel lines" of development since 1776. Certain common traditions the two countries have carried on, of course, and time has brought a good many points of con- tact, some of them friendly, some of them acid, but the com- mon principles upon which Professor Pollard dwells have too many exceptions and too many independent and rather un- related lines of development to make the argument wholly convincing. If the theory is open to question, so also is the method of expounding it. As is likely to be the case where interpreta- tion is the primary aim, the book will be most useful to read- ers who already know pretty well the historical story in detail, but the data relied upon to illustrate the thesis are mainly political, and politics is very far from being the whole of American life. The result is a series of generalizations, many of them acute and some of them more than ordinarily sugges- tive, but not seldom of a kind from which American scholars would incline to draw back. One cannot but admire the friendly !• in which the book is conceived ami il than ible style in which it is written, but it leaves in the end more an impression of special pleading in behalf of Anglo- American comity than of a profound discussion of the f. that have made American history what it is. WlLl I \M M vcDon W.I) Drama Four Notes The Grand Street Follies {Neighborhood Play Not quite so good as last year but still funny. Mrs. Feitelbaum gives an account of "The Dybbuk," and some un- named genius stages "Uncle Tom's Cabin" after the manner of the Russian "Carmen," with a chorus of black mammies on the platform. Tin: MERRY Worid REVIEW (Imperial Theater). The Messrs. Shubert in conjunction with Albert de Court- ville combine the English and American type of review in an effort to retain the best features of both. They are measurably successful and in the Ceinture de Chastite scene they introduce a topic, fertile in doubie-entendres, which has hitherto been neglected in America. The Man from Toronto (Selwyn Theater). A farce comedy which is rather amusing in spite of the fact that it turns upon one of those wills which provide that some one will lose a lot of money if he does not marry some one else. No FOOUN' (Globe Theater). Not only glorifies the American girl but introduces Mr. Ziegfeld as a champion of purity who calls attention to the fact that there is not one of his performers who does not wear something. His modesty exceeds that of the Shuberts by at least three inches of gauze, but the exact significance of this in spiritual terms has not yet been determined. There is a gorgeous finale to the First Part, called "In the Luminous Ball." Joseph Wood Krutch D THEATRE □ GRAND STREET THE ith Annual Remie of Playhouse. 466 Grand St. Drydock 7516. NEIGHBORHOOD Evenings (Except Mon.) at 8:30. Matinees Saturdays. FOLLIES -THE THEATRE GUILD Presents- AT MRS. BEAM'S A Comedy by C. K. MTTNRO with ESTULLE WINWOOD. JEAN CADELL, EARL LARIMORE, HELEN WESTLEY, HENRY TRAVERS AND OTHERS. f^TTTT Fl TTJTt A 1*1? T? 52nd St-> West of B'way. \jVli-,LJ 1 niV\l -Kii, Matinees THURS. and SAT.. Evs. 8:30. 2:30. □ DEBATE □ SESQUICENTENNIAL DEBATE George Hiram Mann. Nat'l Security League Jay Lovestone, Workers Party Resolved : That the present form of government is not in the interest of the American Masses. Central Opera House, 67th St. & 3rd Ave., N. Y. C. Friday, July 16, 8 P. M. Admission 35c. Auspices of the Workers School When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Hauptmann Declines an Honor GERHART HAUPTMANN, Germany's foremost poet, declined membership in the proposed German Academy of Poetry in the following letter, printed in the Berliner Tageblatt for May 27: Agnetendorf, May 20, 1926 My dear Mr. Minister: Returning after an extended journey I find a letter from the Ministry of Science, Art, and Education, in which I am invited to become a member of the newly founded section for poetry in the Prussian Academy of Arts. Fully and gratefully appreciating the great distinction and honor intended, it is doubly hard for me to do what nevertheless must be done, namely, to ask that I be permitted to decline membership in this s ction. However much I may regard an academy of science, an academy of plastic arts and music as a necessity for the state (since these are fields which require cooperative work and include many state-supported schools), nevertheless I cannot convince myself that the state has any need of an academy of poetry. The more I think of it, the less I am convinced. There is no need for a board of poets to establish and distribute state help. Only a few cultured and well-disposed men of tact and taste are necessary. The proposed section gives me little hope of aiding the broader and higher tasks of poetry and of giving it responsible guidance. There is no such thing as conscious leadership in the domain of poetry. Official leaders of poetry are a novelty which would properly excite opposition among free poets. Ar far as I am concerned I cannot claim for myself either an unconscious or a conscious position of leadership. If I, like other artists and writei-s, have made an impression on men as men, it is enough. Thus you find me, Mr. Minister, on the side of those who even before my day have opposed the creation of an academy of poetry. I am certain that you will not expect me to do other- wise than frankly to admit this. Far be it from me, however, to criticize in any way the opposing opinion or the noble reso- lution of the Ministry. For myself and only for myself my conviction must be law. \\jth the sincerest feelings of respect, Gerhart Hauptmann Private Bersot's Trousers UNDER this caption the Paris correspondent of the Vienna Arbeiter-Zeitung tells how a French veterans' organization is fighting to redeem the honor of their fellows sacrificed in the grotesque tragedies of the war-time courts martial. The French Union of Combatants and Cripples has adopted a sensational resolution. It intends to review, as described below, all criminal verdicts handed down by French courts martial dur- ing the World War which are objected to as unjust, either by the victims themselves or, in case of capital sentences, by their surviving kinsfolk. Out of its own membership (exceeding 100,- 000), the union will draw juries to hold open sessions, examine witnesses, invite expert opinions, and pass upon evidence. These popular courts, to be sure, will have no power to summon wit- nesses, but it is expected that the pressure of public opinion will serve, even in the case of general officers required to testify, in lieu of legal constraint. The entire action was suggested to the union partly by the legal efforts of the League for the Rights of Man to bring about a revision of the most scandalous injustices of the French courts martial during the World War, and partly by the immense popular acclaim of a book by R. G. Reau, recently published, entitled "Les Crimes des Conseils de Guerre" (Paris, 1926, Progres Civique). I understand that the first of these jury trials will shortly take place. It will deal with the affair of Private Bersot — a case so revolting and, at the same time, so characteristic of the routine of court-martial procedure as to deserve international notoriety. In February, 1915, the Sixtieth (infantry) Regiment had its quarters in Fontenoy, near the firing-line. Bersot, a shop-assist- ant from Besancon, had been wearing for some time a pair of dirty "white" canvass trousers, riddled with holes. He impor- tuned his sergeant for several weeks with requests for a new pair. To this repeated requisition the sergeant turned a deaf ear. Finally, on February 12, he handed the importunate private a pair of filthy, blood-bespattered trousers just stripped from the body of one of the killed. Bersot refused them and insisted upon a new pair. During the ensuing dispute his company chief, Lieutenant Andre, appeared. The sergeant reported the private, and the lieutenant called the attention of the recalcitrant to the fact that his refusal was equivalent to mutiny in the presence of the enemy. It should be noted that the company was not on the firing-line, and that there were no active hostilities at that time within the sector. Andre put Bersot under arrest and reported the incident to the commander of the regiment, Colonel Auroux, a martinet whose cruelty had made him an object of bitter hatred among the soldiery. Intense excitement seized the company when Andre's action became known. Five soldiers called on him at once, requesting him to alter the charge against Bersot. Andre brusquely refused to listen to them and put the two spokesmen of the deputation under arrest. A few weeks earlier the regiment had been led to a badly prepared attack against the German positions. It lost 1,500 men in what the soldiers considered a wanton slaughter, and indignation against their colonel was outspoken and universal among the men. Enraged by the murmurs and evident hostility Colonel Auroux had been seeking a pretext for repressive meas- ures. The Bersot affair gave him his chance. He immediately ordered Bersot and the two spokesmen of the soldiers' deputation to be court-martialed. On the same day, before the court con- vened, he ordered a firing-platoon to hold itself in readiness for execution. It happened that there served in the regiment, as sergeant, a man well-known as a judge in private life. The colonel called the jurist before him. "Sergeant," he said, "my men are mutin- ous— there is need of a terrifying example. I mean to place those three privates against a wall and have them shot." After listening to the colonel's summary statement of the facts, the judge said the offense of the three men under arrest was trivial, and emphatically declared that there was no warrant for court- martial procedure. His chief insisted: "Bersot is guilty of dis- obedience in the presence of the enemy, the two others of a mutinous demonstration. I want the three shot, and you must find me law enough to warrant their execution." After a des- perate verbal wrangle, the judge succeeded in dissuading him from the execution of the two remonstrants. "Very well," con- cluded Auroux, "I will let the remonstrants off with some minor punishment, but the capital charge against Bersot stands. Of course," he added "I'll preside at the court martial myself." The lawyer tried, earnestly but in vain, to make plain to his regi- mental chief the legal and moral impossibility of convoking and at the same time presiding over a court martial. Colonel Auroux paid no heed to legal advice. A few minutes after his interview with the sergeant he convoked the court, appointing all its members and permitting no evidence to be heard save that of the two complainants, viz., Bersot's sergeant and Lieutenant Andre. A few minutes more and judgment was rendered: death

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July 21, 1926] Tlii' Nation 65 for Bersot, and six years of forced labor for the two remon- strants. Colonel Auroux commanded personally at the execu- tion. The victim collapsing under a shower of bullets, died with the names of his wife and little daughter on his lips. Immedi- ately after execution Colonel Auroux issued an order strictly Iding oral or written mention of the affair or of Bersot's rrespondence of his subordinates was censored for Weeks and all letters alluding to the Bersot affair destroyed. Auroux ordered Bersot's corpse interred outside of the soldiers' cemetery and forbade his men to visit the place, but he could not them from secretly erecting a stone and decorating the grave with flowers. After a lengthy interval, the curate of the Stent informed Mine Bersot of her husband's execution. "Our colonel," so the priest explained, "believed that he didn't have his troops firmly enough in hand. A return to iron disci- pline was deemed necessary, and tin' shooting of Bersot probably saved the lives of many others." The widow, refusing to acquiesce in this logic, set heaven and earth in motion to achieve two cuds: rehabilitation of her dead husband and punishment of his murderer, Colonel Auroux. After a struggle lasting eight years, Mme Bersot scored a partial victory. The Supreme Court annulled the verdict of the court martial, freeing her dead hus- band from reproach. Two years later, in 1924, the mortal re- mains of Bersot were disinterred, transferred to Besancon, and there accorded a solemn public funeral. His widow did not suc- .-. ed at the time in invoking justice against Auroux, a personal protege of Maginot, the French Minister of War in 1924. An interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies laid the scandal bare. Maginot, unterrified by public clamor, screened his friend behind formalities and, to affront the complaining members of the Chamber, made him Commander of the Legion of Honor! [Auroux had in the meantime attained to the rank of general. 1 The fall of the cabinet of which Maginot was a member de- stroyed the political defenses shielding his protege and left the field clear for further action against him. The Union of Com- batants now proposes to begin its revision of thousands of court- martial cases with an indictment of General Auroux. Pilsudski's Warning AT a conference of the representatives of the various Polish parties, preceding the general election at which Professor Moscicki was chosen President of the republic, Marshal Pilsudski delivered the following critical remarks on Polish political conditions. They were printed in the Berliner Tageblatt for May 31, 1926. The chief causes of the present distress and of the internal and external weakness of Poland are the robberies which have been committed without punishment. In Poland the interest of individuals and of parties has dominated all. There has been immunity for all sorts of malpractices and crimes. The reborn state did not experience a rebirth of its soul. When I returned from Magdeburg, believing in the regeneration of the nation, I did not wish to rule whip in hand. I gave the power into the hands of the legislative Sejm which I convoked. But the nation was not regenerated. Scoundrels and worthless wretches be- came dominant. Dishonesty and greed ruled. The number of disreputable elements in Poland increased enormously. Demo- cratic institutions were abused. Democracy as such was placed in a bad light, which I, as a convinced democrat, regret particu- larly. Party interests were victorious over state interests. My life as chief of state was embittered by slander. The only reason I did not fall was that I was stronger than all of you. The second representative of the state was murdered. Those morally responsible for this murder escaped unpunished. Conditions have meanwhile come to such a pass that if I so wished I would not need to admit deputies and senators to the hall of the National Assembly. But I shall make another trial to see whether it is possible to rule in Poland without a whip. I shall exercise no pressure, hut I warn the Sejm and the Senate, which are well hated by the people. I have given a guaranty that the election of a President shall be free ami uncoerced. 1 shall keep my word. But I warn you not to put up candidates on the basis of [tarty membership. The candidate for the presidency must Btand above parties. He must be able to represent the entire nation. 1 want you to know that in case the mob comes to power in Poland I shall not defend the Sejm and the Senate. No man can rule in Poland under the terror of scoundrels. I have declared war on the scoundrels, murderers, and robbers. 1 shall not succumb in this war. You may do as you please with my candidacy. It is of no importance to me whether I receive two, two hundred, or two thousand votes. Choose whom you will, but choose an impartial candidate who is worthy of this high office. If you act otherwise, the future looks dark for you. The army created for the citizenry a state capable of life. What have you made of this state? The Sejm must disband for a time in order that something new may be created. Think about my speech; consider it carefully. I assure you that I will not change. Contributors to This Issue Hendrik van LOON has drawn his weekly cartoon for The Nation throughout a serious attack of scarlet fever from which he is now recovering. Stuart Chase, author of "The Tragedy of Waste," is at present attached to the editorial staff of The Nation. Silas Bent has recently returned from Europe, where he studied the armament policies of the Great Powers. Philip Snowden was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labor Government of Ramsay MacDonald. Talbot Faulkner Hamlin is a New York architect and author of "The Enjoyment of Architecture." Robert W. Rogers, professor of Hebrew at Drew Theo- logical Seminary and of Oriental literature at Prince- ton, is author of many volumes on ancient Oriental texts. W. Norman Brown, now professor of Sanskrit at the University of Pennsylvania, previously taught in Kashmir. C. Hartley Grattan, a graduate of Clark University, is a contributor to current periodicals. William MacDonald, formerly associate editor of The Nation, is author of "Three Centuries of American Democracy" and other historical studies. In an Early Issue Glimpses of Arthur Gleason Three sketches of one of the most courageous liberals of his day. by Helen Hayes Gleason To be followed by a posthumous story Land of the Free by Arthur Gleason

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66 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3185 ADUI/T CAMPS AND VACATION PLACES CAMP TAMIMENT NOW OPEN FOREST PARK, PA. For Adult? Nature's Wonder Spot in the Blue Mountains of Pennsyl- vania twenty miles from Delaware Water Gap. All outdoor Sports. Fourteen splendid tennis courts. De- lightful bathing. Excellent Food. Dancing and entertain- ment in glorious hall on shore of lake. Beginning July 5, daily lecture by eminent speakers. Moderate Rates Make Early Reservations CAMP TAMIMENT N. V. phone Stuy. 3094 FOREST PARK, PA. Phone Stroudsburg 71 HILLCREST LODGE Tennis SWIMMING AND DANCING Situated in the Watchung Mountains. Most beautiful blessed with all nature's gifts, overlooking hill and field and meadow. Only 30 minutes from the hea New York. Excellent food. Rooms very comfortably furnished. and cold running water in every room. Baths showers. B >okle*s and rates on application. spot, dale, rt of Hot and M. EEV1TZ K. F. ]). No. 3 Plainfleld, Phone, Millington 75 N. J. F. 4 Delaware Cliff Lodge An adult camp for 50 guests jn tne Mountains of Northern New Jersey Ail Land and Water Sports. Concerto. Dances, Discussions on Inv- esting Topics, under the Direction of Competent Athletic and Social Directors Bessie Blumberg, liodge Director Write for our Illustrated Literature N. Y. Phone Rector Htl FOR TELEGRAMS, ADDRESS Delaware Cliff Lodge, Post Office, Bushkill, Pa. " RHINEBECKvNEW YORK.. ADULTS A camp for young men ami women of refinement A beautiful lake, tennis, handball, etc. $35 a week. Send for booklet Now. The Riddle Precious Bane of Society By Mary Webb. A contribution to the "Refreshing . . . full of understanding of those interest, meaty and ex- who do wrong. ecuted with finished By Charles Platt craftsmanship." $2.00 C. M. C. $2.00 Common Sense The Silver Forest and Its Culti- By Ben Ames Williams vation Absorbing mystery in By Dr. Han bury Han- the winter woods of kin. Foreword by C. Maine. Best detective S. Myers. $2.50 story of the season. $2.00 E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 5th Ave., New York AlVJOQffYW niAI?V A graphic human-interest story of the IVIKJJK^KJ VV Lfl/AfS. I ijfe 0f the people in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth, $1.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. CHAKI.KS II. KEKR A: CO. 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago accept / ,f- • on Depressant non Habit Forruinj1 In Convenient Aluminum Boxc- At every drug store 3 T»h'rc- 15c 10 T.bln. <0, **• HEADACHE GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street New York REAL ESTATE CAMP GREATER UTOPIA A vacation around f«r grottm-upt LACKAWAXCN. FINN. Atop the Blue Mountains All facilities for all sports Diversified entertainment — Excellent Cuisin* Special offer. Take your vacation now and s*v« money. Railroad fare free to patrons who corns out for a two weeks' stay between June 26th and July 17tb. Send for Booklet, 11 West 87th Street, Wm. J. Perlman, Managing Director Dr. Wnx Diirant, Associate Director THE LLOYD, BeUport, L. I. On Great South Bay. Open June 28d Cool, Comfortable, Charming. Regular guests and week-end parties. RIVERSIDE-on-Delaware, Bushkill, Pa. A RESORT combining all home comfort, good food * *■ and many delights of outdoor camp life. Jew- ish cuisine. Social activities under direction of Hilton and Roxy. Booklet. Trout Lake Hotel and Camp iNcnr Lake George) rT,HlS place of natural beauty and splendor *■ in the heart of the Adirondacks is now under the management of I. B. RAILIN, formerly editor of the Friend and Educa- tional Director of the Workmen's Circle. An abode for recreation and regeneration. All aquatic activities and sports; tennis- courts, music band, dancing, concerts, read- ings, camp fires, etc. Excellent meals — High class American- Jewish cooking. All modern conveniences. Moderate prices. Fourth of July week-end— $5 per day. Write for Booklet or reservation to I. B. BAILIN Director Trout Lake Hotel and Camp Phone: Bollon Landing 60 F 21 Diamond Point, N. Y. ROAD to FREEDOM CAMP Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y. Education Recreation For Adults CAMP FORUM Weekly Schedule of lectures by prominent men and women in the Workers' Education movement. All sons of outdoor sports. Round trip fare $2.46 One hour's ride from Grand Central Station. For further information write for Camp booklet. Sunday morning July 18, A. J. Muste of Brook- wood Labor College will speak on Workers' Education. THE STUDENTS' CAMP Oliverea, via Big Indian Catskill Mountains, Ulster County. N. Y. In a beautiful, secluded mountain hollow where you may spend the summer interestingly, health- fully and cheaply in the company of intelligent companions. Swimming, tennis, sports, hikes, lectures, campfire discussions. $7 per week for accommodations, bringing own blankets and linen. $20 per week for board and vegetarian meals. Send reservations to Walter Siegmeister. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation F O V N P K I> Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESD \ V. JUL1 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS EDITORIALS: 70 Competition— 1926 Modol . , The Smell of Rubber _ . The King Can Do Wrong When Boewella Fall Out rARTOON. Bv Hendrik van Loon ;'".,,',";,""w"i 71 M»N Vl'lNi: ON THE SUBWA\ By Paul Blanshard Oil AND > THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE. By John B Jlh|SlCAHIN9A HOLE rHELESSO* OF PH, , HJ^^LIKBDMISSiONAKiES / '. ': ' B^i." % "' \lMir SEMP1 B McPHERSON. By David Warren Ryder IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter CORRKSPONDENCE Mna'ie Bring* Griefs. Bv Edward Sapir • • • • •• ••• ■• •■ £ : Bashklrtseff. Artist Mannue. By g Joseph Wood Krutch Beatrice Webb as Beatrice Potter By S. K. Ratcliffi Whv Work? Bv Walter James Shepard A True Epic. By Clifton P. Fadiman.. •;■•••• TheRoot* of the Modern State. By Lewis Rokow " toward Intellectual Emancipation. By William L. Lan, Armenia and Afriea. By Ruth 1 .or ledict Roustnn in English. By Louis R. Gottschalk . ^ Easv Going. Ry Lisle Hell Entertaining Persiflage. By Eliseo Vivas The Spirituality of Roughnecks. By Allen late 90 iks in Brief INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: . Danish Trade Unionists Report on Russia. By Marius Hansome... l VAI P GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate EnrroRS LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH „,„..,„. TTniTYlR LITERARY EDITOR FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK % AN DOREN -.TRlRt'TiNG Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager SUBSCRIPTION Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and : to Canada, S5.50. and to foreign countries of the Postal Union. S5.0U. THE NATION. 20 Vesey Street. New York City. Cable Address : Nation, New York. Chicago Office: 38 So. Dearborn Street. British Asent of Subscriptions and Advertising: E. Thurtle, M.P., 36. Temple Fortune Hill. N.W. 11, England. WHO CARES ABOUT TWENTY-ONE PEOPLE blown to pieces by the explosions at the Lake Den- mark naval munitions depot? Certainly the Rotary Club of Dover, N. J., does not seem overly concerned. After the towns and countryside about Dover had been blasted to pieces by high explosives ignited by lightning Senator Edge demanded the removal of such explosives from any inhabited area. He was confronted with a telegram from the Rotary Club of Dover indorsed by the American 1 and the Kiwanis Club. It asked him to stop his effor to remove the powder stores because it might injure Dover business! Prosperity plus explosions — "he profits most who serves best." But why be shocked by the philosophy of the Dover Rotary Club? Were not those shells which tore up twenty-one people intended to tear up many times twenty-one human beings in the next war? POOR PRESIDENT COOLIDGE is having a strenuous vacation. A more President might be allowed to lounge in peace in an Adirondack camp, but the candidate for renomination is forced to brave the man-eating moun- tain mosquitoes in order to live down that impolitic remark made a year ago about his inability to understand how grown men could spend all day hauling fish out of a brook. Thr piscatorial barrage of the Presidential press-agents h been impressive. Surely the remark is forgotten. The dear old public will henceforth enjoy its picture of an economical Izaak Walton enjoying his vacation in t ho wil- derness. Did not Economy Cal again refuse to ride in a special car, in order to impress the people with the need for saving? Only a few correspondents blurted out that the economical common car was attached to a Presidential special train. So the camouflage goes on. Is there not one man among this journalistic crew with courage and wits to tell the truth? The President is slipping, and he knows it. Three months ago he induced his Attorney General's law- partner, Mr. Stickney, to make the race for the Republican Senatorship from Vermont against Senator Dale, who had incurred Presidential disapproval. And now Mr. Stickney resigns — in Senator Dale's favor. What does it mean? Simply that even in his native State the President cannot (airy a candidate to victory. Senator Cummins is right: Mr. Coolidge is likely to decide before 1928 that he does nol want a renomination after all. TARIFF LOBBYISTS were conspicuous in the Chicago convention which nominated Calvin Coolidge to the Presidency. Tariff lobbyists and beneficiaries were con- spicuous in the debauchery of the Pennsylvania primaries. Now let us keep an eye on the Tariff Commission, packed by Mr. Coolidge with high protectionist handy men. Will the commission increase the rate on pig iron, to replenish the purses of the Pennsylvania corruptionists? The rate on aluminum is already high enough to reimburse Secretary Mellon in short order for his outgo on behalf of Senator Pepper's fruitless and costly campaign. But there are the farmers to placate if possible, in view of the Coolidge- Mellon-Pepper opposition to the Haugen bill. Will any- thing be done about the customs duty on sweet and sour milk, perhaps, to please the dairymen of Wisconsin before the September primary? Will the rate be increased on linseed oil, to fill the coffers of the small group of flax-seed crushers- — including Mr. Mellon — and to bemuse the flax farmers in Nebraska and Kansas, the Dakotas, Iowa, and Nebraska? These subsidies come from the pockets of the voter, and every one who votes may well watch, and ponder the relation between the tariff and graft in our national politics. ANDREW MELLON, millionaire Secretary of the United States Treasury, and J. Pierpont Morgan, head of the most powerful banking firm in history, have sailed to- gether for "vacations" in Europe; Governor Strong of the American Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, are conferring in France; the King of Belgium, serving as a smoke-screen for a commission of bankers, has been granted dictatorial decree powers with respect to finance in Belgium; while the French Chamber has refused similar powers to the Briand- Caillaux Government of that country, and it has accordingly fallen. These news items may appear unrelated; they are not. The franc is tumbling, and it is likely to stop tin -

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68 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186 bling only when France agrees, directly or indirectly, to accept control by the international financiers who are today the real rulers of the world. M. Caillaux asked Parliament to abdicate — to grant him full powers to do by decree what- ever seemed to him wise. The Left refused, because it did not believe in jictatorship ; the Right, because, while eager for dictatorship, it hated M. Caillaux. Now M. Herriot, leader of the moderate Left, will attempt to form a Cabinet. That he or anyone can long hold office with the present in- choate Parliament seems unlikely. For France must do one of two things— shoulder the burden of unprecedentedly heavy taxes, perhaps even of a capital levy, or obtain a loan by accepting the control of the international bankers. The succession of crises reveals the old forms of political de- mocracy struggling to maintain themselves against the new financial super-Powers. THE CHURCHES OF GREAT BRITAIN have thrown their weight to the miners' side of the coal strike. Backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the established and free churches have proposed that the miners return to work at the old wages and hours for four months with the help of a government subsidy, and that at the end of the four months they accept arbitration of the wage question. This would give time to launch a reorganization of the coal industry concurrently with a reduction of wages. The miners have accepted the proposal; the Government has refused. The refusal places the Government in an unpopu- lar position since the continuation of the coal strike may cost the country much more than a four months' subsidy. The encouraging thing about the crisis is that the churches are not taking the refusal of the Government meekly; they have become aroused to their moral responsibility for the miners' suffering. They are seizing a magnificent oppor- tunity to justify their own professions of social justice. SOVIET RUSSIA SEEMS still to be an abnormal coun- try: it has railways which make a profit. What is more, they are state-owned. The Moscow Finance Commissariat announces that despite the loss of 11,546 kilometers of the pre-war Russian railways to the Baltic states, new building has increased the total tracks in operation to 73,928 — actually 3,529 more kilometers than before the war and revolution. More than 200 million passengers were carried in 1924-25, and the figure for the current year is estimated at 300 million. Wages, too, are rising; but it is difficult for an outsider to understand how railwaymen live, even if their monthly pay envelopes have swollen from an average of $16 in 1923-24 to $29 in March of this year. However. other news indicates that Russia is not so different after all. "Doug" and "Mary" have just visited the Soviet capi- tal, and the movie-mad mobs there were as passionately enthusiastic as those of Madrid, London, or Los Angeles. THE NEW RAILROAD LABOR ACT is justly hailed as a forward step in industrial adjustment because it accepts the workers' right to bargain collectively through representatives and organizations of their own choosing. If the law had been in existence three years ago the Pennsyl- vania and other railroads could never have destroyed the shopmen's union and installed a company union with a mi- nority of employees. But President Coolidge has done much to discredit the operation of the new act by making the new Board of Mediation a dumping-place for deserving capi- talists and defeated Republicans. With a host of industrial experts to pick from he chose as the two leading members of the Mediation Board former Congressman Samuel E. Wins- low of Massachusetts, a manufacturer, banker, and cor- poration director, and Edwin P. Morrow, faithful Republi- can, ex-governor of Kentucky. This Mediation Board is important in railroad disputes because it appoints the odd member of any arbitration committee in case the company and the union cannot agree on a third party. Under the regulations the railroad representative can throw the choice into the hands of the Mediation Board by refusing to agree on a third member. So President Coolidge has stacked the cards against labor, and further discredited the theory that the "public" is a neutral third party in labor disputes. FOR THE CRIME of carrying on a strike in 1924, forty- four members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, thirty-eight of them women, were im- prisoned last month in the Cook County jail in Chicago for periods varying from ten to sixty days. Many of the women have young children dependent on them; two have children less than a year old. One woman returned from a Colorado sanitarium to serve her sentence. The charge was con- tempt of court, in violating injunctions which in effect made it illegal for a striker or a strike sympathizer to be on the same street with a strike-breaker. Judge Denis E. Sulli- van issued three injunctions of this nature, although there was no need for such drastic action. The report to the mayor of a citizens' committee thus describes the situation: The large majority of workers who were in the streets are women, certainly numbering under two hundred in the vicinity of Market and Jackson streets. To insure peace there were present in this same region over thirty uni- formed police, thirty-six plain-clothes detectives from State's Attorney Crowe's office, and well over twenty-five private detectives. The following statements as to the be- havior of the agents of the law apply with few exceptions. There follows a list of charges against these agents of the law of "profane, abusive, and obscene language," of violent handling of strikers and passers-by, and of wholesale ar- rests. The defense of law and order was directed chiefly by the special officers hired by State's Attorney Crowe. Mr. Crowe came up for reelection during the strike. One of his chief claims to worthiness, as he stated in a form letter which he sent to employers in the city, was his activity in preserving order in the strike. IN AN ERA of commercialized newspapers, when editorial policies are syndicated, it takes more than moderate courage to stand for the old and honorable tradition of independence which once animated the profession of jour- nalism. Two brave editors have received the violent thanks of the powers they attacked. Sudden death was the reward of Donald R. Mellett, editor of the Canton, Ohio, Daily He had been carrying on a vigorous editorial fight against the laxity of the police in dealing with vice in the town. Shots out of the dark near the garage of his home put an end to his campaign. George R. Dale, editor of the Muncie, Indiana, Posl-Dcmocrat, has lost everything but his life in a four-year fight against the Ku Klux Klan, which has fastened itself on the government of Muncie and of Dela- ware County. Dale tells of being attacked four years ago

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July 28, 1926] The Nation 69 by three masked Klansmen. In the battle he wrested a re- volver from one of them and shot him; no investigation fol- lowed. Instead came a series of charges against Dale, for carrying arms, for liquor violations, for libel, for con- tempt of a Klan-ridden court. Legally squeezed dry of all his resources, he now awaits review by the United States Supreme Court of one of the cases of contempt. The SI ipreme Court has declared that the truth of facts asserted in his editorial was no defense. It is less to be wondered at today that so many editors are tempted and fall than that men like Mellett and Dale stand and suffer for their principles. THE VASSAR JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDIES affords new evidence of the tendency on the part of at least a section of the student body in Amer- ican colleges to develop that capacity for independent effort which transforms the pupil into the scholar. The items included in the first number range all the way from the al- most inevitable study of Bernard Shaw to an article on The Crystal Structure of Metallic Tellurium and Selenium. and though it would be too much to expect complete ma- turity throughout most of the articles do satisfy the require- ments laid down by the editorial board to the effect that ch must either make a contribution, "however modest," to scholarship, furnish for the specialist a synthesis from hitherto uncollated material, or set forth some new and in- iting point of view. Such a journal is an admirable peda- gogic device which might well be imitated by other coll It sets up an extra-classroom standard and that, as every teacher knows, is a necessity for the development of work • approaching professional excellence. BARON BEXNO VON SIEBERT'S DEATH in Flor is worthy of more than passing notice in relation to the development of our present knowledge o icuments which have revolutionized the theory of war-guilt. As retary of the Russian Embassy in London he made a copy of all the communications which passed between Lot and St. Petersburg between 11)08 and 1914. A portion of these, published during the course of the World War, con- stituted the first considerable body of evidence in refuta- tion of the Entente Epic. A large number of these docu- ments were never published and remained in Siebert's pos- session until his death. Their future disposition is a mat- ter of real importance to students of the war-guilt problem. One of the most interesting things in Siebert's career was his clash with Poincare. In January, 1922, Poincare de- clared the most compromising parts of the Izvolskj-Sazonov correspondence to be a forgery. The Neutral Commission for the Investigation of War Guilt, with its headquarters in Sweden, invited Poincare to submit his proofs of the forgery to be considered along with Siebert's evidence for their genuineness. Poincare never replied to the invitation. TWO WOMEN with characters that broke through the straitjackets of conventional living have just died. One was Mother Alphonsa Lathrop, daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Dissatisfied with the intellectualism of the New England in which she grew up, she and her author- husband, George Parsons Lathrop, entered the Catholic church, and after his death in 1898 she joined the Dominican nuns. She gave herself to the work for incurable cancer patients which, beginning modestly in Cherry Street, New 5fork City, leaves its landmark in the impressive home now building at Hawthorne, New York. Gertrude Bell was like Mother Alphonsa only in the vigor of her personality. Forty years ago she began her wanderings in Arabia often disguised as an Arab woman, penetrated where not even white men had been before. Like Colonel Law she played a vivid part in the dark history of war-time intrigue in the Arabian peninsula, and her tea-room in id was reputed to lie more truly the seat of power than the British High Commissioner's office. She leaves her life-mark in the new British empire in Irak — which desert heat and desert passion are likely to sweep away long before Mother Alphonsa's bricks begin to crumble. IN COLONEL CHARLES A. WILLIAMS the United States Army lost a soldier who belied the theory that all army officers must be militarists. A quarter century is governor of the Sulu archipelago in the Philippine tropics, he set the army an example which went unheeded. One Sunday a crazed Moro, sworn to attain heaven by killing Christians, slipped inside the walls of Jolo, his barong hidden in his girdle. Before he was stopped he had wounded a dozen soldiers and six American bullets had entered his body. The shots, heard in the Moro village out- side the walls, started a rumor that the Americans were beginning a holy war. Tn a few minutes a thousand mad Moros, knives in hand, were yelling at the gates. Colonel Williams did not order the machine-guns on the walls to wipe them out. He bade his family goodby, disregarded the assurances of his staff that Moros understood only force, and, unarmed and accompanied only by an interpreter, opened the great barred gates and had them barred behind him. He told the rabid Moro mob the cause of the shots, invited the chiefs to come inside with him, and turned over the body to them for honorable burial. Life in Jolo con- tinued peacefully. In those days Colonel Williams and his friends traveled freely about the island of Jolo. The later policy of force made it unsafe for Americans to travel out- side the walled city. If only Wood and Pershing and the rest had been like Williams! PESSIMISTS WILL BE RELIEVED to learn that we need not wait until the extinction of the sun to bring about the end of the world. The source of the energy poured off from that orb remains so much of a mystery that it is impossible to predict with any degree of exacti- tude just how long it will last, but if we accept the con- clusions of an elaborate series of experiments performed by the late Professor Maquenne and recently made public our days are numbered as the result of another process of nature. Plant life, of course, depends upon the carbon dioxide in the air and, difficult as it may be for fresh-air fiends to believe, the amount of carbon dioxide is steadily diminishing. The supply which volcanoes, active in the world's youth, poured into the air is being gradually fixed by the plants, and that now supplied by the burning of coal is not sufficient to maintain the balance. When the avail- able supply has been reduced to one-fifth its present volume all vegetation and along with it all animal life will perish — exterminated .by the too great purity of the air. We might add, however, that the present generation need not alarm itself or even cease to make preparations for its immediate progeny. Professor Maquenne gives us two hundred and twenty trillion centuries yet to live.

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70 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186' Competition-1926 Model MR. 0. H. CHENEY, in a recent number of the Nation's Business, has given us a careful and withal a lively outline of the new twists and turns in the growth of compe- tition. This outline deserves careful attention. Those who took Economics 4 in college will have some difficulty in recognizing their old friends. Competition, according to the textbooks, took place between the same planes in the industrial flow from natural resource to consumer. Coal mine competed with coal mine, railroad with railroad, soap manufacturer with soap manufacturer, grocery wholesaler with grocery wholesaler, retail shoe-store with retail shoe- store. It was a knock-down-and-drag-out affair, but at least you had the satisfaction of knowing whom you were fight- ing. It was that short-changer Smith in the next block. Nowadays the sky is full of new, hidden, and terrible thun- derbolts. Hustling chain-stores, as impersonal as weighing- machines, home-to-home canvassers, mail-order campaigns, instalment sellers, trade-association drives, boomers, boost- ers, yodelers for this and that, resident buyers, "endless- chain" operators are upsetting consumer-buying habits, making consumers call for strange products, strangely named (mostly with words ending in "um") and carried on the spearpoint of national advertising, aye, even shifting population as the "Southland calls." The steady excess of returns to capital over returns to labor of the past generation, and particularly since 1914, has resulted in a vast excess of industrial plant ca~ pacity over normal demand. The amazing growth in the technical arts has provided the machines and the means for turning out goods on the principle of mass production very much faster than purchasing power, as liberated un- der the going financial mechanism, can absorb them. The owners of this surplus equipment naturally hate to see it standing idle, eating its head off in depreciation and fixed charges. And so the psychological stage is set for what Mr. Cheney calls "distributive pressure." the frenzied con- vulsions of business men to find markets and outlets for their products. It is this pressure which has burst through the textbook description of normal competitive economics at a hundred points, turned the whole process upside down and inside out, and created the new competition. Mr. Cheney divides the new competition into five main classes, as follows: 1. Intra-industria! competition. Manufacturers com- pete with wholesalers by selling direct to the retailer; they compete with the retailer by selling direct to the consumer. Retailers compete with wholesalers by organizing buying as- sociations; wholesalers compete with retailers by organizing chain stores. Chain stores and wholesalers compete with ifacturers by starting their own manufacturing plants. In this uproar distributors may find- themselves suddenly with excess capacity, thus creating a "merchandising vacuum," which results in a clamor for more goods at a quicker turnover. The stream turns and runs uphill. The pulling force to attract goods instanter leads the manufac- turer back to his sources of raw materials and supplies. He wants to control them; he does control them; the vertical trust moves a step nearer. 2. Inter-commodity competition. You are sick of paying rent and want to make yourself sicker bv building a house. The Associated Lumber Manufacturers move down on you, closely followed by the Face Brick Association, while the Pink Quartz Stone Fraternity lands in an airplane. Your roof is a bloody struggle between the embattled Na- tional Slate, Red Shingles, Sewer Pipe Tile, Sun-kissed Kop- per, Sea-Green Zinc, and Tar associations. Who ever heard of a lumber dealer doing anything but lambaste another lumber dealer? Now they kiss each other and form a trade association with a ten-million-dollar publicity fund to make the American populace lumber-conscious. The cotton men fight the wool men, and the silk men fight both. The oil men advance upon the coal men, and the water-power men swat both. Trade associations were unthinkable under the old competition — except at an annual banquet where each dealer brought his own chemist — but today distributive pressure has become strong enough to heal the ancient feuds to the point at least of getting together and walloping the gang with an alternative commodity to sell. 3. Inter-industrial competition. This is the most re- cent of the new forces, and, in the opinion of Mr. Cheney, the most important. It is also the least understood. It is competition of an industry for as much as it can get of the national income. Purchasing power being limited, and there being far more plants than can be kept busy, it de- volves upon each industry to grab all the purchasing power it can before the supply runs out. This is not lumber against bricks, but lumber against every other industry on the economic map. Make 'em lumber-conscious, shoe-con- scious, straw-hat-conscious, white-tooth-conscious, bad- breath-conscious, silk-shirt-conscious, personality-perfume- conscious, four-door-conscious, davenport-conscious, any- thing-conscious — before the consumer's bank account be- comes unconscious. If you cannot sell him on this year's wages, take a mortgage on next year's wages — and lo! the sky is black with instalment contracts. "The automobile boys put it over, why can't we?" The answer is, We do — to the tune of five billion dollars. 4. Inter-community competition. The plaintive yells of realtors, backed by local trade associations, to get people out of Yapptown into Papptown; the indignant answering yells of the Papptown men of vision ; the brotherly exchange of pleasantries between, say, California and Florida. 5. International economic competition. If you cannot sell it at home, can't you dump it abroad? With a dozen nations equipped with excess plant capacity, this question leads to lively times; and to the subcellars of diplomacy. When a certain pitch of liveliness is reached, men prepare to make the world safe for democracy — or for whatever other slogan comes handy. Mr. Cheney is big enough and wise enough to see the waste, folly, and possible social calamity which the new com- petition entails. He sees excess plant capacity as its root cause. But he does not see— or at least he does not say — that money in terms of use and want has broken down; a mere paper thing, a medium of exchange, is destroying us, and the most elementary common sense calls for a new orientation to neutralize the new competition. One sus- pects that a liberation of purchasing power is the key to that orientation, but one looks in vain for business leader- ship in that direction.

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July 28, 1926] The Nation 71 The Smell of Rubber Wibber burns it stinks. Ami when it gets into international politics it stinks. And the pre hullabaloo about separating the Moros from the rest of the Philippines in the interest of the American rubber cor- porations stinks to high heaven. Carmi Thompson, of the old "Ohio gang," is now in the Philippines surveying political and economic conditions there as "special representative" of President Coolidge. official status is ambiguous. When, last spring, the Senate asked Secretary Mellon whether any funds were available to cover his expenses a stall" of forty "experts" is reported to be with him— Mr. Mellon replied that he knew of none. Is the economical Mr. Coolidge paying for the junket out of his own budget? If not. who is'.' Is the War Department financing this convenient cruise, which keeps a capricious politician out of Ohio tor the preelection period, and, if so, on what basis? Whoever pays Mr. Thompson's expenses the purpose of his mission is already plain. It is to save the Philippines for rubber. "I hope you gentlemen in your wisdom will find a way to open, primarily for the benefit of your people, the public lands in your rubber section," he told the Filipino Legislature. The Filipinos, we gather, are by oppressive legislation keeping the rubber lands undeveloped, and in the interest of the starving Ford-owners of the world their rubber must be developed. The trouble is with Sections 23 and 34 of Act 2874 of the Philippine Legislature, which provide that not more than 1,024 hectares of the public lands shall be sold nor more than an equal amount leased to any single individual or corporation. This is the restriction which, we an is holding up the greatest rubber development in history. That may be, but 1,024 hectares are 2,530 acres, approxi- mately four square miles, and it would seem that with four- square miles purchased and another four square miles under a twenty-five-year renewable lease an ordinary rub- ber corporation should be able to do well enough. But the rubber corporations are not satisfied; they want land by the hundred or thousand square miles. These restrictive clauses are not products of a Filipino brain. They have come down in the Filipino statutes from the days when William Howard Taft, now Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was Governor General and very nearly czar of the Philippines. They are part and parcel of the conservation era of American history. In that remote period two decades ago American statesmen did not believe in giving away the natural resources of a nation for a song; they believed in keeping them until such time as they could be developed by small settlers or by the nation for the benefit of the mass. The Filipinos absorbed the lesson while we wTere forgetting it; hence the present-day difficulties of the rubber magnates. Yet Mr. Thompson, it is not rash to predict, will recommend a change. Naturally the Filipinos fear the development of huge rubber empires within their territory. Naturally they prefer small plantations. They know as well as the rubber companies what ghastly conditions of slavery have existed in the rubber areas of the Congo and Amazon forests. De- cent Americans are with them in their determination not to permit such awful conditions to be repeated in the island of Mindanao. Huge feudal landholdings have no proper place in the twentieth century. But, alarmed by the per- sistent propaganda of the rubber interests, the Filipinos are beginning to waver. Some of them propose to remove the restriction on the si/.e of landholdings if they are ired of their independence. The Nation hopes that no such bribes will be needed for the fulfilment of the Amer- of Philippine independence. Representative Roberl 1.. Bacon of New York propo lo save rubber by separating the rubber islands from the rest of the Philippines and retaining them under American supervision. Here again a few facts demolish a ton of specious argument. The island of Min- danao, where the richest rubber lands lie, is no such Moslem unit as Mr. Paeon indicates. Even apart from the sepa- rately administered Christian province of Misamis, it had, at the last census, 222,260 Christian inhabitants, 272,902 Moslems, ami 126,908 pagans. In all the settled portions the Christian population has been steadily increasing of late years, and, except in a few regions where Americans seem almost deliberately to have fomented antagonism, rela- tions between the Christians and Moslems have been good. Racially there is no difference between them; the religious differences will persist, but with the increasing use of English as a medium of communication the old difficulties disappear. Moro declarations of desire for American rule made since the arrival of General Wood in the islands may be taken with a grain of salt; the same chieftains made equally convincing protestations of yearning for independ- ence when Harrison was governor, and Hajji Buto, the Moro senator who is so constantly quoted in anti-Filipino propaganda, regularly votes for the annual independence resolution in the Filipino Legislature, and did so again the other day in the presence of Carmi Thompson. It would be an ineradicable disgrace to America if she permitted her Philippine policy to be determined by rub- ber. Carmi Thompson's mission will bear close watching. The King May Do Wrong NOT one of the sufferers from the ghastly New Jersey explosion of a Navy munitions depot can sue the Gov- ernment for damages. Our Government is still like the kings of old; in legal theory it can do no wrong; it cannot be sued. The only remedy is by private bills in Congress. But a change is due, for on June 10 the House of Repre- sentatives, without a dissenting voice, passed a bill pro- viding that the United States Government may be sued for injuries which its officers or employees negligently inflict, in the course of their official employment, on private indi- viduals. Heretofore the innocent victims of official wrongs have been left without redress, except against an irresponsi- ble minor official — a flagrant denial of justice. The fact that practically every country of continental Europe had long abandoned this unjust position and freely permitted the Government to be sued in tort, made little impression on our Government, and to this day Attorney General Sar- gent labors under the erroneous impression that the im- munity of the Government from suit is common to all countries. What finally moved the House of Representatives was not chiefly the manifest justice of the Government assum- ing responsibility, like any other corporate employer, for injuries inflicted by its agents, but the fact that the immunity from suit did not relieve the Government from trouble and financial burden. Instead of legal, complaint^

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72 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 31S6 took political form. The victim got his Congressman to introduce a private bill, which was duly referred to the Claims Committee, and there became the football of political bickering and political luck. The success of the claim depended upon the forcefulness or influence of its proponent and upon political and other considerations having perhaps only a slight relation to the merits of the complaint. A judicial investigation by the committee was manifestly impossible. Even less possible was it for the House or Senate to pass upon the merits of the case. Yet days are taken by Senate and House in each session for the con- sideration of these private bills, concerning which only a very few members can have any knowledge. The success of a tort claims bill depended upon many factors other than merit. Uniformity of adjudication was of course out of the question. Under the bill which passed the House property dam- ages negligently inflicted by agents of the Government would be redressible under a systematic form of investi- gation and adjudication. Small claims under $5,000 (prob- ably to be reduced in conference to $3,000) would be determinable in the executive departments directly respon- sible for the injury; claims above that amount would go to the courts. Personal-injury claims would go to the Employees Compensation Commission which has a definite practice and organized machinery for dealing with such cases. The responsibility of the Government for personal injury or death is limited to $5,000, a limitation upon which the House insisted. This gave rise to a protest from Representative Ceiier of Brooklyn, on the ground that property was again being preferred over human life, but the limitation is explainable by the fear of exorbitant demands. The Senate had earlier in the session passed a bill limiting relief in any case to $3,000 and giving jurisdiction exclusively to the respective executive departments. The two bills have gone to conference and probably at the December session a definite bill will be reported out and passed which will at last bring our law into line with that of most civilized countries. The horrible events in New Jersey should make the need of such a bill plain to the blindest, and this relic of medieval days when the king was held infallible and irresponsible should be discarded forever. When Boswells Fall Out IT will be remembered that Boswell did not speak with great tenderness of those who invaded his field, and in a similar manner those who claim to have enjoyed the in- timacy of Anatole France are now falling upon one an- other. The ingenious Brousson, whose book, so it is said, was held in the press because its subject inconsiderately rallied at a time when it was reasonably anticipated that he would be dead, got there first; but the others, in posses- sion of marketable scraps, have no intention of allowing him to be carried into immortality on his master's coat- tails if they can help it. Three other books have reached America and though none refers by name to the author . f "Anatole France en Pantoufles" two leave no doubt as to the opinion of the writer upon the subject of that gentleman and his fellows. Lewis May, France's English translator, contents himself with the happy epithet "backstairs Boswell," hut Michel Corday, having failed, apparently, to learn urbanity from "the Master," delivers himself as follows: "The spy, the scavenger, the emptier of cesspools, the sewerman perform their disagreeable office to earn their daily bread. But these people have not this excuse. They were earning their living before they began their foul work." And after can- vassing the names of Judas, Tartufe, Nero, Messalina, and others he comes to the conclusion that "the perfect, the typical example of the blackguard did not exist until now." "Anatole France was this," says one; "Anatole France was that," shouts another; but unfortunately all are at pains to' insist that though he was superficially affable to every- one there were few at whose assumptions of intimacy he did not laugh behind their backs, and so one is not with- out suspicion that he may be at this very moment joking with the illustrious shades about him at the nobodies who pretend to have known him so well. And yet, though none of the others is so wittily mali- cious as Brousson or so disregardful of the proprieties as he, they are all constrained to draw a portrait not essentially unlike his, and hence one not likely to encourage the forma- tion of too respectable a legend. When a great heretic gathers a wide following there is always a tendency to ex- plain at least half of him away. Rabelais and Voltaire have been disinfected for popular consumption, and it might not have been difficult to do the same for France but for these authentic anecdotes about the man himself — to have said that his scornful pessimism was only a garment and his fervent carnality only a fagon de parler. Thanks to the Boswells in general and to Brousson in particular we know that France practiced what he preached. From the pages of each book of conversation or reminis- cences, whatever its particular emphasis, he emerges as the Epicurean he professed to be, and as an ardently practic- ing amorist as well. Perhaps the author of "The Song of Solomon" was only, as Origen has persuaded the world to believe, using highly metaphorical language about the church, and perhaps, as some have seriously maintained, Omar Khayyam was a teetotaling Sufi who celebrated nothing more potent than the wine of the spirit; but the unregenerate will be safe, as long as the fame of Anatole France endures, in the possession of one hero whose devo- tion to the world, the flesh, and the devil was no mere metaphor. He himself had no desire to be admired for anything other than what he was. He despised "The Crime of Syl- vestre Bonnard," which enabled tender-minded people to like him, and to Nicolas Segur he said: "The widespread clientele would not pursue me were it not for sundry mis- conceptions." Now, there are some people whom scandal does not become. To have spread the story of Wordsworth's illegitimate child would have been indiscreet, for it hardly fitted his pi-ofessed character, but Anatole France had no desire to be renowned for virtues which he did not pos- sess. He might not have relished the picture which Marcel Le Goff draws of him sitting in his Touraine retreat, too consistently an Epicurean to risk his safety by too out- spoken opposition to the spirit of the war; perhaps, too, he might have squirmed a little at Brousson's exposure of certain petty human defects; but scandal in the ordinary sense could hardly touch him. "Think of it, my dear Mas- ter," said a friend, "old age isn't shown sufficient respect. We are treated as honorable and respectable old men: PI1 be damned if I want to be honorable or respectable." "You may take my word for it," replied France, "that I am not delighted with the idea either." and his biographers seem likely to spare him this last indignity. It is just as well.

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July 28, 1926] The Nation 73 30000 B. C. Mrs. Neanderthal: "It is perfectly scandalous the way they let those up-start Cro-Magnon people into our valley. We shall have to find another cave."

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74 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186 Man -Hunting on the Subway By PAUL BLANSKARD SIXTY-TWO striking workers of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York have been sued for $239,000 for violation of their "yellow-dog" contracts with the company which bind them not to join an independent labor union. The company has asked for a sweeping injunc- tion which, if granted, would place under a ban all strike meetings, all strike hand-bills, all peaceful persuasion of workers by strikers, and it might even restrain newspapers from encouraging the strike. The company has threatened to sue the New York Graphic for its harmless cartoon in support of the strikers which The Nation reproduces on this page. It asks that the homes and savings of the strikers be seized as payment for the fares lost by the company during the opening weeks of the strike. So the Interborough has brought to New York the tactics of West Virgin- ia. It is meeting with stubborn resistance ; the strikers are not terrified by the legal assault. In the huge hall in the Bronx where their strike meet- ings are held they receive the bulky injunction threat with jeers; their cheerful Irish leader, Edward P. Lavin, waves it in the air and shouts to a great throng "This is a bluff, boys, a dirty, cheap bluff. It means we've got the company on the run." A roar of approval greets him from the floor. These men who run the trains are a buoyant gang. the kind of men who win wars. They are not experienced radicals like the needle-trades workers; in fact, they are more familiar with red cardinals than with red agita- tors. They are all insiders, many of them fighting their first labor battle led by their own local leaders. There is something pitiful and heroic in their isolation. The Amer- ican Federation of Labor is not behind them; there is no fat union treasury for their relief. But they fight. Up on the platform the leader of the power-house men, who hasn't had time to shave in three days, -vaves his megaphone, and the chorus roars : "Hail, hail, the gang's all here." The justice of the strikers' demands is conceded even by hostile newspapers. Motormen and switchmen are strik- ing for 75 cents and $1 an hour in the most expensive city in the world. Motormen now get about $36 a week and switchmen considerably less. "The wonder," says the New York World, "is not that 700 struck but that 14,000 re- mained loyal." Many of the subway employees work ten hours a day seven days a week in the roar and heat of the crowd while their critics hurl epithets at them from the seashore. A guard receives $4.04 to $4.37 a day with no day off on pay. The platform men receive a maximum of $4.62 for a ten-hour day. Workers who are sick lose their wages; workers who need a vacation occasionally get one — without pay. Why do skilled men tolerate such conditions? One reason is that the Interborough is relatively poor. An- other is that the public of New York is indifferent; it is willing to ride on the backs of the Interborough workers until the workers themselves make an effect- ive protest. But why have not these workers made an effective protest before? Chiefly because the Inter- borough has built a pro- tecting wall against labor discontent, a company union that provides with its elaborate mechanism a most significant study in the technique of strike- breaking. When President Hed- ley smashed the old A. F. of L. union of Interborough workers in 1916 at a cost of over two million dollars the company presented to its employees the ingeni- ously constructed "Brother- hood of Interborough Rapid Transit Company Em- ployees" and compelled a job to sign the famous F.om the New York Evening Graphic, July 7, 1926 Remember! every worker who applied for "yellow-dog" contract: In conformity with the policy adopted by the Brother- hood and consented to by the Company, and as a condition of employment, I expressly agree that I will remain a member of the Brotherhood during the time that I am em- ployed by the Company and am eligible to membership therein; that I am not and will not become identified in any manner with the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America, or with any other association of street railway or other employees. . . . The constitution of the Interborough Brotherhood con- tains all the industrial-democracy jokers that characterize the company-union movement. There are at least five jokers plainly discernible in the constitution and its methods of. enforcement. (1) The employees have no free choice of their collective bargaining machinery. If 99 per cent of them become disgusted with the brotherhood and quit its meetings, the company may continue to deal with the re- maining 1 per cent as representative. (2) All matters of

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July 28, 1926] The Nation 75 "discipline and efficiency" rest with the c What are matters of discipline and efficiency? Anyone experienced in the industrial struggle knows how simple it is to dis- charge labor leaders aa "inefficient" unless the workers can force review by some impartial person of all discipline cases, (3) Mass action is prevented by splitting up the Interborough workers into locals without any general meet- ings. During the strike the policy has been to suspend all meetings; the company does not dare to allow its employees to gather together to face the strike issue. Those attempt- ing to attend irregular meetings are discharged. (4) There is continual petty bribery of company-union officials by special favors from the firm: reduced hours with pay, pic- tures in the company's house organ, and the like. This is accompanied by constant spying among the men and reports to superiors against the vigorous anti-company leaders. One worker put it this way: "If any stranger comes along and asks you, 'How's conditions?' you've got to answer: 'Fine. Greatest place in the world to work.' And if you don't answer that way, who knows, you may be talking to a company spy, and when you get to your terminal that night the boss may stop you off and say, 'What are you doing, Harry? Ain't you satisfied? Guess you better look around for another opening if you don't like it here!'" (5) The company union has stripped the workers of their power. Under it they cannot strike and they cannot unite with any national body which can supply strike funds. Nominally, the company must ai*bitrate disputes with its employees but the employees have no weapon powerful enough to compel the company to carry out an award in good faith. The company union as a strike-breaker serves two purposes. It provides deceptive pro-company publicity and it can be used as a legal springboard for injunctions. The Interborough strike is a battle between a small minority of the underpaid employees who dare to fight for better con- ditions, and the company. By the device of the company union President Hedley has been able to picture the strike as a fight within the labor world between a minority group of strikers and a majority of loyal workers. He accom- plished the crownin ity of refusing to arbitrate with the strikers because his company union wouldn't permit it. Of course the workers were not called together to vote on this question of arbitration. In asking for an injunction with damages from the Interborough strikers President Hedley is coupling the two most hated weapons of the employing class, the company union and the "yellow-dog" contract. This combination makes the Interborough strike of national importance. If it is possible to rob men of their savings for joining a union in New York, what may not be done by this combina- tion in Nevada or Los Angeles? The company's case is plausible. It says in effect: The majority of our em- ployees have formed a labor organization of their own. The organization has decided to make itself exclusive; no workers can enter the employ of the company without sign- ing a contract to accept its exclusive jurisdiction in indus- trial disputes. If employees resist the majority and de- clare a strike they are violating a sacred contract and must be restrained by injunctions and punished by damage suits. The one weakness in the logic of the Interborough is the nature of the contract which workers are compelled to sign. The worker who signs it in order to get work is not a free agent no matter how many times ancient judges may say that he is. He is an economic dependent forced to sub- mit to superior power just as a helpless pedestrian submits to the robber who points a gun at his heart. This common- sense interpretation of the "yellow-dog" contract may not win the support of the Supreme Court at the present time but it is the only interpretation that is workable in the industrial world. No company in the history of American industrial struggles has been able to collect damages from workers for striking, whether they signed pledges against striking or not. In the much-cited Danbury Hatters' case the strikers were punished not for striking against a con- tract but for secondary boycott of inter-State shipments of goods. We cannot buy workers as commodities while they are on the job and then hold them responsible for the con- duct of industry as soon as they go on strike. Oil and the Wheels of Justice By JOHN BILLINGS, JR. OIL lubricates everything but the wheels of justice. Mixed with money and poured into the court machine, it can so gum the works that the only output is an increased public contempt for the administration of the law. Twenty-five months ago indictments charging bribery and conspiracy were returned by a District of Columbia grand jury against former Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, Harry F. Sinclair, and Edward L. Doheny. These criminal charges were a direct outgrowth of the disclosures made by a Senate committee investigating the leasing of naval oil reserves at Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming. A year later, when the Government seemed about to be cheated out of its prosecution of this ex-cabinet officer and the two multi-millionaire oil pro- moters, additional indictments for conspiracy were brought against the trio. And during this two-year lapse of time not one of the defendants has been brought to trial before a jury. Not one word of evidence has been taken as to their guilt or innocence. They are, in effect, as free today as they were when they negotiated these secret leases behind sealed doors in the Interior Department. Their case represents a shocking example of the law's breakdown into hopeless delay — when wealth and powerful influences are brought di- rectly to bear. These last twenty-five months have been frittered away on one of the strangest mockeries of justice ever observed in the courts of the national capital. An endless series of technical appeals, demurrers, special pleas, and so forth, has served to muffle the real issues in these criminal cases. The whole purpose of the defense was plainly to stave off a jury trial until public interest waned, until important witnesses scattered or died, until something developed to obviate a direct court encounter on fundamental facts. Ordinary men cannot bend the courts so forcibly to their will. Every-day criminal trials in the District of

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76 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 Columbia go forward with a reasonable degree of celerity. You never hear of a plain defendant squeezing such incred- ible "benefits" from the courts as a two-year delay before even so much as entering a pleading. But this oil case is "different." Sinclair and Doheny are rich and influential. Fall was. a good Republican, and political factors are even now at work trying to shield him from the awful glare of a jury trial. About Washington the oil scandals have been relegated to the limbo of forgotten political issues. Interest in their prosecution has petered out in the newspapers. The details have become blurred in the public mind, thus giving the defense lawyers a free opportunity to employ their Fabian tactics under cover of a colossal popular apathy. There is in the District of Columbia a tricky law relat- ing to appeals which will not be found in any other juris- diction. This law, permitting an immediate appeal from an interlocutory order in the local Supreme Court to the Court of Appeals, afforded defense counsel a means of blocking prosecution indefinitely. Thus, as in the case of the second indictments, for instance, the lower court over- ruled a motion to quash and, instead of ordering the de- fendants to trial, permitted them to take this ruling to the higher court at once for review. Nine months were lost in such an irrelevant appeal, which in any other jurisdiction would simply have been noted in the record and considered in a final appeal after conviction. This practice could have been continued until Doheny, Sinclair, and Fall, to say nothing of the judges and lawyers, were all in their ■ had not Congress on the last day of the session changed the Lav, by prohibiting such appeals from interlocutory orders. This change did not come until Representative William R. Wood of Indiana, chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, had exerted all his efforts to kill the legislation. Wood is closely associated with the lawyers who are defending Sinclair, Doheny, and Fall. He was able to block the bill temporarily, even though he admitted he had never read it. In the end Chairman Graham of the House Judiciary Committee, whipped the measure through in the face of spluttering opposition. Perhaps this new law will help. Perhaps, as defense counsel are now secretly boasting, it will give them another peg for further appeals and delays. On June 30, 1924, Fall was indicted for accepting a bribe— the $100,000 in the little black bag— and Doheny was indicted for giving one. Fall and Sinclair and Fall and Doheny were likewise indicted for conspiracy to de- fraud the Government. The country, still sweating from the excitement of the Senate's oil investigation, braced it- self for further thrills in the trials. Here is the court record of what actually happened: July 7, 1921>. Consolidating all four indictments, the defense filed pleas in abatement, contending that an un- authorized person in the grand-jury room had vitiated the documents. August 12, 192 J*. Another plea in abatement, contend- ing that Senator Walsh had made a prejudicial radio ad- dress while the grand jury was sit ing. To these pleas the Government countered, doing its best to prevent the de- fense from tangling the issues of the cases on sheer technicalities. January 23, 1925. Argument on these pleas before the local Supreme Court. April 3, 1925. The Supreme Court quashed the in- dictments. Government counsel were forced to take an appeal to the Court of Appeals. May 30, 1925. Fearful that these delays would cause the statute of limitations to run against the oil cases, the Government procured two new indictments, charging Fall and Sinclair and Fall and Doheny with conspiracy. November 3, 1925. The defense filed demurrers to second set of indictments. December 28, 1925. The Court of Appeals reversed the Supreme Court order quashing the indictment of Doheny for offering a bribe and sent it back as valid to the lower court. Government counsel dropped the original con- spiracy indictments, deciding to press the subsequent set. February 15, 1926. Defense demurrers to second con- spiracy indictments were overruled by Supreme Court, but the judge allowed the defense, in an interlocutory order, to appeal this ruling to the Court of Appeals. This was done and argument on the appeal before the higher court is set for next October. February 16, 1926. Defense filed a demurrer to Doheny indictment reinstated by the Court of Appeals on December 28, 1925. On the record of this pernicious practice of dilatory appeals Congress has abolished th system, thus putting the criminal cases back to scratch in the Supreme Court for actual trial. Since the new law is retroactive defense counsel imagine they have been handed another opportunity for more delays, on the theory that a test of this enactment by higher courts is permissible. Senator Walsh and Atlee Pomerene, chief government oil counsel, are convinced that no such appeal can be taken until after the actual trial, as the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that procedural legislation may be retroactive. On the civil side the oil cases have gone more rapidly. The Elk Hills lease, which two lower courts voided at the Government's request, is now pending before the Supreme Court of the United States, with argument scheduled there for October. The Teapot Dome case, lost by the Govern- ment in the district court, has been argued on appeal before the Circuit Court of Appeals. These civil cases seem destined to be finished and forgotten before Fall, Doheny, and Sinclair are at last dragged into court and forced to stand trial for their deeds in connection with the oil leases. Bride By THOMAS HORNSBY FERRIL After the turgid incidence and when The last mad whispering had darkly blown Away, letting the woods be real again, He propped his elbow on a lichened stone. "I've climbed that mountain many times alone," He said at length. She stared, then asked him how One felt at timberline. He answered "One Feels much as we do now," remembering snow- That must have cooled whatever long ago Had cracked the rocks with terrible ecstasy. "It's not so wild up there, you feel as though Something were finished. You're at peace with sky And earth, as wre are now." She pointed where The peak seemed highest, whispering "Take me there."

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July 28, 1926] The Nation 77 Putting America in a Hole — the Lesson of the Debts By JOHN CARTER WHEN Balfour, as British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, sent out his famous note of August, 1922, in which he laid down the principle that Great Britain would collect from Germany and her allies only enough to satisfy the demands of the United States, he was guilty of a gratuitous impertinence toward this country, but lie set in motion a chain of events of which the parade of protesting French veterans in Paris and the Anglo-French debt agree- ment were the logical results. The "Balfour principle" became the cardinal point in British war-debt diplomacy — in default of any effective protest by our State Department — and was reiterated on timely occasions to such purpose that the entire onus of the collection of war debts and reparations by Great Britain was shifted from Downing Street to Washington. As though this were not enough, the British Government secured our assent to the principle that Great Britain was entitled to collect from France and Italy in the same pro- portion that we collected our debts from these counl thus making sure that we should receive all the blame for any stringency in the British terms. They got us botli v. The trap has finally been sprung. When the dust cleared away it found us without a friend in Western Eu- rope and with Great Britain acclaimed as "gentlemanly" by the Parisian press. We are in a hole and we may as admit it, for although we are sufficiently remote from Europe to dispense with the good-will of any confine Power, yet international friendships are not to be despised and international enmities are not lightly to be incurred. Let us presume that the object of British diplomacy in thus isolating the United States contains no threat. Prob- ably its only object is to deprive us of possible European support in our numerous disputes — oil, rubber, open door. seizure of cargoes during the war — with the British Em- pire, with the secondary design of putting Great Britain in the position of the middleman, or tertius gaudens, in all dealings between America and Europe. Such a position is exceedingly comfortable for the British and is not espe- cially ominous for us. We can let it pass. The French, on the other hand, have played true to form. Hypnotized by ingrowing megalomania, they have permitted the passionate reluctance of the continental debtor to pay any obligation and the unwelcome reflection that the position of victor in a European war "ain't what it used to be" to obscure the very real benefits which France has received from this country and could still obtain were better counsels to prevail at the Quai d'Orsay. With a naive and reckless mood of self-pity dominant, the powers in France have permitted — if not encouraged — the develop- ment of a persistent anti-American propaganda to affect the volatile mentality of the political Frenchman. While Ambassador Berenger at Washington, with the full sup- port of his Government, negotiated a debt agreement with the United States, the same Government permitted the active cultivation of a spirit of hostility to the agreement which it was negotiating. And when the agreement was out of the hands of the United States Government and before Congress France turned abruptly, held the veterans' parade, signed the agreement with England, and thumbed its nose at us. However, there is one factor which both Great Britain and France have left out of their computations, and this factor— Russia — is one which might be used by the United States to reverse positions with a startling facility. For both France and Great Britain have, in their anti-American antics, exposed their policies to grave inconsistencies. Let us first consider the matter of the Balfour prin- ciple. Great Britain owes this country $4,600,000,000. To serve this debt, Great Britain has funded the French obli- gations of $3,500,000,000 and the Italian borrowings of $2,500,000,000— a total of $6,000,000,000. In addition Great Britain receives a $50,000,000 annuity from Germany un- der the Dawes Plan. To be sure, the Italian debt agreement contained a proviso for the proportional remission of pay- ments in excess of those necessary to pay America, but the British debt system is further supported by the sum of $3,000,000,000 owed her by her Dominions, as part of the work of financing the war. This is not touched by the Bal- four principle. And then there is the trifling sum of $4,000,000,000 lent to Russia by Great Britain during the war. It is upon this Russian debt that the British policy breaks down. As her payments to America are already covered by her collections from France, Germany, and Italy, how does Downing Street reconcile its policy of fierce dun- ning of the Soviet with Balfour's pronunciamento? To collect from the Russians would expose Great Britain to the unanswerable charge of equivocation; it would make the Balfour note a lie. To cancel the Russian debt, on the other hand, would be patently unfair to France, Italy, and Ger- many, for Great Britain would thus gain Russian friend- ship at the direct expense of the French, Italian, and Ger- man taxpayers and by a deliberate policy of deceit. The only escape from the dilemma is to revise all existing Brit- ish debt agreements in relation to the Russian debt, and in this case the current agreements are stultified from the start. The second inconsistency in the European debt policy is the French attitude toward the Czarist debts, a total of 6,500.000,000 gold francs lent to the Imperial Russian Government as part and parcel of the far-reaching French military measures against Germany before and during the war. The argument of French public opinion toward the American debt policy has been, in -effect, as follows: "We fought your battles for you for three years before you entered the war. We saved you — and civilization — from Prussianism. We lost 1,500,000 dead to your 100,000, and suffered 3,500,000 casualties to your 200,000. We have emerged from the war victorious but vastly disorganized. If we put our dead against your dollars, you owe us far more than we can ever owe to you. The money you ad- vanced us was contributed to the common cause, and was entered as a debt merely as a form of accountancy. Lafa- yette and Rochambeau, Washington and Franklin, Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite! And so on."

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78 The Nation [Vol 123, No. 3186 Now, Russia fought France's battle from the first. More than that, Russia undeniably saved France from de- feat in 1914 and again in 1916. And Russia lost in the process 2,700,000 dead to France's 1,500,000, and 7,500,000 wounded and missing to France's 3,500,000. In fact, Rus- sia's human losses were almost precisely equal to those of Great Britain, France, and Italy put together. Again, Russia emerged from the war, not victorious but defeated. France in 1919 was the strongest nation on the Continent for the first time in a century; it found Russia dismem- bered, disorganized, her services to the Entente and to civi- lization forgotten, and her weakness an excuse for a series of the most mischievous and wanton intervention^ yet re- corded of European diplomacy. But do the French statesmen admit a gleam of tender- ness and hope to their former Muscovite partner? Does tne French public feel the outrageousness of demanding payment from Russia? M. de Monzie, head of the French delegation which I iated last winter with the Russians for recognition of the Czarist debts, succinctly expressed the attitude of the Quai D'Orsay in the following words: "From the purely French standpoint we will not forsake the mass of investors of small means who were the benevolent clients of that Russia of which the Union of Soviet Republics is the legal successor, and whom we are bound in honor to protect." It is easy enough to point out the inconsistencies of French and British debt diplomacy in the light of the Rus- sian loans, but it is a different matter when it comes to devising a method for our own Government to tal.e advan- tage of European inconsistencies as the Europeans have taken advantage of the policy of our Government — in con- sidering each loan as a separate transaction. The clear course of action for our State Department is to persist in its present policy of regarding each loan as a distinct operation. We have reaped all the disadvantages of this policy; now is the time to reap the benefits. We lent the Kerensky Government — or its agents in America — the relatively small sum of $250,000,000. Rakovsky is quoted as saying that in return for de jure recognition of Russia, his Government will promptly acknowledge this debt. To this, however, must be added the $100,000,000-odd investment of American capital in Russia which was se- questered by the Communist revolution. On the debit side, then, Russia has, as regards this country, a total of about $350,000,000. On the credit side, she can insist on American liability for the damage wrought by American troops in the Archangel and Siberian interventions. America can well afford to admit this prin- ciple, first, because, as a matter of plain morality, our troops had absolutely no business invading the territory of a friendly country, and secondly, because the number of American troops involved in these adventures was rela- tively small and the ascertainable damage they wrought was correspondingly inconsiderable. Let America, then, only insist on Russia's liability for the loan to Kerensky — as she has consistently done — and submit to a mixed commission the matter of Russia's lia- bility for sequestered American property and American liability for military damage to Ru =sian civilians. Each side would have too much to gain to permit the sessions of the commission to reach the impasse which blocked our attempt to adjust the similar controversy with Mexico. Once a general agreement were arrived at, it would place Great Britain and France in the following position: Against the $4,000,000,000 British loans and the $1,000,000,000 claims of British subjects, Russia could set the major part of the damage done in the Archangel affair and the immense sums due to Russia for the British opera- tions in the Caucasus and Siberia after the war. These two claims would more than wipe out any possibility of British collection. However, even if Great Britain uses the Rus- sian debt to cancel any part of this liability, in all justice to her other Allies — as stipulated by the Balfour princi- ple— she must reckon the potential income from her can- celed Russian loans in evaluating the total collected to pay America. In other words, Russian recognition of this debt, weighed against British liability, cannot honorably be excluded from the operations of the Balfour idea: Eng- land cannot use this Czarist loan to square her private debts at the expense of her Allies. Similarly, France would be compelled to acknowledge her liability for the Denikin and Wrangel adventures in South Russia, which would more than offset the Czarist debts. Of course, both Great Britain and France would vigorously contest these points, and their desperate efforts to compel Russia to pay would not only expose the moral weakness of their present posi- tion but would estrange them from the greatest Power of the Eurasian continent and would cement a diplomatic friendship between the United States and Russia. In point of fact, it is worth remembering that the United States, despite its economic quarrels with the So- viet system, has consistently defended the interests of Rus- sia since the war. America refused to indorse, at Paris, the Rumanian grab of Bessarabia, "sanctioned" by a con- ference at which Russia was not represented. Again, at the Washington Conference America arrogated to herself the role of trustee for Russia's interests in the Pacific and the Far East, and refused to sanction any settlement at Russia's expense. American diplomatic pressure drew the Japanese out of Siberia, and during the Russian famine in 1921 the energetic intervention of the American Relief Ad- ministration helped save Russia from catastrophe. The scrupulously cultivated friendship of the Russian people could be ours for the gesture of arranging a fair account- ing of the claims between the two governments. To be sure, one of the chief objects of European diplo- macy, and of its god-child, propaganda, has been to prevent Russian-American friendship. European governments can recognize Russia, and not abate their morality as capitalist Powers, but upon the American nation has somehow been foisted the role of the capitalist state par excellence. True, we do live under the forms of capitalism, and Russia does live under the forms of communism, but there is a good deal of communism in our capitalism and a good deal of capi- talism in Russia's communism. As late as December, 1923, President Coolidge, as evidenced by his message to Con- gress, did not seem to feel that the barriers between the two systems were insurmountable. Neither did M. Chi- cherin and only the eagle eye of Charles Evans Hughes detected insincerity in the latter's acceptance of the Presidential overtures. At the moment there is an American election on hand, and the Administration will certainly do nothing to pro- vide campaign material for its opponents. But once the election is over, the way will be open for a renewal of the endeavor to put Russian-American relations on a practical basis and, incidentally, to allow Great Britain and France to take a little lesson in diplomacy from the despised states- men of the United States of America.

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July 28, 1926] The Nation . I Never Liked Missionaries By LEWIS S. GANNETT YOU see a blank high wall breaking the monotony of the swarming close-built Chinese street; you enter a gate, and suddenly find yourself in a miniature Main Street. There are the square-set homely houses, the ample porches, the trees and green lawns, the comfortable space and leis- ureliness of Any Town in the U. S. A. There are romping white children in relatively clean, neatly darned clothes; the familiar smells of American food float out of the kitchen windows. It is the missionary compound. Large and small, there must be a thousand of them scattered through the cities and villages of China. They are the cent the greatest foreign propaganda scheme in history: ;. lither George Creel nor the Bolsheviks ever, in numbers, in money spent, or in system and method, approached There are some 8,000 missionaries in China, and of these more than half are Americans. An extraordinary missionary atlas entitled "The Christian Occupation of China." which in a series of graphic chai'ts portrays the invasion of this alien group, reports that whereas in 1907 37 per cent of the foreign missionaries in China were American and 52 per cent British, by 1922 the proportions had been precisely reversed. This Americanizing tendency is increasing, because America is now spending ten million dollars annually on mission work in China, and no other country can afford a tithe of that sum. Even the Catholic missions are passing from French to American control. In- creasingly, the missionary invasion of China is an Amer- ican campaign, conducted by Americans, with American methods of statistical efficiency, gymnasium camou mass-advertising propaganda, and Rotary Club enthusiasm. Some two and a half million Chinese now call themselve- Christians; more than 200,000 children daily attend the 7,000 Christian missionary schools, while 2,000 young men and women are in Christian colleges; and the 330 Chris- tian hospitals with their 18,000 beds form the bulk o decent hospital facilities of China. Now, I have never liked missionaries. My Unitarian- Quaker upbringing predisposed me against the militant conquest of souls, and I grew up increasingly skeptical of all those things of which a Christian missionary should feel most sure. It seemed to me that all religions were attempts from various angles to scale a mountain which reaches beyond the capacity of the human mind and that they fill in the unknown and unknowable with more or less satis- factory legends; that the function of the missionaries was to supplant native superstitions with unnatural alien super- stitions, paving the way for the denationalization of their victims. Certainly I have never felt that more vividly than when I watched an enthusiastic Minnesotan teaching patient Chinese boys to sing a hymn — which they could not pos- sibly understand — about the "blood of the lamb" ; or when I sat through a colorless church service in Chinese in a bare little barn of an American mission church stupidly planted in a colorful Oriental city. But I return from China almost converted. . . . What are the missionaries there for? The radicals of China say they are making the way easy for the im- perialist-conquerors; the Russians regard them as propa- gandists for capitalism; the foreign business men say that the missionaries are just stirring up trouble, putting fool ideas into Chinese heads; the old-fashioned circuit-riding missionary says they are there to preach the word of Jesus Christ; and the younger generation talk in terms of sanita- tion, modern schools, improved agriculture, and social work. In their way all are right. China has missionaries of every description, from the devout Inland Mission workers who used to wear queues and still go about in Chinese cos- tume, living on the rice diet of their congregations, the passionate fundamentalists who preach Christianity ex- actly as they learned it in tight little American villages, foreign patriots who identify their religion with their na- tionality, to medical workers who have forgotten creed in healing, teachers who are so absorbed in China that they remember America only when they have to ask for funds, community leaders who belong to the race of Jane Addams and Lillian Wald, and thinkers who have climbed to heights beyond the walls of any single religion. They are all there, and on the whole I think they are rather more liberal- minded than the people who support them at home. The red-hot days of 1925, following the foreign shootings of May and June, taught the missionaries things about themselves that they had never known, forced move- ments that had been long in germination to bloom early. New buds appeared upon the branches which the gardeners at home had never suspected were there. Every anti-for- eign outbreak seems to work changes in the missionary garden. "Rice Christians" who join the churches for what they can get out of it drop away; and the missionaries learn in blinding flashes what parts of their work have sunk into Chinese hearts and what have not. Some of them suddenly realize how far they have moved since they left home, how much more they care for China than for any form or creed. Historically, of course, the radicals are right. The stain of blood and lawlessness lies on the missions in China. The first American missionaries went to China as the illegal guests of a trading firm; and missionaries helped draft, after the First Opium War, the treaty that estab- lished extraterritoriality and gave mission work its treaty basis. Nor did those early apostles heed the treaty terms; long before the Second Opium War forced new concessions from China they made their dangerous way into forbidden cities. As recently as 1897 the death of two missionaries was used as an excuse for the great international grab game in which Germany took Tsingtao, Russia Port Arthur, Great Britain Wei-hai-wei and the Kowloon new territory, and France Kwang-chow-wan. Even today American and other foreign gunboats penetrate a thousand miles and more into the interior of China upon the excuse of "pro- tecting missionaries." However many the missionaries who have come to regret this association of Christianity with the foreign gunboat, it is natural that angry young nation- alists should call the Christian organizr 'loiis and their officers the "hawks and hounds of the imperialists"! Nor are the Russians so far wrong. Inevitably the

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80 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186 missionaries are apostles of the economic system from which they spring. Whether they are conscious of it or not, they are advance agents of the business men from whom they buy. As Mr. John E. Baker, who is in fact a sort of Galahad among business men, put it: The missionary home in the interior is a demonstra- tion of Western life with the comforts and all the means the Westerner has used to give himself comfort. Were the merchant deliberately to make a great advertising cam- paign for the purpose of putting up a demonstration of Western materials in the interior for sales purposes, he could not put up any better display than the missionary has done gratis. Naturally the simple coolie identifies the religion of the foreigner with his higher standard of living, and both with the system of production whence it arises. Too often the x issionary makes the same mistake. He is under fire, however, from both sides. The nar- row-minded little business communities of China detest the missionary as much as does a Bolshevik; indeed they class missionary and Bolshevik together. For the new national- ism is a product of the schools, and many of the Christian educational leaders have fanned the flames of discontent. Christian students have been shot down along with non- Christians in almost every one of the bloody clashes of native and foreigner that dot the calendar of 1925 and 1926. Chinese Christian leaders have sought to prove that they were no whit less patriotic than those who had not been contaminated by foreign religions, and many of the West- ern Christians in China have openly voiced their ;ympathy with the patriotic movement. Christian schools have cele- brated the national days of mourning and have officially participated in the huge patriotic demonstrations. An in- creasing group of missionaries has boldly entered the for- bidden sphere of politics and insisted that the spirit of Christianity requires abolition of the "unequal treaties." In the missionary body itself the debate has been hot and heavy. "Let us mind our own business and leave political affai's to those who are trained diplomats and capable of dealing with such matters," wrote a missionary veteran, Dr. Main of Hangchow, in a circular letter to his friends last Christmas. "These matters do not concern us as mis- sionaries." But, he continued, "If we are loyal subjects we should be grateful for what our Government does for us and ought not to sell our birthright simply to curry favor. . . . If our Government really wants to help China she should insist on extraterritoriality until China has a government that can guarantee law and order." Dr. Main is Scotch, but many Americans share his confusion. They say to the pro- Chinese "Drop politics ; we are here to preach Christ," and they themselves continue to preach the gospel of foreign intervention. How the bulk of lonely missionaries who carry on their work far from any possible gunboat protection feel I have no means of knowing. It is possible that they still think in the old ruts, as the treaty-port newspapers insist. But I doubt it. The missionary press itself reveals a profound ferment, a passion to justify faith by works. These men and women have seen their own converts and Chinese col- leagues watching them with doubt and distrust in their eyes. That Message to the Missionaries in China signed by the Chinese staff of Soochow University a year ago was typical : We have read some statements made by groups of missionaries in expressing their attitude toward [the Shang- hai shootings]. We appreciate their statement in regard to the spirit of justice, nationality, and fraternity which should transcend national and racial boundaries; their words of sympathy. . . . Time and again we have heard such expressions of high-sounding principles, but we have now come to the point where we find ourselves unable to have faith in words which are not validated by correspond- ing deeds. Furthermore, we desire to know whether or not such statements represent the consensus of opinion of all the missionaries in China. I have read scores of resolutions and hundreds of letters from missionaries all over China, and while there is many a voice to say, "Business enterprises would suffer most from abolition and we are dependent upon business men for a very large part of the means with which we carry on our work," a commoner opinion is that "More is to be gained by letting it be known that we are preaching our gospel with no dependence upon gunboats or laws which give us special favors." Dependence upon gunboats and treaties is only one symptom of the alien arrogance of the old missionaries. They believed it their duty to impose Christianity, with all its Western forms, on China. They never stopped to ques- tion whether, man for man, we Western Christians were superior to the Chinese. The Christian schools began as Western schools, taught by Westerners, largely as bait for converts. But increasingly they have focused on education as an end in itself rather than upon conversion, and the junior schools have been going under Chinese control; in the last year of ferment the colleges too have had to look for advice and leadership to their Chinese faculties. The change has brought some unlooked-for results. Two years ago daily chapel attendance was compulsory at virtually every Christian school in China; so were courses in religion. Today nearly half the higher schools have made both voluntary, and another year will see a change in the majority. The Government requires registered schools to eliminate compulsory religious instruction, to have a Chinese president or vice-president, and a Chinese majority on the board of control, and to declare that the propagation of religion is not its purpose. The Chinese — faculty and student, Christian and non-Christian — want registration, which opens the road to government jobs for the graduates; and the foreign teachers, sometimes reluctantly, are follow- ing their lead. "It would be un-Christian for a school in China not to do willingly what the Government would en- force if it could," says the president of a Peking college. And what modern government would permit a corps of aliens, teaching largely in a foreign language, propagating a foreign religion, to dominate its school system? Some missionaries are looking forward to a day when they will not be permitted to give even voluntary courses in religion. "But we can make our education Christian by the spirit in which we conduct it even if we are forbidden to give any direct Christian teaching," said President Burton. Schools like Lingnan University at Canton (where courses in re- ligion are voluntary) are doing that. Slowly and impressively China gathers into herself the men and women who work there and stamps them with its own ancient civilization. I once argued for hours with an old missionary vainly trying to find some virtue in the Christian teaching for which he could produce no parallel from the Chinese classics. Missionaries w:ho study Chinese thought acquire something of its tolerant eclecticism. The Chinese have never fought religious wars and cannot un- derstand our emphasis on doctrines, our conviction that religions must be mutually exclusive. Our little sects mean

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July 28, 1926] Thr Nation 81 nothing to them; if they accept Christianity they but add it to minds already deeply molded by Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist teaching. The old type of missionary who refused to show dis- trust in God by being vaccinated (the smallpox rate among missionaries in China is one hundred times that in the United States, and the typhoid rate is thirty-three times that of the American army) is fading into the hinterland. The new type is an emissary of athletic sports, of hygiene, of schools, of mechanics — needed in China, although in- corrigibly alien. Even he, I suspect, will find his role de- clining; as in Japan, the number of foreign missionaries is likely to fall, and the Christian church in China, if it con- tinues at all, may represent a new Chinese Christianity, as much modified by Oriental habits as what we call Chris- tianity has been modified, in two thousand years, by our Western history. The permanent service of the mission- aries will, I believe, be less in the religious field than as a bridge between two civilizations that had lost contact with each other. In the early days the missionaries forced con- tacts where they were not wanted; they can, and 1 think will, somewhat lessen the frictions of tomorrow. Bring- ing science to the Cast as a gift of God rather than as an efficient aid to lower production costs, the missionaries may soften the harsh process of adaptation to the industrial West, and ease the break-up of the ancient family system which is an inevitable part of that inevitable process. Romantic lovers of the past will deplore that necessity; but history marches roughshod over romance. And so, with scant faith in their gospel and no belief in the permanence of what they value most, I yet return from China half con- verted to missionaries. | This is the fourth of Lewis Gannett's articles on China. The fifth, China: The World's Proletariat, ivill 1 r in The Nation for August 11.] Aimee Seniple McPherson By DAVID WARREN RYDER THE mysterious disappearance of Aimee Semple Mc- Pherson, successful evangelist, and her subsequent reappearance with a tale of having been kidnapped and held for ransom are occupying the energies of two grand juries in Los Angeles. On May 18 Mrs. McPherson and her secretary were at Venice, a beach suburb of Los An- geles, for an afternoon dip in the surf. After the two had been on the beach for some time the secretary went to a nearby hotel to telephone. When she left evangelist McPherson was swimming close to shore. When she re- turned after a fifteen-minute absence the evangelist was nowhere to be seen. For more than a month she was missing. The belief that she had drowned had taken con- crete form in a memorial fund of $25,000 raised by her parishioners of the Angelus Temple, when an anonymous letter was given to the authorities by her mother asserting that she was alive and demanding $500,000 ransom for her safe return. On June 24 the evangelist herself appeared in Agua Prieta, just across the Mexican border, exhausted, as she said, after walking twenty miles across the desert from the hut where she had been held by her kidnappers, and from which she had escaped in their absence. Her story is a good one, but the skeptical point out that the evangelist was not more than ordinarily sunburned and that her clothes had suffered surprisingly little from the experience. There is evidence, besides, in the hands of the federal grand jury indicating that the letter announcing that Mrs. McPherson was safe had been received by her mother the day before the raising of the memorial fund was begun. These details and the inevitable rumors that gather about the secret hearings of a grand jury have created a sharp division between the true believers and the non- believers of Los Angeles. So aroused are the former to the defense of their leader that a body of them one day descended upon and destroyed a side-show which purported to tell in photographs the true story of the case. For in the short space of six years in the city of Los Angeles Aimee Semple McPherson has gathered a huge and ardent following. At the same time, and far more remarkably, she has built up for herself and her two or three close associates one of the soundest and most prosperous busi- ness establishments in the land. Nominally it is not, of course, a commercial concern. Officially it is dedicated to Jehovah, but it is none the less a vast business project; a religious factory where religion has been manufactured in huge quantities and then sold, both wholesale and retail, at a handsome profit. It is a tribute to the discernment of the woman that she proclaimed her "Bridal Call" and founded her "International Institute of Foursquare Evan- gelism" in the city of Los Angeles, where conditions of climate and the mental sea-level of the majority of inhabi- tants have combined to create a veritable Canaan for the religio-commercial entrepreneur. This modern Joan of Arc (single-handedly she has assailed the citadels of evolution, infidelity, and sin) was born in humble surroundings in Canada. Her father was a farmer, her mother had been a Salvation Army worker, who, according to press accounts, continued her religious interests so that Aimee was "brought up in an atmosphere which accounts for her career." At the age of seventeen Aimee was converted by Robert Semple, boilermaker by trade and traveling evangelist by avocation, and soon after- ward married him and went with him on a mission to China. There a daughter was born to them, and there Semple fell ill of a fever and died. His widow and the child made their way back to America, where, after a time, Mrs. Semple married Harold McPherson, an employee of a New England wholesale grocery store. They had one child, a son. Subsequently, after a number of separations oc- casioned by her intermittent soul-saving activities, they were divorced; McPherson going back to the grocery busi- ness and his wife taking up evangelism in dead earnest. Very early in her career she had evidences that she was under the protection of some superhuman agency. On the ship returning from China she was the recipient from unknown sources first of a purse full of money, then of a much-needed steamer shawl, then of various other valu-

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82 The Nation rVol. 123, No. 3186 able articles; and never thereafter did she want long for anything. She had but to register a silent wish, and from sources revealed and unrevealed came not only what she had desired but other useful things as well. Success seems to have attended evangelist McPherson's efforts from the start. Wherever she went, and she traveled into the East, the South, and the Middle West, she saved souls in large numbers, and her prowess spread. Soon she began to heal as well as to save. The blind, the lame, and the halt came to be touched by her and go away whole. From cities and towns all over the land came calls to her to come and hold healing services. She does not say so directly, but it is evident from all the surrounding facts that the money rolled in. By this time she had established a publication called the Bridal Call Foursquare, through whose columns, whenever she needed extra money, she sent out appeals for financial aid. Never, apparently, did such appeals go unanswered. Anxiety over money matters was always dissipated. On this point I quote the evangelist herself, as follows: "Several times when we were wonder- ing how to meet expenses the money came by mail from some child of God to whom He had telephoned." Demands for her services increased until she had to employ help — a manager of tours. She sent for her mother, Mrs. Kennedy, who brought organization and system. The business of soul-saving, healing, etc., was put on a sound, profitable basis, where it has since remained, with con- tinuous publicity and advertising to establish and main- tain good-will and keep things moving. As the result of this, Aimee Semple McPherson (she was using her full name now) became a national institution, making plans for a triumphant tour. "The Lord," she states, "had been speaking to me for some time about a transcontinental gospel auto tour." The tour led finally to Los Angeles, and ended. There the famous evangelist found her promised land. At her first meetings the people came in throngs, and before I had been there a week the largest halls to be obtained were far too small and she had to go into boxing arenas and parks, where police reserves were necessary to handle the crowds. It required no direct communication from on high to convince her that here she should pitch her tent and remain. Only she was not so plebeian as to pitch a tent. She drove about the town until she found a piece of vacant land suitable for a magnificent tabernacle, and this she bought. As far as I have been able to discover, neither Mrs. McPherson's autobiography nor her other writings describe exactly the source of the money with which she purchased the site and began construction work. There is some reference to collections, and she issued printed literature asking for help; but nowhere can I find any state- ment of how much money was collected or what the taber- nacle and its site cost. Judging, however, from the size of the place and its appearance, and relying upon news- paper reports, I should say that the plant as it stands rep- resents an investment of at least two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; a promotion feat truly miraculous when it is considered that it was accomplished in a little more than a year. Indeed, evangelist McPherson's money-raising abilities are phenomenal. Requirir;' a specific sum for some special purpose, say $25,000. she stands in the pulpit and announces this need as blandly as if the sum was a mere trifle; always making it plain, however, that it is for the greater glory of God. Then she says: "To begin with, I'll accept a thousand dollars each from just ten people. Who wants to be among those ten?" Usually there are fifteen or twenty hands thrust up, and then there ensues much good-natured colloquy as to which of the ten were first. Finally this is determined satisfactorily, whereupon the evangelist announces: "Well, now that we've made such a good start and got ten thousand dollars, I'll let twenty of God's children give me five hundred each." Instantly, as before, many more hands than the required number are raised, and again, after discussion as to who owned the twenty hands that went up first, the favored twenty are rewarded by a "God bless you, Brother Blank," "God bless you, Sister Jones," and so on. Then, to make the remain- ing five thousand democratic, the evangelist says with her sweetest smile: "God has given us twenty thousand dollars, and all we need is five thousand more. So I'm going to let a hundred of you dear children give me fifty dollars apiece"; and instantly two or three hundred endeavor to be among the favored one hundred. Nor is the method just described the evangelist's only resource. Sometimes she has relied solely on the printed word. I am fortunate enough to possess, among other literature from and about her, several copies of her pub- lication, the Bridal Call Foursquare. In one issue of this interesting organ I read: William Jennings Bryan, valiant warrior of God — defender of the faith of our fathers, has been called home to a well-earned rest. The sword has dropped from his hand, but ten thousands of hands are outstretched, grasp- ing the sword of the Spirit and pressing onward into the thick of battle. . . . Today the Angelus Temple membership, the Bridal Call family and Foursquare friends the world around are on the front line. Hands are upheld, bearing aloft the Banner of the Cross, and when a few days ago the word ca ne down the ranks — "Over the Top"— without a break in the lines, up they went, and over the $100,000 mark; lining the first rampart in the completion of The In- ternational Institute of Foursquare Evangelism. In this great School of Evangelism, God willing, there shall be raised up William J. Bryans, Abraham Lincolns, Warren G. Hardings, and Aimee Semple McPhersons, who shall carry the insignia of the Cross and the Crown up to the very doors of the national capital, into its legislations, and among the busy marts of men. . . . The first rampart has been gained and conquered. Now we are facing the second. The safety of the world is at stake! . . . No, you don't have to come to Los Angeles to join these ranks. The Foursquare Army is international and interdenominational. Pray that the Lord Jesus Christ will show you the way into the front line today. Ask llim, "What wouldst Thou have me do, Lord?" Then as He blesses you give that His children may be saved unto Himself, and trained for His service. . . . Use This Form for Your Subscription Dear Sister McPherson: To help enshrine the Bible in the hearts of the people, to help save our nation from the crime wave, infidelity, and sin, and to prepare the world for the coming of the King, I hereby joyfully in- close my offering for the Building Fund of the Evange- listic and Missionary Training Seminary. Just how many thousands of dollars came in response to this magnetic appeal, I am not advised; it appears, how- ever, from published accounts, that the whole religious plant stands today fully paid for in the names of Aimee Semple McPherson and her mother, Mrs. Kennedy.

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ruly 28, 1926] The Nation 83 In the Driftway THE parsons of Philadelphia, the Drifter reads, have refused their blessing to the Sesquicentennial because it is open on Sundays. The Drifter thinks that weekdays are drab enough anyway, and would not have Sundays made more so; but from what he has heard of the Sesquici nial — which seems to be a rather dull attempt to boost real-estate values in the swamps of South Philadelphia- he is not sure that it will help enliven the Sabbath in Mr. Vare's pure city. However, the parsons seem to have had no doubts; they thought the Sesqui a joy and a delight, and were therefore against it on Sundays. Sundays should be kept unpleasant. It is a horrid state of mind. ALL these troubles — the Lord's Day Alliance, the Anti- Saloon League, the anti-evolution laws, and the rest — are really women's fault. The Drifter has always sus- pected the women, but he was a little timid about expressing himself until he found that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that grand old warrior for the rights of women, was with him. Thirty-odd years ago she wrote an essay on The Effect of Woman Suffrage on Questions of Morals and Religion. Women, she admitted, would at first through ignorance abuse their power. Woman's religious bigotry was sure for a time to threaten the secular nature of our government. She proceeded to cite cases: To push what they consider a moral measure they have sometimes acted in violation of law. In the early temper- ance crusade in Ohio they walked into the drinking saloons, smashed the bottles right and left, emptied the liquor into the street, and then with hymns and prayers endeavored to impress their victims with the sacredness of their proceedings. This was the year of the Chicago World's Exposition, and Mrs. Stanton wrote: Led by the Temperance Association 100,000 persons, chiefly women, petitioned Congress to make no appropria- tion to the exposition unless the managers pledged them- selves to close it on Sunday, the only day in the week the masses could enjoy it. What an outrage it would have been to close that magnificent spectacle and drive the multi- tudes back into the crowded streets of the city! Yet this was the verdict of 100,000 petitioners, chiefly women. Mrs. Stanton concluded: There is no doubt that in their present religious bond- age the political influence of women would be against the secular nature of our government, so carefully guarded by the Fathers. They would, if possible, restore the Puritan Sabbath and sumptuary laws, and have the name of God and the Christian religion recognized in the national Con- stitution, this granting privilege to one section over another involving no end of religious persecutions. AS a male the Drifter is delighted to find this feminine support to his thesis. We have woman suffrage; and the evils Mrs. Stanton predicted have fallen upon us like a cloud of scorpions. "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Quod erat demonstrandum." Only, once in a while a feminine hesita- tion creeps into the Drifter's mind. After all, the hooded bigots of the Ku Klux Klan are male too. The Drifter Correspondence Mary Austin on Alcohol To the Editor op The Nation: Sib: The .Mary Austin article in your current issue me as being something really big; I would like to see her I worked out at greater length, arriving at the conclusion that the individual becomes civilized only when he uses his mind for his liquor cellar and learns how to bring himself happiness through the brewing of mental intoxicants. Vopeka, Kansas, Jun, W. G. Clugston To the Editor of The Nation: SIR: In simple fairness to their breathless public The Nation and Miss Austin should contrive an article supplemen- tary to Amorousness and Alcohol explaining what the original means. It is a joy forever to notice that Miss Austin, previ- ously celebrate for her laments on the progressive corruption of the American language by East Side foreigners, has now joined the medicine men. Her Aeolian multiloquence is, I take it, an example of what happens to the American Rhythm when it goes on a jag. Louisville, Kentucky, June 24 H. M. Rosenthal To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Mary Austin assumes, without proof, that amorous- ness diminishes with alcohol. But American amorousness has not diminished with prohibition. On the contrary, its manifesta- tions have increased. Space forbids enumeration of proofs, but I refer you to the press, the courts, police matrons, Judge Lindsey; to rescue homes, hotel-keepers, apartment-house own- ers, dance halls. The prohibition "raiding parson," arrested yesterday for "petting" with a married lady of his church, was presumably not stimulated by alcohol. Human nature always and everywhere has demanded occa- sional relaxation with some sort of "spree" or "orgy." Psy- chology calls it liberation of the subconscious. Hence our forefathers invented periodical holidays which fanatics per- verted into sabbaths. Whether we like it or not, social drink- ing: was a distraction from amorousness; it drew men together for masculine conversation, discussion, and pastimes, made or kept them manlike, while providing the temporary "escape from reality" which the tragedies of life demand. Prohibition, by reducing the ways of escape or relaxation for that general type of male that finds no relief in the religious jag, virtually forces him into a greater variety of feminine contacts than before; and the erotic current, dammed back into its primitive channel, flows forth with more powerful head. Self-control, never sufficient to stop but only to divert the libido, is weaker than ever now. Hence we have the increased amorousness, mostly illicit, of our blessed Volstead days. San Diego, California, June 30 Edward H. Whelan To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Amorousness and Alcohol sounds a far cry and it's all the more difficult to feel in accord with Mary Austin inas- much as there's little to indicate that biology is on the side of any form of prohibition. The effect of alcohol is to stunt sex-desire. Any one, saturated with corn-juice for a protracted period, loses the sex-appetite. But alcohol also stupefies the mind and weakens resistance; hence played so large a role in illicit amorousness and consequent trafficking. As a mat- ter of fact, I do not believe any one is yet in a position to state definitely in what manner alcohol affects the begetting of children. The large probability is that the sex-libido is not thwarted nor frustrated by anything we mortals can do. Stephen D. B. Hyllebourne Blue Island, Illinoi 24

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84 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186 Man Trapped To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In a letter in your issue of July 14 — a letter which I was astonished to find my good friend The Nation publishing without comment — one Austin Bothwell says definitely that in my novel "Mantrap" I mention the Royal Mounted of Canada but do not mention the provincial police. "The only policeman in 'Mantrap' is romantically a scarlet rider," he says, and he most generously explains for us the provincial force. Would it be bad taste to say bluntly that this Bothwell liar? If so, I will delicately observe that he is not dis- r accuracy. Among the few characters of the book are two provincial policemen, one of whom, Curly Evans, is a principal character. And he is spoken of as a provincial policeman, using those words, on pages 105, 166, 200, and possibly elsewhere. The other provincial policeman in the book is the theme of the scene on pages 49 to 52 inclusive. As to the peacefulness of the Indians — of course they are peaceful, of course they no longer go to war. But that would not prevent them from burning a store in protest if they were so long denied credit that they were starving. The incident is fictional and does not pretend to be anything else, and it could happen equally in peaceful Concord, Massachusetts. To say that Mr. Bothwell's beloved Crees alone among mankind could never be roused to resentment is scarcely a compliment to them. I expect to be lied about column of Mr. Brisbane, and the sermons of evang I and I should never think of answering them. But when our household religious paper The Nation admits to its columns such a letter as that of Bothwell, I close my Bible with a quick nervous snap, and speak thus in mild and mellifluous protest. Pequot, Minnesota, July 12 Sinclair Lewis Laissez-faire To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In his spirited review of "The Rise of Modern In- dustry," by J. L. and Barbara Hammond, Stuart Chase declares that the first factory acts "broke the sacred nonsense of laissez- faire." Slighting references like this to the ideal of equal freedom are not infrequent in the pages of The Nation. Are they justified? The term laissez-faire is difficult to render briefly in Eng- lish. It was adopted by the French economists, who ardently desired to destroy a social system based on privilege and re- place it by just laws under which oppression would be impos- sible. Gournay, the friend of Turgot, took as his motto : Laissez-faire, laissez-passer, defined by Leon Say as "Free labor, free trade, and free industry." To confuse this ideal of freedom with the industrial tyranny in England is to misrepresent its spirit and intent. The fac- tory system developed terrible abuses which Parliament at- tempted to check by curtailing the freedom of the employers, but it might have done away with their arbitrary power by re- pealing the legal privileges upon which wage slavery is founded. All the factory laws enacted since 1833, all the attempts to regulate the hours of work and to limit the employment of women and children have left us with the problem unsolved. State interference creates new evils in attempting to correct old ones. In Mr. Chase's own words, "The physical degradation abates a little, but the spiritual degradation of the machine grows more remorseless with the years." The "capitalist" has been made the scapegoat in order, it would seem, to shield the landlord. This becomes clear when we seek to discover why the laboring classes accepted such hard conditions. Manifestly, because they could turn to no alternative employment. Julia Patton says in her study of the English village that before the inclosure of the commons "the farm laborer had enough land about his cottage to supply the immediate needs of his family, and the right of pasturage for as many beasts as he could feed during the winter." The results of dispossession were "a class of independent, self-sup- porting laborers pauperized, driven out of their homes, and made either spiritless or defiant; ... an antagonism between a capitalistic employing class and a proletariat; ... a serious national problem bequeathed to succeeding generations." Robbed of their rights in the land, the peasants were driven by hunger to the factory gates, there to set up among themselves a cutthroat competition that left them no power of bargaining. The employers, however cold-blooded their at- titude, took an active part in the production of wealth. But the proceeds could not be shared by the producers until tribute was paid to the landlord, who contributed nothing to the en- terprise. Land monopoly is at the root of industrial servitude, but the landlord enjoys some sort of color protection that makes him invisible to the eyes of socialists. Regulation of industry by the state leads inevitably to a condition of servitude. No matter how wise the paternal gov- ernment, its wards are not free men and women. A "living wage," sanitary workshops, model cottages, and old-age pen- sions are poor substitutes for the free play of individual capa- bilities in a world who.se inhabitants are assured of equality of opportunity. The advocates of laissez-faire, abolitionists who look upon land monopoly as the modern equivalent of the slave system, cannot be justly accused of sanctioning the evils of industrial life. They offer a means, not of mitigating them but of ending them once for all by the immediate repeal of every legal privilege. Southwest Harbor, Maine, Jane 22 FRANK W. GARRISON The Unimportance of Railways To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In his article in The Nation on the General Strike W. N. Ewer dilates upon the completeness of the railway tie-up. He ignores altogether the obvious fact that a railway strike in England nowadays counts for little save inconvenience; so long as the strikers cannot control the highways and stop the streams of motor traffic a railway stoppage is of no vital import. It is a well-known fact that the railways in England are not pros- pering due to the tremendous development of motor traffic on the highways. Also, Mr. Ewer entirely ignores (as did your other corre- spondent) the fact that there was an absence of public support to the strikers so well-nigh complete in all parts of Great Britain that it was cause for common comment. What defeated the strike first, last, and all the time was the attitude of the people. Brooklyn, New York, July 5 Wm. TAYLOR Let Well Enough Alone To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: T shall not read The Nation more! I know you will not care! Your everlasting righteousness It drives me to despair. Think not that I joke or quiz! For on the square and on the level. I love my country as it is. With Coolirl.ee and the devil. Charles Edward Stowe Santa Barbara, California, June U

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Books Music Brings Griefs By EDWARD SAPIR Music brings with pause and tone Griefs more poignant than our own, Yet have her tears a starlike grace Forever set in Music's face. She weeps but willing tears that seem Enchanted in the eyelids' dream And fall not to a heaving breast, Unlovely, turbulent, distressed. Music wears her grief with joy, Holding her pain a merest toy And dancing with unruffled hair On the dancing-floor of her despair. Marie BashkirtseflP, Artist Manque Marie Bashkirtseff. The Journal of a Young Artist, 18G0- 1884. Translated by Mary J. Serrano. New and Revised Edition. E. P. Dutton and Company. $3. ''pO reread the diary of Marie Bashkirtseff is to become A aware of the fact that there are fashions in souls. To a generation eager to take at their face value the raptures and despairs of a facilely romantic nature she seemed an astounding phenomenon, but in this age which has its own spiritual fash- ions she seems almost as faded as the pictures which she and her contemporaries painted. A little before she came to the end of her page the sense of impending death, ceasing to be a romantic fancy and become a desperate certitude, deepened her tone, but death is the only reality in all the journal of which we can be quite sure. Of places or of persons other than her- self she tells us nothing that is not utterly commonplace, and she dramatized herself too constantly ever to have achieved that self-knowledge which she fancied she desired. Doubtless her diary, written with the avowed purpose of assuring her fame in the event that her painting should not be remem- bered, is nowhere deliberately disingenuous, but if she does not deceive others she deceived herself. Born of wealthy parents and dragged at an early age from city to city over the face of Europe, extravagantly praised for everything she did, and accustomed from her earliest memory to believe that she was destined for great things, Marie was a typical spoiled child. At the age of twelve, when the pub- lished portion of her diary begins, she was already cultivating her sensibilities and noting with pride the tears which fell as she wrote. At the same age she was uttering passionate prayers to God that her vanities might be gratified, and she remained to the day of her death less proud in any noble sense than merely vain. "I must be either the Duchess of H or become famous on the stage" she wrote, and this childish thirst for a distinction of some kind, no matter what, is the key to her character. A snob who would be satisfied with nothing less than great- ness in both the world of fashion and the world of art, she could not endure the thought that any circle should fail to respect her. Incapable of love, she constantly dreamed of in- spiring a desperate passion in some resplendent person; she de- voted a preposterous amount of time to her toilet; and she postured in her diary, constantly trying to feel some remarkable feeling or think some remarkable thought. And yet we have, throughout, not emotions struggling for expression but words whipping up an emotion to meet them. She admired whatever it was correct to admire and she doubtless believed in the dis- tinction of her own perceptions, but when she wishes to be poetic she seldom gets further than an "( li, Home! Oh, Naples!" and her criticism of art never ^re of her remark, apropos of Bastien-Lepage, "Tin it, but Nature Tuberculosis, apparently active 1 re it was suspected, gave her that hectic eagerness which has been re- marked in others with the same affliction, and she had i good many romantic novels, including those; of Ouida (whom she admired), but if the influences of disease and cheap fiction wen- taken away not a great deal would remain. The pictures which she managed to paint were only mildly distinguished per- formances in an insipid tradition and her diary contains no observations which are in themselves memorable. Doubtless an egotism such as hers has often served as the driving force behind artistic achievement, but it does not in itself constitute genius. Her ambition never really focused itself, never really went to work upon any specific thing. The desire to be famous never translated itself, as it sometimes does, into a desire to perform a great work, but remained a purely personal vanity. She never forgot herself in her art, never dreamed of a picture whose chief function was not to confer greatness upon her, and by that fact she is damned. She remained an artist manque because she was never really interested in art. Joseph Wood Kkutch Beatrice Webb as Beatrice Potter My Apprenticeship. By Beatrice Webb. Longmans, Green and Company. $6. T'HE ancestry of Beatrice Webb was a highly representative *■ compound. Her father was Richard Potter, typically Eng- lish from the west country, for many years chairman of the Canadian Grand Trunk, one of the earliest of those "capitalists at large" who have since come to rule the world. Liberal in spirit, he was conservative in politics, happy and energetic, and idolized by his nine daughters, of whom Beatrice was the eighth. According to his friend Herbert Spencer, whose the- ories and reasoning he good-humoredly despised, Richard Pot- ter was the most lovable of human beings. His wife was a scholar and a gentlewoman, who learned a dozen languages for fun. Wanting sons, she could make little of her daughters. They were original and self-willed; they refused to be educated, but none the less fulfilled the family destiny by making a series of splendid marriages. Always deeply introspective, Beatrice Potter kept a journal from childhood, and from her seventeenth year with remark- able fulness and regularity. The passages here quoted reveal this remarkable girl, encouraged by the best of fathers, read- ing where she pleased, and thinking in perfect freedom; and yet, at the time of her confirmation in the Anglican church, entering into a spiritual life wherein a deep skepticism con- tended with a vein of mysticism which survived all her most searching .xperiences. We see her in the early twenties play- ing uneasily and critically on the edge of London society, seek- ing painfully, through occasional gloom and constant frustra- tion, for a guiding principle and purpose, for a creed and a craft. We see her tempted for a while by the political scene — loathing Gladstone, and being attracted by Joseph Chamber- lain, seeing in the latter a destroying enemy of the Victorian Liberalism with which she never knew a moment's sympathy. We see her, as she is nearing thirty, freed from family obliga- tion, feeling after the new calling of social investigator, com- ing at the precisely right moment under the tutelage of Charles Booth, then starting upon his classic survey of the "Life and Labor of the People of London," the book in which all modern surveys have their source. We see her mastering the Booth method, and applying it in the tenements and sweatshops of East London, and later among the cooperative societies of the North of England.

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86 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3138 It was the search for an alternative to capitalism which carried Beatrice Potter into the study of the cooperative move- ment, that characteristic product of the English working classes. After toiling through masses of its deadly records, she found her way to a Lancashire cotton town, and, without revealing her identity, made friends with some of her own kinsfolk who had remained in the ancestral region. In let- ters to her father she drew charming pictures of the strong and simple life of the factory operatives and cooperators, noting in particular their preoccupation with Bible religion and the steady influence of nonconformist church life in the mechanism and habits of local self-government. The history of consumers' cooperation was a virgin field, and to this investigator, as it happened, the lack of historical training proved to be a providential circumstance. It drove her to seek the aid of an authority, and a friendly finger pointed to Sidney Webb, then the encyclopedic director of the youthful Fabian Society. They met, and she appealed for help. It was forthcoming with the immediacy, the order, and the copiousness which a generation of students and public workers have learned to think of as the triple mark of Sidney Webb. Pamphlets and memoranda, the author of "My Apprenticeship" sedately im- plies, were a prelude to Rossetti and Keats and flowing after- noons in Epping Forest — notwithstanding that, according to an emphatic early statement in the record, the receptive member of this wonderful partnership was "poetry-blind." Mrs. Webb quotes H. W. Nevinson as saying of her bril- liant young womanhood, "a rather hard and learned woman, with a clear and analytic mind," concerned with the condition of "an undefined and unimaginable class" rather than with the individual case. This is the familiar case against the Webbs. Does Mrs. Webb admit it? Not only so; she accepts and tri- umphantly answers; it: "To me a million sick have always seemed actually more worthy of self-sacrificing devotion than the 'child sick in a fever' preferred by Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh." That, surely, for the modern citizen, is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. S. K. Ratcliffe Why Work? Incent i 'fs in the New Industrial Order. By J. A. Hobson. Thomas Seltzer. $1.75. Free Thought in the Social Sciences. By J. A. Hobson. The Macmillan Company. $4. WHAT a remarkable record of productive scholarship Hob- son has to his credit! Extending over a period of forty years and embodied in more than a score of substantial volumes, not to speak of innumerable reviews and newspaper articles, his work reveals throughout a mind keen to detect the defects, to puncture the fallacies of current doctrinaire explanations, but as eager to modify his own previous positions if the evidence no longer supports them. In his two latest books we have per- haps not his most distinctive work, but certainly the ripened fruit of his scholarship and thought on as important and intriguing subjects as any he has previously treated. More perhaps than any other contemporary economist, Hobson effectively uses the newer psychology as an auxiliary. If an effective, it is also a dangerous weapon, so long as the battle of the psychologists continues. In employing an ap- paratus of instincts after McDougall, he lays himself open to the shafts of the behaviorist school. The suggestive little volume on "Incentives in the New Industrial Order" portrays the collar >e of the old order, already shaken to its foundations before the war, and in the last decade really crumbling before our eyes. Autocracy has failed in industry, as it has failed in politics. The democratic institutions which have displaced it in thf latter sphere have plenty of faults. But nobody seriously regards it as practicable to return to the auto- cratic state. Absolute government did work in industry, it may continue to work in some countries, and in some industries here. But it has broken down in the larger departments of great capitalism, and must be replaced by methods better adjusted to the psychology of the new situation. Mr. Hobson believes that in new and yet unstabilized industries, where risk is great and the requirement for large creative imagination imperative, the incentives of large profits must be preserved ; here the competitive system may be expected to continue. But those basic and essential industries which are proposed for nationalization have already attained a suffi- ciently stable and routine character to dispense with the high measure of initiative and enterprise which is so indispensable for success in the newer and less developed type. Furthermore, "a great deal of this initiative and enterprise has no rightful place in socialized industry, being directed either to the achieve- ment of profitable victories over trade competitors or the establishment of a monopolistic power to tax consumers or to the performance of successful coups in the financial sphere." But certainly some creative and progressive qualities must always be required even in public services, however stable, and these he believes will be secured from men "who combine them with a keen public spirit and a high regard for such distinction as the public services can be made to afford." May not, indeed, as R. H. Tawney has suggested, a different value scheme emerge in the new regime which will adequately supply the effective motives for industry? If it be said that this means a change in human nature, the answer is that human nature is a most changeable phenomenon and has always responded to the system uf institutions with which it is confronted. Certainly the medieval man reacted to different incentives and revealed dif- ferent motives than the man of today. The unchangeable character of human nature is one of the fictions which modern psychology is dissolving. In "Free Thought in the Social Sciences" Mr. Hobson discusses particularly the trammels to which the social sciences are subjected from their intimate connection with concrete interests. A disinterested pursuit of knowledge is possible only in such abstract areas of investigation as mathematics, where the active tide of human affairs is not felt. A purely objective approach to social phenomena is impossible. In describing the rise of political economy, in tracing the development of the neo-classical school, in effectively criticizing the theory of mar- ginalism, the author clearly shows how interest has at every turn prevented the dry light of science from shining undimmed. And the same perverting influence of interest is quite as notice- able in the more recent systems of welfare and proletarian economics. In the field of politics also there are identical obstacles to a disinterested study of the facts. "If such great minds as those of Plato and Aristotle could not disentangle themselves from current Greek sentiment toward barbarians, slaves, women, how could it be expected that modern political teachers, from Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke to Rousseau and Hegel, Mill, Spencer, and Bryce, should escape the emotional entanglements of their time and country in the pursuance of their 'science'?" Is, then, the hope for an effective and disinterested social science futile? Characteristically Mr. Hobson looks to psy- chology to provide the weapon with which successful resistance may be made to the inimical forces of special interest. An understanding of the nature and method of these forces, which psychology is already providing us, must liberate new powers on the side of "idle curiosity" and reveal the means of "keeping clean the intellectual instruments." By elevating to its just place the instinct of "idle curiosity"; by emancipating the social sciences from the service of the fighting, the self-assertive, the acquisitive instincts, a juster balance, a truer harmony may be attained in the life and conduct of society. In the long run truth must prevail because it is more pleasing than falsehood. To many this must appear a futile hope. But psychology

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July 28, 1926] ion S7 possesses one great advantage in its definite foundation in the objective facts of biology. When the clouds of war have cleared away, it ought to be able to supply the inductive and disinterested approach to social problems which hitherto has been lacking. In the meantime we can at least envisage those problems more clearly in psychological terms than in the out- worn and empty categories of economic law. Walter James Shepard A True Epic The Worm Ouroboros. By E. R. Eddison. A. and C. Boni. j:i. ' 'HPHE Worm Ouroboros" represents a curious voyage in the *■ antique. Mr. Eddison has dipped his hand in many a treasury. The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Ramayana, the Norse sagas (Burnt Njal, especially), Chaucer, Malory, Thomas Browne, medieval bestiaries and lapidaries, Anglo-Saxon charms, Elizabethan chap-books, the romances of the Middle Ages: all seem to have been laid under contribution. A rigorously con- ceived epic, the interest lies purely in the narrative. As Mr. Cabell notes in his preface, there is no hint of allegory, hardly even a suspicion of humor. The classical exigencies of the epic — that it shall involve a battle between two great powers, that our attention shall be particularly directed to the feats of one hero, that this hero shall emerge victor after a series of adventures mounting in complexity, that there shall be divine intrusion at one point at least of the story, and that the viewpoint of the author, if at all intimated, shall be conveyed by exaggeration rather than irony — all of these requirements are complied with. To give his narrative the appearance of pure romance, Mr. Eddison has nonchalantly indicated the scene of the action as the planet Mercury and has invented names utterly thrilling in their remoteness — Lord Juss, Queen Prez- myra, Brandoch Daha, Gorice the Twelfth, the mountain Koshtra Pivrarcha, and the city of Melikaphkaz ! Much of the style is unabashedly synthetic, but a chapter like that recounting the marvelous ascent of Koshtra Pivrarcha has a poetic boldness and masculinity that finds its meet parallels in Blake and Ossian. There is nothing of Mr. Cabell's pre-Raphaelitism : Mr. Eddison's affinities are with Snorri Stor- lusson and the Northern skalds. The narrative is prettily complicated and as prettily resolved, and though James Stephens's characterization of it as a masterpiece of English literature sounds like a Celtic exaggeration there can be little doubt that such fierce energy, such sheer story-telling ability is of extreme rarity. There are arid stretches; the copiousness of the style has an occasional smothering effect; the book is rather faite in the French sense than created in the English one; but how much may we not forgive a man of such primitive generosity that in this day, when analytical subtlety seems king, he dares to dower us with 450 pages of what "is neither allegory nor fable but a Story to be read for its own sake"? Clifton P. Fadiman The Roots of the Modern State The Political Consequences of the Re funnel ion. By R. II. Murray. Little, Brown and Company. $4. rT1HE period of the Reformation is a seminal period in the •*■ history of the modern nation-state. It marked the final eclipse of the medieval quest for unity. It witnessed the d< fini- tive end of universal dominion under pope and emperor. The nation-state alone then emerged as the ultimate social bond. To a Frenchman, a Spaniard, or an Englishman, the pope and emperor became merely foreigners. Assuredly this d is reflected in the political speculation of the period. In political thought the period began with the audacities of Machiavelli, and it almost ended with that livre de circumstance, the "Repub- ! he former deals with political art. the latter with political BCiem both theory and fact, art and science, pointed to the rise of national particularism. Mr. Murray's hook on the political thought of the Reforma- tion is hence of interest. In a brief introduction Mr. Murray analyzes the intellectual ferment of the period preeeding the •nation. He then frowns upon Machiavelli, but recognizes his historic significance. He shows how Luther crowned the state with divine sanction and how ho was ultimately instru- mental in making men more solicitous about, the security of their country than about tin- safety of their souls. Calvin's importance, he finds, rests not on his theory but on its special application by his disciples. He regards Bodin and his "Repub- lique" highly, for Bodin apprehended the practical convenience of an omni-competent state in a world riven by the strife of sectaries. He traces the anti-monarchical theories of the Prot- estant and Catholic writers, but he questions the sincerity of the latter because they were less democrats than Catholics. He concludes with a review of such British writers as Sir Thomas More, George Buchanan, and Richard Hooker. Mr. Murray's approach to his problem is that of the his- torian rather than that of the political philosopher. The his- torian emphasizes casual sequence, the philosopher stresses values. Our author is concerned mainly with the historical con- tinuity of a particular idea, with the influence of one writer upon another, and with the impact of a historic fact upon a political thought. Luther's predecessors and Calvin's succes- sors are carefully analyzed. But the problems of a world where the main concern was with the relationship of a supernatural religion to a secular state are not applied to a world where loyalty to the state has in itself become a religion. Lewis Rockow Toward Intellectual Emancipation The Limitations of Victory. By Alfred Fabre-Luce. Trans- lated l.y Constance Vesey. Alfred A. Knopf. $4. IX/f FABRE-LUCE'S book will retain its importance after 1 * • most books on the origins of the war have become hope- lessly out of date. It is rather an essay on the abortive peace than a treatise on the origins of the war, but the larger part of the volume is taken up by a discussion of the crisis which led to the catastrophe. M. Fabre-Luce, who published an earlier essay on the crisis of the alliances (La Crise des Alli- ances), has come to the conclusion that the ills which have afflicted Europe since the armistice are in large part traceable to moral causes. The peace was born with a curse upon it. Any sane person will admit now that the peace treaties were largely a product of the abnormal war psychology. The idea of attempting to shoulder one belligerent with sole responsi- bility for a world cataclysm seems to us as ridiculous as some of the peace terms were absurd. M. Fabre-Luce is convinced that there can be no real peace until the problem of war origins is examined and aired, until the average intelligent person, enlightened, has revised his notions and reformed his judgment. His book is intended as a "work of intellectual emancipation" and there is a highly interesting introductory chapter in which the methods of war propaganda are outlined and the story of the evolution of historical opinion on the problem is recapitulated. Two phrases which stick in the memory serve well as summary of M. Fabre-Luce's conclusions: "Germany and Aus- tria made the gestures which rendered the war possible. The Entente made those which rendered it certain"; "The only excuse for the Central Empires is that they gave peace some chances; the mistake the Entente made was in not taking advantage of them." The author by no means exonerates the Central Powers. In his opinion they set the pace and so im- parted to the crisis that mark of nrecipitation and baste

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The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186 which was in part at least responsible for the fatal outcome. The dispassionate tone, the genuine scholarship, the breadth of view, and the keenness of insight displayed in this volume are truly remarkable. Considering the youth of the author one marvels at the sm-eness with which he introduces factors of a psychological nature. He can see that though the acts of a statesman may have been mistaken, though they may be damaging evidence of lack of statesmanship itself, though, in fact, they may have been instrumental in precipitating the conflict, yet they need not necessarily imply criminal intent. On the major issues his conclusions, reached by an independent line of approach and by original research in the source material, are substantially in agreement with those of the leading writers of the revisionist school. Reduced to the lowest common denominator, the war was the result of the unfortunate concatenation of circumstances in the Near East, with the resultant revival of the Austro-Russian antagonism, the revivification and "Balkanization" of the two a.liance groups, the undue haste of Austria and Germany after the assassination of the Archduke, creating an atmosphere of feverish alarm and anxiety, and, finally, the Russian mobiliza- tion, which made the maintenance of peace impossible. One comes away from a perusal of the book with a renewed feeling that, in the last count, the history of German foreign policy after Bismark's fall is the history of a series of blunders. She had little to gain and much to lose by war, while with France and Russ;a the converse was true. So far as we can see at the present the ill-will was on the side of the allies of 1893. The German blunders proved fatal because France and Russia were ready to take advantage of them. William L. Langer Armenia and Africa The Mythology of All Races:. Volume VII: Armenian. By Mar- diros H. Ananikian; African. By Alice Werner. Boston: Marshall Jones Company. $8. T'HE mythology of the world is an obstreperous thing to *■ edit. The policy of this thirteen-volume series has been to allow each compiler and commentator a free hand with his ma- terial, whatever his special idea of the function of folklore stud- ies. Tn this latest volume the two surveys of Armenian and African mythology have nothing but the name in common. The one itemizes the characters of the Armenian pantheon as they are described in old religious texts, commenting on Semitic and Iranian origins. The plots in which they figure, Aramazd and Anahit, Ba'al Shamin and Nane, only occasionally and casually come in for comment. But this is precisely where the interest of the student of folklore lies. Every people has made over for itself the widely disseminated material of mythology and fitted it to the local pantheon. The present discussion of African mythology is written by an outstanding authority on the Bantu languages who has her- self gathered folklore in Africa in the native tongue. It is running commentary with illustrative synopses of tales, and it covers fairly well the types of traditional material that are current in Africa. For the explorer into strange patterns and curious by-ways the stories will be their own justification and the comment mostly gratuitous. Unfortunately, our English publishers have never provided a series such as the German "Marchen der Weltliteratur," where the stories are given un- mutilated and the editors' duties have been only to select the most telling or the most illuminating among the available variants. It is a wise limitation; nobody who has yet tried it has improved upon the naive charm of the native story-tellers, and even free renderings of interpreters do not give the delight of text translations such as those in Rattray's "Hausa Folklore." For the student of world mythology Professor Werner's comments are a strain on credulity. It is her article of faith that African mythology, except for insignificant exceptions, is indigenous and uninfluenced by European elements. If that is so, the output of the human mind is circumscribed in trivial boundaries; must it throw off among the Hottentot the reynard the fox tale of the lion's illness, even to the jackal's prescrip- tion that the king be wrapped in the warm skin of his enemy, the hyena? Or accumulative tales with the familiar water-fire- wood-dog-cat-mouse sequences of our childhood? Even the human tales of Africa, however alien the cultural details, are built upon the familiar motives of the False Bride and Frau Holle and Rumpelstilzchen, and the great proportion of tales are as familiar as the one of the loss of the magic spoon — which we knew as the tablecloth — followed by the loss of the magic cudgel that soundly beats the thieves. It is not in such uniformity that the human mind works uninfluenced from with- out. We have only to explore the American continents and the South Seas to determine the degree of difference. At whatever period in history, African folklore was deep- dyed in Indian-European elements. It may be that it is a part of a great myth-area that comprises India, Europe, and Africa, and that it is only in consequence of that old term, "the Dark Continent," that we are blind to age-long infiltrations. Or it may be that five centuries of Portuguese-Spanish influence have supplanted an older mythology which has left its traces chiefly in some stories of creation and of the origin of death. Very likely it is the latter. Certainly the student of folklore can no longer set down to the inevitable action of the human brain such a vast accumulation of similarity in trivial plot-detail as unites the tales of Africa and Europe. Once recognized, does this relationship not rather add to than detract from the curious charm of this African folk-art? Tales that we have thought trivial or wearisome in our col- lections are here seen with fresh eyes by men to whom story- telling is an exciting profession. They are turned to new and racy point, hit off with curious or barbaric detail. They have not deteriorated in the transplantation. Ruth Benedict Roustan in English The Pioneers of the French Revolution. By M. Roustan. Trans- lated by Frederic Whyte. With an Introduction by Harold J. Laski. Little, Brown and Company. $4. rT^O a student of the Ancient Regime who has been reared in * the school of Aulard, See, Becker, Dunning, and a host of other contemporary writers on the eighteenth century it comes somewhat as a surprise that there should ever have existed a doubt that Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, the Encyclopedists, and the other philosophes of the Aufklarung were the Fathers of the French Revolution. However, after reading Mr. Laski's introduction to the present volume and the author's own pref- ace, one recalls vaguely that Rocquain did maintain that the esprit revolutionnaire sprang into being long before the out- break of the revolution and that Faguet did say of the eigh- teenth century that it was "singularly pale between the age that preceded it and that which followed it." There was good rea- son, then, why Roustan, twenty years ago, should have taken up the cudgels on behalf of the Age of Enlightenment and written his "Les Philosophes et la Societe Francaise au XVIII« Siecle" to establish not only the superiority of the eighteenth century over the seventeenth but also the direct descent of the revolution from the philosophes. If, however, the only merit of M. Roustan's work is that he proves his theses, it is tilting with windmills to translate it into English in the present year of grace, when no outstanding stu- dent of the eighteenth century questions the legitimacy of the parentage of Voltaire and his confreres. The justification of this belated translation lies in the fact that the book not only presents a most thoroughly informed survey of the society of the Ancient Regime as examined through the eyes of the men

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July 28, 1926] The Nation so of letters of the period but also presents that survey in a limpid and eloquent style that alone assures it a place in the literature of history. While the author has used the memoirs and the political writings of the philosophes almost exclusively as his sources of information, his conclusions are nut different from the findings of more recent scholars who, like Marion and See, have laboriously groveled among cahiers, pro- vincial archives, and institutional statistics, and today stand in need of no essential revision. Several questions that even at this late date are in dispute find plausible answers in the present volume: why, for example, the philosophes conceded to Louis XV his title of Bien Aime despite all the suffering he brought upon his people; how Mme du Barry aided the cause of enlightenment by her active opposition no less than Mine ' de Pompadour by her active support; how the nobility both of the sword and of the robe aligned themselves almost un- willingly on the side of the Encyclopedists; why the financier of the eighteenth century was a more pleasant and intelligent fellow than his colleague of the preceding century; how the ideas of the philosophes spread among the poorest classes of society even though they were illiterate and submerged. One's only sense of irritation is over the liberties the translator has taken. He has freely omitted passages, not alone for the purpose of condensation but sometimes in the cause of expurgation. He has also added numerous footnotes without taking the trouble to indicate which are his and which the author's — a process especially confusing when he makes errors such as giving the dates of the younger Mirabeau when it is clearly the elder Mirabeau that the text means. Still the translator and the editor deserve praise and thanks. This — the first of a series of books on social and political thought in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present time to be edited by Mr. Laski — is an eminently happy beginning. Louis R. Gottschalk Easy Going Flight. By Walter White. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. ANY number of difficulties beset the path of Mr. White's heroine, but the flight is theirs, not hers. The novelist de- picts the life of a sensitive child of Creole blood transplanted from New Orleans to an uncongenial environment in the black belt of Atlanta, and traces her subsequent career in Philadel- phia and New York. But at each turn of the narrative where one looks for a definite crisis in the antagonisms from which the story is built up the clash is averted. As Mimi Daquin advances her problems melt like snowflakes on a coat sleeve, and — like snowflakes — one quickly forgets their pattern and almost doubts that they existed. Mimi has the faculty of averting every crisis simply by brushing past it to meet a new one. When she is betrayed she espouses feminism instead of the man and chooses the role of unmarried mother. When her child becomes a problem she places him in a home — without mentioning his race — and he is quite out of the story after that, except as a motif. When the gossip of her own people follows her, she escapes it by affiliating with the white race. And when business success and a brilliant marriage ensue with almost clocklike smoothness, she hearkens to the call of her own blood once more. Whereupon she simply walks out of the house — a "song in her heart as she happily strode through the dawn, the rays of the morning sun dancing lightly upon the more brilliant gold of her hair" — closing her eyes (with the author's connivance) upon a whole new set of problems resting on her doorstep. This, while it does not alter the significance or the sincerity of the novel, somewhat mars a sense of its reality. Woven into the texture of the story is a study of the development of Negro life in contact with American urban civilization, and here the work of the novelist is notably vivid and comprehensive. LlSLE Br.LL Entertaining Persiflag I'll, S <r//Y. Being the Second \ tin /'< mous Works of Julio Arceval. Edited by Salvador de Madariaga. London: Martin Hopkinson and Company, Ltd. 10 6. ■\ IK. DE M ^.DARIAG \'S conception is quite ambitious, but x ' his execution, one must reluctantly confess, is rather hum- ble. Bere were the possibilities of a truly great satire on modern civilization— or on civilization in general. Imagine archaeologists of the future excavating in America and Asia for the relics of a civilization said to have had its seat in a lost continent which a persistent tradition calls Eur hat pic- ture of our culture will they construct from what they find? The result, reported by Doctoress Bela to a notabl gathering of Ebonite scholars and their husbands, is extremely diverting. The solid arguments which the doctoress forwards to prove that Oxford was really the author of the poems hitherto at- tributed to Chaucer and Milton and Shakespeare and Kipling, and not, as some Ebonite scholars are inclined to believe, a person or firm responsible for their collection, is a mild satire on our efforts to reconstruct the past from insufficient data. But amusing as all these fanciful details are by themselves, they are incapable of making a book. The important thing is not what the Ebonites think of us but what Mr. De Madariaga thinks of them and of us. From this angle Mr. De Madariaga's book leaves a great deal to be desired. He sees civilization as a futile, amusing, often boring expenditure of human effort. He sees history as a repetitious tale told by an idler. No matter how it manifests itself, it is always the same old story. Human nature being unchangeable, progress is really the substitution of one social mannerism for another. Civilizations do not really differ essen- tially; what characterizes them is their style. Here we have a pessimistic attitude big enough to serve as the basis of a philosophy, and therefore solid enough to serve as the skeleton for a satire. So that the reader must reproach Mr. De Mada- riaga for his lost opportunities. Enmeshed in a great many clever fancies of minor importance, he has failed to carry out the idea dramatically in all its possible significance. The inci- dents in which he has chosen to give it artistic life are inconse- quential and the follies he has chosen to satirize are trivial. Intent on them, he has not seen the tragic comedy of civilization as a whole. On the other hand, he cannot be accused of dulness. Those who are acquainted with his books of criticism know that he possesses a mind remarkable for th« fine integration of scholar- ship and fancy, culture and urbanity which it has attained. These qualities he now displays at their best in his new medium. And he has buttressed them gracefully with a homely wisdom expressed in parables and proverbs the salt and reasonableness of which recall his immortal countryman Sancho Panza. Had he been writing fairy tales one would have no quarrel with him whatsoever. Eliseo Vivas The Spirituality of Roughnecks The Torrents of Spring. By Ernest Hemingway. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50. "C1 RNEST HEMINGWAY says he wrote this novel in ten -*-J days, and there is no reason for believing that Mr. Heming- way, besides being the best contemporary writer of eighteenth- century prose, is also a liar. The novel is short. But it would have done him or anybody else much credit had its author labored with its perfect style (perfect within honorable limi- tations) for ten months. "The Torrents of Spring" differs in important features from Mr. Hemingway's first American vol- ume, published last autumn; its differences from "In Our

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90 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186 Time" spring from a basically different intention. "In Our Time" is naturalistic fiction done for purely creative ends. "The Torrents of Spring" grew out of a motive a little this side of that; its motive is satire and, if one may produce an un- demonstrable but wholly convincing bit of internal evidence, its object is Sherwood Anderson's "Dark Laughter." "Pamela" is still worth reading; "Joseph Andrews" is better worth reading. "Dark Laughter" is a good novel, but, like "Pamela," it contains emotion in excess of the facts, and "The Torrents of Spring" is better worth reading. Lacking, as Fielding did in "Joseph Andrews," a motive originally cre- ative, Mr. Hemingway has nevertheless written a novel which is on its own account, irrespective of momentary aim, a small masterpiece of American fiction. Mr. Hemingway's consistently limited performance is not generally due to missed intention. He knows what he wishes to do; he usually does it. His intention is fundamentally op- posed to any other naturalism of the age. He gets his effects not by complete documentation but by the avoidance of ex- planatory statement; he keeps his explicit knowledge of the characters exactly equal to the reader's knowledge. Neither do the characters ever rationalize or generalize their successive predicaments. His naturalism is a modified naturalism, and its principles have become more and more unfamiliar since the influence of Zola caught up with the more difficult method of "Bouvard et Pecuohet" and obscured it; while Zola has actually instructed the American novel since Frank Norris, Flaubert has been simply admired. Mr. Hemingway, apparently careless about the choice of material, exercises the greatest zeal in isolat- ing its significant aspects; his selective naturalism achieves its effects through indirect irony, the irony of suppressed com- ment. Few of his characters are fools; all of them are Bouvards and Pecuchets in that their conduct is so arranged as to rouse the reader's sense of value to the appropriate judgment of it, while they are themselves immersed in a "pure present" and lack the power of generalizing it at all. "In Our Time" proved Hemingway to be a master of this irony. It is an irony pre- eminently fitted for sustained satire of the sort conspicuous in Defoe and Swift, and Hemingway's success with it in "The Torrents of Spring" is a triumph, but not a surprise. The material of the story is slight and insignificant in outline; a summary would be impertinent here. But Scripps O'Neil, Mrs. Scripps, Yogi Johnson, the big Indian and the little Indian, "Brown's Beanery the Best by Test," the drinking club of the educated Indians whence Yogi hears the "dark Negro laughter" of the ebony bartender after he is kicked out for being not an Indian but a Swede— these characters and places focus the best genial satire of the "spirituality" of rough- necks, the most deftly tempered ribaldry, and the most eco- nomically realized humor of disproportion that this reviewer has read in American prose. Allen Tate Books in Brief The Theories of Instinct: A Study in the History of Psychol- ogy. By E. C. Wilm. Yale University Press. $2.50. The plan of writing the history of the leading concepts in psychology is a good one, and Mr. Wilm has done about all that could be done to tell the story of how thinkers of other days and other ways thought about instinct. He realizes that until modern, even recent, days the topic was a subordinate one, finding treatment as it reinforced or could be assimilated with philosophical doctrines that held the c mter of the stage. The omnivorous interests of the Greeks included tangential con- siderations. Was the cosmos a blind or a designed construc- tion? Instinct as an accomplishment of ends without conscious appreciation of means (or with it) was a favorite means of reinforcing cosmic philosophies, bent in diverse moods upon reconciling religion and science. It is only in the doctrines of When writing to advei I ■ ■ Reimarus, an early sixteenth-century philosopher, that there appears a definite recognition of what the problem signifies in its own right. Other phases born of a growing psychologi- cal insight had to appear and disappear before the modern approach, for which the doctrine of evolution was indispen- sable, could assert its sway. The philosophical implications remain. The pessimistic interpretations of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, no less than the creative intelligence of Bergson, are rooted in views of the functions of instinct; and the same close association with the authentically natural and unconscious appears in the Freudian position. The distinctively recent interest is in tracing the play of urges, acting after the pattern of instincts and thus derived, upon the motives that keep the human world alive and so variously busy. It is upon the his- torical development that Mr. Wilm concentrates his convenient and critically executed history. Education in Soviet Russia. By Scott Nearing. International Publishers. $1.50. For once Mr. Nearing pleads no cause. But he is obvi- ously impressed with what he describes as one of the most vital educational experiments the world has ever known. This brief treatise upon the unique and conscientious attempt at mass education by the Soviet Government is written from the standpoint of the educator rather than the economist, and deals solely with the complex school system. As yet, Russia is a vast educational laboratory. The Russians themselves are aware of its tentative nature. They welcome criticism. Mr. Nearing finds a pitiful paucity of equipment and teachers, yet at the same time an indomitable eagerness, both on the part of the workers and the educators, for a free unified education, a wholesale dissemination of "socialized culture." The preva- lent belief seems to be that such ends can be achieved only through a system or plan which awakens in the student a consciousness of himself as a functioning social unit. The Dalton Plan was abandoned in favor of group study main- tained in close liaison with industrial and community life, and most of the academic programs are devised and carried out by student organizations under the jurisdiction of the Pioneer or Young Communist groups. Mr. Nearing's report is thought- ful and cautious, and makes no pretense at conclusiveness. Hunting and Adventure in the Arctic. By Fridtjof Nansen. Duffield and Company. $4. Anything Nansen may write is bound to have value and to be interesting. The present volume relates the story of his first entrance into the icy regions where later he accomplished so much basic work. Besides the running tale of what hap- pened to him and the good ship Viking, Nansen naturally im- presses every page with a profound knowledge gained after- wards; consequently the book is far more important than at first glance would appear. □ THEATER □ GRAND STREET THE 4th Annual Revue of Playhouse, 466 Grand St. Drydock 7516. NEIGHBORHOOD Evenings (Except Mon.) at 8:30. Matinees Saturdays. FOLLIES -THE THEATRE GUILD Presents. AT MRS. BEAM'S A Comedy by C. K. MUNRO with ESTELLE WINWOOD, JEAN CADELL. EARL LARIMORE. HELEN WESTLEY, HENRY TKAVERS AND OTHERS. GUILD THEATRE, 6i2L^ West ot B'way- Ev8- 8:3°- THURS. and SAT., 2:30. pleas entioTi The Nation

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International Relations Section Danish Trade Unionists Report on Russia By MARIUS HANSOME FOR some years students and itinerant delegations Russia visited Denmark to study the technique of Danish agricultural and cooperative activities. Meanwhile Danish industry and commerce have been tardy in reestab- lishing connections with their Eastern neighbor. Danish labor, too, in common with the majority of Western Euro- pean labor groups, has been wary of the Bolshevik regime. Last fall, however, at the invitation of M. Tomsky, president of the Central Executive of the Russian Federation of Trade Unions, seventeen representatives of fifteen Danish labor unions visited Russia, to study conditions and observe what results had been obtained for the working class. Of the seventeen members of the delegation eleven were Social Democrats, three were Communists, while thre< unaffiliated politically. Frederik Nygaard, poet and author, represented the intellectuals in the Studentersamfund. The findings of the delegation have been brought together in a volume, "What We Saw in Soviet Russia," which was pub- lished in Copenhagen early in 1926. "We who went to Russia as Social Democrats," said Chr. Bruun, delegate from the Molders' Union, in an inter- view published shortly after his return, "have not been converted to 100 per cent Communism. Though we are agreeably surprised at the amazing accomplishments in the cultural and industrial activities of Soviet Russia, yet features strike a person from a freer democratic country a bit discordantly." He deplored particularly the restraints on civil liber- ties, press, and speech, the almost fanatical deification of Lenin, and armed detachments of soldiers at factory gates. Russia gives tender consideration to women in confinement, allowing full pay for a period of eight weeks. However, it is not uncommon to see women perform the hardest and coarsest work, such as bricklaying and blacksmithing. Why this seeming paradox surprised the Danes, it is hard to say, unless, as highly skilled tradesmen and city dwellers, they do not know the life of many Danish peasant women. Bruun continues: We are of one mind in this particular, that a bourgeois reaction in Russia must be prevented at all costs, if we do not wish to weaken the cause of labor everywhere. On this matter Western European labor must be determined. And we Social Democrats of the delegation are in agree- ment further that labor throughout the world must rally to the cause of unity and solidarity; we must present a solid international front against capitalism and reaction, whose designs are the same in all lands. The delegation went from Leningrad to the Caspian Sea, through the Caucasus to the Black Sea, into the Ukraine and to the large industrial centers, and, finally, via Moscow back to Helsingfors. Since space forbids an adequate summary of the entire survey, it may be interest- ing to quote sections of the report on such points as the Russian unions and strikes, their political activity, and the special meeting to discuss international trade-union unity. Unions and Strikes Russian heavy industries are directed by the state and the method of solving disputes is by mutual agreement end arbitration between the workers and the Gov< rnn diets arise only where the industrial life has been interrupted by imperialistic or civil wars on the one hand and bureaucratic misunderstanding on the other. In both instances these conflicts can be solved peacefully when labor understands the economic situation, and the Govern- ment together with the unions usually terminates any abnormal condition without resort to strikes. Improved working conditions as a result of the rebuilding of industry have led to a marked decrease in the number of strikes, the statistics from 1922 to 1925 showing a decrease from 3.8 per cent to 0.3 per cent calculated on the basis of the entire union membership. The Russian unions regard a strike that leads to the interference with production as a less acceptable remedy for the solution of conflicts under the soviet system. . . . Strikes are usually of extremely short duration — the ige loss of time during the past three years has been only twenty-seven days. Arbitration was established as the normal method of settling industrial disputes by the All-Russian Trade Union Congress, which in 1924 agreed that All unions shall avail themselves of arbitration as the normal method of solving industrial disputes. Arbitration insures full protection of the workers' interests and the forward movement of industry. The percentage of decisions for and against labor as well as the compromise decisions reached in the arbitration courts is indicated in the following table for 1923-1924: To workers' interest Compromise Against workers percent percent percent 1923 45.4 39.6 15. 1924 36.8 52.4 10.8 Unions and Political Activity The unions participate in the entire political life of the USSR. Many union leaders are members of foreign delegations, Tomsky in London, Sapronov in Geneva, etc. Unions also look after the welfare of the soldiers and sailors. They take a vigorous part in campaigns, and especially in cultural work. The latter is done through the clubs, of which USSR numbers 3,417 with a mem- bership of 900,251 (601,412 men and 255,118 women). These clubs have divisions for sport, drama, choral sing- ing, science, reading-rooms, etc. Of libraries (reading- rooms) there are 6,803 with 8,414,040 volumes and 1,175,714 borrowers. Every month 2,380,011 books are lent. The clubs also serve as schools, especially for illiterates. ... Of this type of school there are 4,240 with 131,181 pupils, of whom 106,771 are adults. There are 4,500 divisions for physical culture with a member- ship of 350,000. The union educational work deals not only with general culture but especially with union problems. The Central Executive conducts a school and library where more than one hundred active members are prepared for positions of leadership in the movement. Similar schools on a smaller scale are distributed throughout industrial cities. Propa- ganda among the masses is carried on in the clubs. There are between five and six thousand of such union circl

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92 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186 That widespread ignorance exists among the general populace of Russia concerning conditions in other countries was delightfully illustrated in an address of welcome to the Danish delegation delivered by a woman in one of the provincial cities. She said: "During the Czar's regime none of us in the country villages could either read or write. Since the revolution many of the peasants can do both." Then pointing her finger directly at the well-set-up, edu- cated labor leaders of Denmark, representing a highly literate and disciplined working class she remarked: "Now, when you go home, prepared to make a revolution in Den- mark, then your peasants will also surely learn to read and write." The labor federations conduct a powerful press. Number of Union Newspapers in 192k Dailies 5 Twice a week 10 Thrice a week 6 Weeklies 14 Bi-weeklies 3 Magazines and Periodicals Semi-monthlies 2!) Monthlies 52 Others 7 In addition the various central executives of the unions issue numerous books and pamphlets dealing with the theoretical, practical, and historical phases of the trade- union movement. Conference on Unity In Moscow the Danish and Norwegian delegations met and it was agreed that a joint meeting with the Russian leaders should be held to discuss the question of the united front. A stenographic record of this meeting is included in the report, but since the single address of M. Losovsky, the chief speaker, covers twenty-four pages of six-point type, we must limit this description to a bare outline. Alfred Madsen, chairman of the Norwegian delegation, intro luced Comrade Losovsky, general secretary of the Red Trade Union International. "The working class of the world is divided according to political, religious, national, and racial characteristics — an uneven spotted picture, and to bring unity into this picture is a colossal task," began Losovsky. He gave the following as reasons for existing divisions: 1. Bourgeois influence over the labor movement, e.g., the Hirsch-Dunckers. 2. The difference in class level within the working class, e.g., the aristocracy of the skilled and the plebeian unskilled. 3. The bourgeois political effort to secure a trade- union voting body (what the Germans call Stimmvieh) as a basis of its party. 4. Coalition of a part of the labor movement with the bourgeoisie. 5. Collaboration of certain labor groups with bour- geois international institutions, such as the League of Nations, International Labor Bureau, etc. 6. Violation of the principle of democracy within the trade unions toward virile minorities, e.g., exclusion from the A. F. of L. congress of a Communist for introducing a resolution on the recognition of Soviet Russia. As hindrances to unity he cited the following points: 1. Rejection of democratic methods in the meeting of duo to the inability of the leaders to adapt them- selves to new ideas, new strategy, and to an acquired fear of the masses. 2. The belief of several of the leaders of the Amster- dam International in their inherent infallibility and life tenure of office, even to the point of making their position hereditary and self-perpetuating. 3. The feeling of superiority of Europeans toward non-Europeans — especially the Orientals; a superiority which reflects Europe's one-time financial and economic hegemony. 4. Unresponsive leadership; many leaders are mere excrescences on the body of labor. They are given to formalism, precedents, paragraphs, historical resolutions, instead of feeling the living processes, the growth of new facts. 5. The insidious development of bureaucratic cen- tralism in place of democratic centralism. 6. All forms of collaboration with the bourgeoisie. 7. The failure of labor representatives in the League of Nations to protest against the wars in Morocco and Syria. In summing up, Losovsky attempted to answer the question whether trade-union unity is possible as long as the political movement is divided. It is possible only when the unions create an atmos- phere in which there is frank and free discussion, while simultaneously submitting to discipline in the fight against capitalism. Can we create political unity by the liquida- tion of the conflict between reformism and communism? I do not think so. For these two theories are mutually exclusive. But we can create an organization in which the workers' interest can be defended against the common enemy. The Norwegian Labor Party points the way to such an organization. In the trade-union field we can point to the agreement between the English Trade Union Congress and the Rod Trade Union International. I believe we should call an international congress with pro- portional representation from all lands for the purpose of discussing unity. In the event that the majority vote for the Second International then the minority must abide by the decision, with the privilege of agitation within the organization, and vice versa. We are ready for such a congress. Can it be done? Yes, if we so will. If we do not arrive at unity soon, the bourgeoisie will celebrate its victory over our graves. Unity is not a problem in Russia. We have unity. Wo are smelted and forged and we hope to see the same united front in all other lands. Discission Alfred Madsen of the Norwegian delegation said: I concur fully with Comrade Losovsky in the reasons be assigns for the split and the hindrances to unity. . . . I believe that trade-union unity is possible without nolitical unity. I do not believe that a social-democratic ideology can be brought into consonance with communism. I shall not dispute why the split came; what is of greater importance is the way to unity, and on this point Comrade Losovsky was a trifle weak. Unity lies along the lines of the work of the English-Russian Committee with whose decision the congress of the Norwegian Federation of Labor agreed unanimously. Erick Jacobsen offered a resolution for the Danish delegation : The Danish delegation adheres to all efforts in behalf of gathering the workers of the world in a common inter- national through the summoning of a world congress, there to lay down such lines and rules as will be efficacious in the creation of a united front. L J

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July 28, 1926] We are in agreement with the expressed principli the English-Russian Committee. Our president of the Danish Federation of Labor, C. F. Madsen, voted for the English proposal to call a world congress at the last executive meeting of the Amsterdam International. Our delegation is of the opinion, further, that new developments have created an understanding of the nec-page book . . . f^ivini; the live?* an.) opinions of the great phil- osophers from Socrates to Sanlayana ... in a way ho sound, so human, so brilliant, so exciting • • • ( the italics ore ours hut the adj<*<"tivc8 belong to Van Loon, Dorsey, Dewey, Broun, Macy, etc., ete.) that it has become the best-selling non-fiction book in America ... the superlatives are Drentano's, Maey*s, and other repre- sentative book-stores, 35.00 every- where. Simon and Schuster Publishers of Books 37 West 57th Street New York City mmummammMmmmm m\ m\\\ — ura — iuitji tu»ui Mil Willi WWl fllUll ClIdlH Summer Read in Books from all publishers, books for all readers Delivered promptly to any address E. P. DUTTON & C0.s 681 Fifth Ave., N.Y. Summer Time! Camps, hotels, summer homes, boarding houses, — and those who seek such accommodations Those who have an apartment they wish to rent Those who want to rent an apartment we recommend placing an advertisement in the classified section of The Nation, as the best means of bringing the right person and the right place together. Rates on re- quest. Addres , care of The Nation. When writing to advertiaera, please mention The Nation

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The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3186 t Contributors to This Issue Paul Blanshard, at present attached to the staff of The Nation, is field secretary of the League for Industrial Democracy. John- Billings, Jr., is in the Washington bureau of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. John Carter is on the staff of the New York Times. Lewis S. Gannett, associate editor of The Nation, recently returned from six months in the Orient, spent chiefly in China. David Warren Ryder is editor of the San Francisco Review, a literary monthly. Edward Sapir is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago. S. K. Ratcliffe is a British journalist and lecturer. Walter James Shepard is on the staff of the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics in Washington, D. C. Clifton P. Fadiman is a contributor to The Nation and other periodicals. Lewis Rockow is author of "Contemporary Political Thought in England." William L. Langer is assistant professor of European history at Clark University. Ruth Benedict is in the department of anthropology at Columbia University. Louis R. Gottschalk is professor of history at the Uni- ty of Ln 400 < tisera, pirate mention The Na'ion

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The Nation POUNDED 1865 ■ — Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST I, No. S187 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS EDITORIALS: .. Those Debta The Problem of Crime Remains Next Winter in the Theater ;)t) Mexico vs. the Roman Church » CARTOON. Py Hendrlk van Loon . | PRICE-FIXING FOR THE FARMER. By Hennk Shipstead • 101 GLIMPSES OF ARTHUR GLEASON. By Helen Hayes Gleason . . . .. AMERICA SHOULD CANCEL THE WAR DEBTS By Philip Snowden 01 A WOMAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. By Mary K. Das. IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter }"" CORRESPONDENCE B For 'a Thief Lynched. By John Waldhorn Gassner Fra Elbertua. By J "1 Krutch ' ' Our American Empire. By Paul H. Douglas l Romantic " Spence Robertson ««» \ Poetic Palate. By Jacob Zeitlin Negro Eloquence. By Alain Locke Books in Brief INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Shrinking Globe OSWALD GARRISON VII. LARD. Editor Associate EDITORS LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH ,,..,,„..„ Editor Literary Editor FRED.f K1RCHWEY M*RK VAN DOREN CoNTRrntniNO Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico: to Canada, $5.50. and to foreign countries of the Postal Union. $b.W>. THE NATION 20 Vesey Street. New York City. Cable Address : Nation, New York. Chicago Office: 3S So. Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: E. Thurtle, M.P., 36, Temple Fortune Hill, N.W. 11, England. REMEMBERING THE LONGEVITY which Bernard Shaw granted to the most nearly ideal people who ever sat upon the stage, the he- and she-ancients of "Back to Methuselah," we suppose that he considers himself at seventy as very little more than an infant. The human world is so unwise, he then insisted, because it lives so short a while. Give a man several hundred years of trial and error, and he may possibly evolve a sensible method of con- ducting the affairs of himself and his fellows on the earth. Doubtless Mr. Shaw would like to learn that centuries still stretch before him, and we must confess that no piece of news would please us more. Threescore and ten years are not enough for such as he; — whether boy or man we shall not presume to decide. There still are those who denounce him as an international bad boy at the same time that they are worried over one who seems too wise for this world. We can only wish that such boys would be boys forever, or, failing that, could pass on into a green old age among people who not only tolerated but worshiped wisdom. THE CASE OF SUSIE BOYD proves that Richmond, Virginia, at least, stands for justice to the Negro. Susie forged twenty-two small checks, amounting to $183. Arrested on three indictments, she pleaded guilty, and, with- out jury or even counsel, was sentenced by Judge W. Kirk Mathews to ten years on each charge, amounting to thirty years in prison. Thereupon a crop of protests sprang up — not, as might be expected, from the Negro community. The white press of Richmond took a firm and dignified stand in editorials against the extreme sentence, and printed col- umns of letters of pn ime from Ne but most from whites. The News-Leader in an editorial pointed out that on the same day when Susie was sentenced to thirty years for a forgerj of $183 a white woman received a two-year suspended sentence for shoplifting goods to the value of $13,000. The Times-Dispatch asked the court's leave to join as an amicus curiae in a plea for a reopening of the case, which was made by II. W. Oppenheimer, a white lawyer who volunteered his services in Susie's defense. Finally, on the ground that Susie was mentally subnormal and did not understand her right to a counsel and a jury, Judge Mathews reopened the case and reduced the sentence from thirty years to six. The News-Leader commends Judge Mathews for his courage in openly admitting and correcting a serious mistake. To this praise we gladly add our own hearty commendation of the News-Leader, the Times-Dispatck, and 1h"> citizens of Richmond. They made real the old theory that all are equal before the law. ILLINOIS REPUBLICANS do not spend money as \r as Mr. Mellon's friends in Pennsylvania, but they spend plenty. Each of the two Senatorial candidates admits spending about a quarter of a million dollars, which in the ancient days of Newberry, five or six years ago, would have shocked the country. One traction magnate presented the successful Republican candidate with $125,000, and then reinsured himself by offering $15,000 to the successful Democrat. He was a good guesser. As in Pennsylvania, most of the transactions were in cash, which facilitates the covering-up process when the investigators come around. The cheerful aspect of the Chicago situation is that there appears to be something of a civic revolt against this orgy. Illinois is not quite as contentedly corrupt as Pennsylvania. TEXAS IS STILL a lone star. She insists upon bursting into the news in her own way. She did not stage a national "monkey trial": but she quietly told the textbook publishers just how to eliminate evolution from the copies sold in Texas (and they did it) ; and she has a roaring fundamentalist parson who can quietly murder a political enemy in the church study, then post a small bail, and con- tinue preaching to still larger audiences. And she has "Ma" Ferguson, the first woman Governor in these United States. Even in the manner of her defeat "Ma" maintained the Texas tradition. She promised to resign if she did not lead her opponent, Attorney General Dan Moody, by 25,000 votes in the primary, and the Attorney General matched her by agreeing to resign his office if he did not lead. Texas was evidently tired of being governed by "Jim" Ferguson through his wife, and gave Moody a clear majority. It is a singular fact that while there have been good women in our Congress, as in the German Reichstag, the House of Commons, and the Scandinavian legislatures, not one woman has yet achieved real distinction as a legislator or executive. Is it because women are too intelligent to devote themselves to politics? Or mere accident? And will Judge Florence Allen defeat Atlee Pomerene for the Democratic nomination for United States Senator from Ohio, and break the spell? We hope so.

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96 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3187 THE STRIKING EMPLOYEES of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company had their first taste of violence at the hands of twenty-five detectives of New York's Indus- trial Squad who were waiting for them outside Manhattan Casino, the strikers' meeting-place, where they had been holding a meeting. The one striker who was arrested is lying in the hospital with broken ribs and a possible frac- tured skull. Responsibility for the incident has not been fixed, but the company's officials are known to have kept the police informed of the activities of the strikers, and on that evening had reported that the audience in the Casino was listening to "inflammatory speeches." Not to be out- done the police of Passaic have a bigger and better brawl to their credit. Four hundred fur workers of New York, recently victorious in their own strike, went in trucks and buses to Ukrainian Hall in Passaic for a meeting with several thousand textile strikers in support of the relief plans of the United Front Committee. The police first objected to the fur workers' placards, then declared the string of conveyances a parade and attempted to send the fur workers back to New York without the buses which had brought them. Fighting followed, with six arrests. The orgy of police violence which has characterized recent strikes in ostensibly civilized areas must have persuaded many persons even outside the ranks of the strikers that the police can generally be found on the side not of "law and order" but of the employers. THE GALAXY OF EX-PREMIERS in the new French Cabinet is impressive — and depressing. Here is Poincare himself, one of the makers of the Russ.an alliance before the war, and author of the Ruhr invasion which heaped high the debt of France. Here is Briand, the chameleon, ten times Premier, who has espoused every policy on the compass of French politics. Here are Barthou, author of the three-year military-service law; the amiable Leygues; and Painleve, who waged the war on Abd-el-Krim; here, curiously, is Herriot, the genial leader of the radical Left, who ousted the Briand-Caillaux combination, failed to win the Chamber for himself, and now accepts a humble position as Minister of Public Instruction with men whom he has all his life fought. Here, too, are Louis Marin, who still fights the Germans in his every speech; Andre Tardieu, with his past of colonial scandal; and Albert Sarraut, a nominal radical who has always succeeded in working with Poincare. It is a Cabinet of great names — many of them names familiar long before the war. If all these men can work together they must command a majority in the Cham- ber. But can they work together on a program of econo- mies that must mean demanding drastic taxes from their rich friends and eliminating the political jobs with which they have satisfied their poor supporters? GREGORY ZINOVIEV has been ousted from the Politi- cal Bureau of the Russian Communist Party, the real governing body of Soviet Russia — ousted because, defeated at the party congress, he refused to accept party discipline and secretly organized a sort of counter-revolution within the Bolshevik organization. Thus the mills of revolution grind their grist. For it was Zin viev who two years ago perfected the machinery which removed Trotzky from his natural position in the inner temple of Bolshevism. Friends of Soviet Russia will rejoice at the fall of this stormy petrel. Zinoviev had a talent for being a revolu- tionary at the wrong moment. He was against the Soviet Revolution when it occurred, and won his chief fame as leader of the Third International in predicting and promot- ing revolutions all over Europe when the psychological con- ditions were not ripe for revolution. He bears a large share of personal responsibility for the bloody and useless "Mai-ch Action" in Germany in 1921, and for the silly per- sonal dissensions which turned what might have been work- ing-class Communist parties in a dozen countries into mere bands of religious sectaries. The next move will be to remove him from his control of the Third International; when that happens reunion of the labor movements in Europe will be appreciably nearer. IN FELIX DJERZINSKY, dead of heart disease at 49, Soviet Russia loses one of its legendary heroes. As chairman of the military revolutionary committee, with trusted men in every regiment, he organized the military coup that ousted Kerensky in 1917; and then, as head of the Cheka, he turned his genius to the destruction of counter- revolutionary forces. He believed in Terror as a political instrument, and when in power applied the ghastly lesson he had learned in the prisons of the Czar- It was his job to crush opposition in days when human life seemed trivial. Perhaps only a fraction of the terrible stories told of his administration of the Cheka were true; but he would have scorned to deny the human cost of maintaining Soviet rule in those bloody days. Criticism meant little to him if he succeeded. And he did succeed. He crushed monarchist, anarchist, socialist conspiracies with impartial cruelty. Then, the revolution safeguarded, he reorganized the rail- roads, and later utilized his extraordinary administrative capacity in the development of Russia's national industries. Something in him of the ruthless efficiency of the "hard- boiled" American business man made the Hoover men of the American Relief Administration admire him more than Lenin. If American criticism of an inefficient railroad offi- cial proved true, the man disappeared next day. He preached and practiced the sacrificial discipline of the Russian Com- munist Party. A mere bourgeois, caught stealing, went to jail; a party member, for the same offense, might die. Son of a Polish noble, classmate of Pilsudski at Vilna, Djerzinsky gave his life for Russia's experiment in com- munism. He combined the qualities which make Lenin and Henry Ford the twin heroes of the new Russia. OREGON HAS A PRESIDENT of the State university who has had banking experience and a pleasant smile. A few weeks ago we noted the enthusiasm of the university regents over those qualities, but suggested that Dr. Hall might have other qualities as well. We were, alas, right. Dr. Hall has dared to state in a public speech that national prohibition was not a success, and to add that he was opposed to it in principle. Immediately the Oregon Anti- Saloon League and the Portland Ministerial Association passed resolutions tantamount to demanding his resignation, the Portland Oregonian devoted an editorial column to de- ploring his utterances, and the regents issued a series of apologetic statements devoutly hoping that he had been misquoted. As the Anti-Saloon League said, such expres- sions of minority opinion "are contrary to the settled policy of Oregon." College presidents, it appears, are entitled to smile and to cash checks, but not to suggest that anything should ever be changed.

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Aug. 4, 1926] The Nation 97 Those Debts THERE are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Secretary Mellon prefers statistics. In the confused welt< kitchenwife name-calling in which the British and American treasuries, ably supported by the newspapers, have been in- dulging, this emerges clear: Secretary Mellon has told Europe one thing; he has told America another thing; and he has bolstered his contradictory statements with equally staggering arrays of billion-dollar statistics. If from this blatherskiting episode the American people learn to regard Mr. Mellon and his figures with a profound distrust we shall gain something. Mr. Mellon wants to settle the inter-Allied debts so that the private bankers can do a rousing business "reconstruct- ing" Europe. In order to achieve that high end he does not scruple to twist his figures to suit his audience. On Jan- uary 4, speaking to the American people through Congress, he said that no funding of the debts should be made which did not repay the principal; and on May 20, to carry his point, he told Congress that the present value of the pro- posed French payments was $2,734,000,000, of the Belgian settlement $302,000,000, of the Italian settlement $782,- 000,000. But on July 14, wishing to impress Europeans with our generosity, he revised his figures and produced a figure for the French of $1,681,000,000, for the Belgian of $192,000,000, for the Italian of $426,000,000. Somehow or other, in less than two months, he lost track of something more than a billion and a half dollars. Which is a great deal of money, even for a Secretary of the American Treasury. The secret, of course, lies in his playful juggling with the interest rate. If you discount the present value of future payments at 5 per cent, you get one result; if you discount at 2V2 per cent, you get a very different result. And our Secretary of the Treasury in his public utterances has juggled the figures to gain his point in a manner which can only be described as dishonest. He fibbed and figured, to be sure, in an earnest en- deavor to persuade the American people to be reasonable about a matter on which they are unreasonable. His prin- ciple for settlement was sound — that of "capacity to pay." Any sensible creditor treats with a delinquent debtor on such a basis. To shout at an impoverished debtor that he must pay dollars when he has only cents in his pockets is to make oneself ridiculous. And that, after all, was some- thing like the manner of our Congress in insisting that the debts be collected in full. That insistence, to be sure, was a natural enough product of the national disillusionment with the Treaty of Versailles. The American people were still full of the crusading spirit with which they had been led into the war when that conference opened; when it closed their ideals were dead, and since then they have demanded of those who killed them whatever pounds of flesh the bonds demand. Their statesmen have seldom been conscious of the significance of that mood of disillusion- ment; but it is the fire behind the isolationism of the masses. But Mr. Mellon did not attempt to argue the question of Europe's capacity to pay; he simply produced false fig- ures to prove that his settlements were really settlements in full. And Congress accordingly approved the Belgian - d [tal an ttlements — not because it understood and liked them but because Mr. Mellon had deliberately and success- fully made it misunderstand them. It was a little startled when the compact scaling the Italian debt was ratified to discover that the bankers had meanwhile negotiated a 7 per cent loan with Italy on the basis of her revived credit. Italy was unable to pay the taxpayers of the United States who, in the end, pay these inter- Allied debts — but she was rich enough to pay good interest to American bond-buyers. One suspects that even some of Mr. Mellon's calculations of capacity to pay may be, let us say, edited to suit the needs of the hour. And the net result of this false figur- ing is likely to be to drive the American people into a still more recalcitrant state of mind toward all these debt settlements. Meanwhile we are subjected to a heavy barrage from both sides of the English Channel. Winston Churchill says that Mr. Mellon's figures are false, and Mr. Mellon's under- study replies that the British figures are false. Whether the British payments cover food or munitions bought during the war does not seem to The Nation to matter much. All the advances were made, directly or indirectly, to help on the war; and when the Europeans signed bonds they did so expecting to repay. They have acknowledged their obli- gations, and their responsible statesmen (we do not rate Winston Churchill as such) argue only as to the amount which they can repay without jeopardizing their economic structure. It is a pity that argument on that point cannot be taken out of the hands of politicians and referred to a genuine committee of experts, without the suspicion that the experts will merely arrange terms on which new and profitable private loans can be substituted for these trouble- some inter-government loans. There was a time when a far-sighted government in Washington might have used the debts as an instrument to hasten a world-wide policy of reconciliation; but there was no such vision in the capital, and no policy of reconciliation. Under Poincare France had its spree in the Ruhr; today she is belatedly paying the cost of it, and blaming America. Europe, we believe, has never faced the facts of Amer- ica's position. Even Mr. Snowden, in his wise article in this issue of The Nation, does not seem to realize that the "intol- erable burden" which he would have us lift from the backs of the British workers must be carried somehow. If European taxpayers do not meet the interest on the Liberty bonds (which raised the money lent to Europe) American taxpayers must. Few Americans want to see Europe squeezed, but before they make the sacrifice, they want to be sure of results. The American debt has little to do with the crisis of the franc. France has been living by borrowing, and has borrowed money to pay the interest on her previous bor- rowings. On her debt to the United States — barring some small post-armistice purchases — she has not been paying at nil; that debt has affected the present crisis only by keeping her from borrowing more money in the American market. In 1919 French revenues amounted to only 15 per cent of French expenditures; in 1920 to 27 per cent; in 1921 to 40

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The Nation [Vol 1 123, No. 3187 per cent; in 1922 to 50 per cent; in 1923 to 56 per cent; in 1924 to 66 per cent; and in 1925 and 1926 the expendi- tures still overtop the income. The deficits have been in large part concealed, and met by borrowings and by infla- tions. Until the recent crisis no French Finance Minister dared admit publicly that the franc could never be brought back to its pre-war par but must be stabilized at perhaps an eighth of its former value. There lies the cause of the French crisis, not in the American debt settlement; but it is small wonder that the boulevard crowd, seeing the dollar and pound quotations go up as the franc goes down, vent their excited irritation at the next rude and stupid American tourist whom they meet. The trouble in France is that politicians have not dared tell the people the truth, and that accordingly things have drifted from bad to worse. And Secretary Mellon, deceiv- ing the American Congress, has only made it more difficult for America to contribute its mite toward a solution. The Problem of Crime Remains THE war against crime is taking its usual course. The old guard dies but it never surrenders. The old methods have failed; therefore let us try more of the old methods. It is wisdom of this sort that inspired most of the crime bills that have come from half a dozen State legislatures during the past few months. This is not to condemn them utterly; some of them have merit and only a few are positively mischievous. What is deplorable is that they should be taken seriously as measures of crime repression and thus accepted by the community as a solu- tion of the problem. The public mind has been aroused by the recent propaganda against crime and is demanding that effective measures shall be devised to deal with the What it is getting is a few score laws aiming to treat evi more drastically the symptoms of the disease. There is available today an extensive and growing body of knowl- edge of the causes of delinquency. Scores of devoted stu- dents, from Miriam Van Waters in Los Angeles to William Healy in Boston, are devising a promising technique for the study and the treatment of the individual delinquent. Hundreds of private social agencies are working at the development of effective preventive and curative measures. The psychiatric branch of the medical profession is pre- pared to submit a legislative program for dealing conclu- sively with the large class of mental cases in our criminal population. Of all these efforts which aim at the heart of the problem our amateur reformers of the crime commis- sions know nothing and care less. But there is another angle to the effort which the crime bills of the current season represent. Many of them, it is true, are the futile gestures of panic-stricken reform- ers, striking out blindly at the criminal by increasing pen- alties and by seeking to restrict or even, in many cases, to abolish the salutary devices of probation and parole. But along with these there appear measures whereby the legal profession aims to give new efficiency to the administration of criminal justice. To the lawyer crime is a matter of justice, and justice is a matter j{ law and judicial pro- cedure. He is justly proud of the law and jealous of its dignity. The administration of the criminal law does not deserve half the hard knocks it has been getting of late it is by far the best part of our system of municipal ad- ministration— but it is bad enough, much too dilatory and technical, too easily manipulated by the unscrupulous crim- inal lawyer, too frequently degenerating into play-acting. These things put the honest lawyer's teeth on edge. So he sets himself, through legislation, to stop the loop- holes through which experienced criminals make their es- cape— too easy bail for professional crooks, interminable delays in bringing offenders to trial, unlimited appeals on technical grounds — and to restore to the judicial office some of the power which used to go with its dignity — more con- trol over counsel and a greater share in the task of enlight- ening the jury. Such matters have been dealt with in the bills under consideration, and we can only hope that the new laws will be so administered as to accomplish the de- sired results. We may also hope that the new impulse to study the workings of the present system will be produc- tive of more comprehensive and far-reaching improvements in the near future. The American genius for organization and management should, in the course of another genera- tion, furnish us with an administration of criminal justice comparable with that which England has achieved in recent years. That will be a brave achievement, but let us not be deceived as to its aims or results. It does not deal with the problem of crime. That still remains the task of the student of delinquency. Next Winter in the Theater FROM the standpoint of the average theatergoer the New York stage is probably the most interesting in the world. It has developed no novelty as provocative as several of the experiments recently conducted in Russia; its inter- est is due largely to a group of producers who have formu- lated no very definite program; yet it caters to a dozen ditferent audiences with considerable success. Each year it has its score of plays addressed to the comparatively small group interested in the serious drama and its hundreds addressed to every other sort and condition of man. The American who hears its supremacy challenged can at least take his usual refuge in an emphasis upon size. No other country in the world ever produced so many or such different plays, or produced them so lavishly. If one may judge from the announcements so far made for the coming season, next winter will produce an even more abundant crop of plays than usual. Three or four theaters now under construction will open, and the names of more than a hundred new pieces have already been made public. There is no dearth of things which promise well for those interested in the serious drama: Shakespeare will be represented by "Much Ado About Nothing" (Theater Guild), "Twelfth Night" (Civic Repertory Theater), and a plain-clothe? "Taming of the Shrew" (Horace Liveright), as well as by various revivals by both Hampden and Man- tell. From Ibsen we are promised "Pillars of Society" and two of his plays seen here last year, all done by Miss Le Gallienne. From other foreign dramatists of some distinc- tion we are to have works not yet seen here by Andreyev, Sem Benelli, Ansky, and Sacha Guitry, as well as an adap- tation of Dryden's "All for Love" (Horace Liveright), and another Gilbert and Sullivan opera (Winthrop Ames). Five popular pieces of literature — "An American Tragedy" (Horace Liveright), "Jurgen" (Norman Bel Geddes), "Gen- tlemen Prefer Blondes" (Edgar Selwyn), "Teef tallow"

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Aug. 4, 1926] The Nation 99 (Messrs. Shubert), "The Constant Nymph" I , "Hatrack" (Jones and Green), and perhaps "The Pi Life of Helen of Troy" — will be dramatized. Best of all, a number of the most interesting American dramatists will have one or more new pieces. Laurence Stallings will con- tribute the score of a jazz opera, "Deep River," which Ar- thur Hopkins will produce, and. perhaps, "When in Rome," a play not yet completed; Eugene O'Neill will have three new works, of which only "Marco's Millions" ami "Lazarus Laughed" have yet been named; while (Mare Kummer, George Kaufman, Marc Connelly, George Childs Carpenter. Arthur Richman, and Edwin Justus Mayer will all have new plays. Moreover, each of the non-commercial producing groups promises an interesting program. The Neighbor- Pi ffer a new expressionistic drama railed "Pinwheel" and a revival ot" "The Little Clay Cart." Actor's Theater will present, among other things, "Viva Mexico." by Michael Gold of the .V. ir I and the I'rovincetown Playhouse promises "The Seven Against Iheln " A for the Theater Guild, it has refused so far to commit itself definitely, but it has suggested many inter- esting possibilities, including Werfel's "Juarez and Maxi- milian" and, if it is completed in time, a new play by Shaw ■ > he called "Saint Theresa." Theatrical announcements are notoriously unreliable, and some of the productions here listed may never be heard of again; but there will remain a sufficient number to make the heart of any theatergoing New Yorker thump. Mexico vs. The Roman Church MEXICO is in open war with the Roman Catholic church. It is a war which recalls Bismarck's Kultur- kampf and the violent anti-clericalism of pre-war France. Virtually every country where an established church has been associated with a feudal state goes through such paroxysms — even far-off Mongolia in ridding itself of lama rule. Mexico has tried before to throw off the yoke of the church. Her constitution of 1857 was pronouncedly anti- clerical, the decrees of 1859 more so, that of 1917 most so of all. But the laws have gone unenforced. Calles's decree of July 3, which has inspired the virtual excommunication of Mexico by the Pope, is essentially in execution of the old laws. As summarized by the Foreign Policy Association, it provides: 1. No foreigner may exercise the religious profession in Mexico. 2. Education must be given in official schools and be secular. No religious corporation or minister of any creed may establish or direct schools of primary instruction. 3. Religious orders, convents, and monasteries will be dissolved. 4. Any minister who incites the public to refuse to acknowledge public institutions or to obey the laws will be severely punished. 5. No publication, either religious or merely showing marked tendencies in favor of religion, may comment on national political affairs. 6. No organization may be formed whose title has any word or any indication that it is connected with religious ideas. 7. Political meetings may not be held in churches. 8. All religious acts must be held within the walls of a church. 9. No religious order of any creed may possess or administer property or capital. 10. The churches are the property of the nation. Other ecclesiastical properties, such as bishops' palaces, houses, seminaries, asylums, colleges, convents, and all buildings constructed for religious purposes, pass into the possession of the nation, the use to which they are to be put to be determined by the Government. 11. Heavy penalties may be imposed upon ministerial or other authorities who fail to enforce the above provisions. Pope Pius asks the Catholic world to unite on August 1, the festival of St. Peter-in-Chains, in prayer for the cessa- tion of Mexican persecution of Catholics- The Pope ap- parently has also approved the extraordinary pastoral letter signed by the thirty-seven bishops of Mexico announcing nsion of all religious services requiring the participa- tion of priests from July 31, the date on which the Calles edict takes effect, and enjoining the population to refuse to cooperate in its enforcement. A boycott of lay schools is enjoined; a sort of non-cooperation movement, refusing to attend "mundane amusements," is suggested; and excommunication of those interfering with the church is suggested. Judge Alfred J. Talley of New York publicly demands that the American Government cease recognition of Mexico and "prevent" the denial of the rights of Catholics. With the protesting bishops The Nation has a measure of sym- pathy; with Judge Talley it has none. It is not the busi- ness of the Washington Government to tell Mexico what its laws should be; Judge Talley would be the first to resent any suggestion that foreigners should dictate our laws, and he ought to know better than to suggest that we dictate to others. If Mexico were as large and as strong as France in the days of her violent anti-clerical laws Judge Talley would not dare suggest such interference. What he wants us to do is to bully Mexico. Yet, sympathizing with Mexico's determination to end church control, we must regret her methods. We can un- derstand Mexico's opposition to a foreign priesthood vir- tually controlling her system of education and encouraging the ignorant masses to disobey her land laws, and her de- termination to nationalize vast properties of the church which are essentially a relic of a feudal past. But with the Mexican Government's attempt to suppress criticism of its own attitude we have no sympathy whatever. Clause 13 of the new decree, ruling that publications "either religious or merely showing marked tendencies in favor of religions and religious creeds through titles or propaganda, may not comment on national political affairs or inform readers of acts of the authorities of the country or on particulars related directly to the functioning of public institutions" is sheer tyranny. It is one thing to secularize the state; it is another thing to attempt to suppress discussion of the wisdom of secularization. We do not sympathize with the Catholic church in its attempt to retain its essentially medieval position in Mexico, but the Mexican Government must realize that its best friends abroad have been liberals. Liberals oppose bullying of one government by another; they also oppose bullying of one section of the population by any government.

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100 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3187 h±y »U.L- The Cal of the Wilds

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Aug. 4, 1926] The Nation 101 Price- Fixing for the Farmer By HENRIK SHIPSTEAD HOW can the farmer collect his board bill from a boarder who refuses to pay? How can he compel a better price for his product and so be assured of a fair return and a steady income? He has come to the conclusion that in order to accomplish this he must take a leaf out of the book of the railroads, the manufacturers, the big bank- ers, who each have their price-fixing bureaucracy estab- lished by law. The farmer, finding that it lias worked well for industry, finance, and transportation, has come to Con- gress asking for the same treatment. There seems to be no objection to price-fixing except when it is for the benefit of the farmer. When Congress passed the transportation act creating a government commission to fix railroad rates, that was a price-fixing law. When Congress gave the Federal Reserve Bank power to raise and lower the rediscount rate and so to a large extent to control the price of credit by control of the interest rates, that was a price-fixing program bene- fiting the large bankers of the country who compose the class A directors of the Fedei-al Reserve System. The high- protective tariff is in itself a price-fixing law, because it gives the manufacturers of the country the opportunity to fix their prices higher than they could do without the pro- tection of a tariff wall. Practically every State of the United States has enacted laws creating bureaus or com- missions whose duty, usually made mandatory under the law, ia to fix the prices of necessities, as, for instance, telephone service, telegraph service, gas and electric lights, and street-railway service. All of those corporations enjoy the blessings and protections of price-fixing laws enacted by the various States. Not a court in the land but lays it down as a basic principle that business must enjoy for its goods or service a market price that will yield a fair return on the capital over and above production and operating costs, taxes, inter- est, rentals, and overhead. Anything less than a fair return the court regards as confiscation of property in violation of constitutional guaranties. "Fair return on capital invest- ment and operating cost" is an American principle, fixed in our legislative and judicial system. An executive ruling or legislative act which authorizes or imposes less than a fair return on gas, electric light, steam or electric transporta- tion, a bank loan, water-power rental, house rental, or a manufactured article is declared in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution protect- ing life, liberty, and property. But the farmer is left out in the cold. Some people are beginning to recognize that anything less than a fair return to our greatest industry is not only a national injustice but an invitation to economic downfall. Millers, packers, and the manufacturers of a thousand staple food and textile products can not prosper without a depend- able supply of raw materials at a stabilized price from the 6,000,000 producing farms. When the farms fail because of the lack of a fair return on labor and invested capital, when 1,000,000 farmers and farm hands desert the farms in a single season, all food and textile-producing industries are placed in jeopardy. The first manufacturing industry of this country, the flour-milling industry, the source of the nation's bread, has been reduced, by uncertain farm condi- tions and by the spasmodic ups and downs of grain specu- lation and grain prices, to a condition where for five years it has run at less than 50 per cent, and much of the time at only 40 per cent of the normal milling capacity. The millers are going down with the farmers. They are sunken derelicts abandoned in the struggle against commercial forces in a country boasting the greatest home market on the globe. We can all remember when the stocks of the leading grain-and-agricultural-products-carrying roads, such as the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, the Northwestern, the "Soo Line," and the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul were quoted on the stock exchange from $100 to $150 a share. Their securities were the soundest gilt-edged invest- ments on the market. Today they are quoted at from $10 to $50 or $75 a share. The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, which traverses one of the finest agricultural regions of the globe, has $230,000,000 of stock certificates quoted at $9 and $15 a share, and has not paid a dividend in six years. The rates of these roads have increased 75 per cent, and they stand at that figure now, higher than in their palmy days. But the tonnage of farm products carried by them dropped from 156,000,000 tons in 1918 and 155,000,000 in 1919 to 146,700,000 in 1923. The average for the four years 1920-1924 was 6,000,000 tons under 1919. Twenty- five years ago, in 1901, farm products gave the railroads a greater revenue tonnage than manufactures by 4,000,000 tons. During 1914, 1915, and 1916 farm products and manu- factures gave them about the same volume of revenue tonnage as manufactures. In 1923, after the Fordney- McCumber tariff, manufactures gave the railroads a ton- nage 110,000,000 greater than the products of the farms. We know from reports secured from farms in every section of the United States in 1923, that a farm with $17,500 invested capital gets an average gross return from sales of only $2,240; that after deducting a cash outlay of $1,350 for expenses, the net earning is $750; that after payment of interest and sundry charges, the return to capital on this $17,500 farm is $415, or 2.3 per cent; that the net return to the farm operator is $154, and that if the family labor is paid for at hired-labor rates, there is a net loss of $71 a year on the year's operation (Agricultural Year-Book, 1924, pages 1131-1132.) We know that it cost in 1923 $21 an acre to raise wheat valued at $16.64, and $1.24 to raise a bushel worth 99 cents. We know that it cost 52 cents to raise a bushel of oats worth 49 cents; that a hoe or rake costing the farmer $1 has a declared export value for shipment abroad of 44 cents; that in 1924 the average farm income was $736, or half that of a railroad laborer; that in 1924-1925 over 1,000 banks failed in the agricultural States; that the value of farm property since 1920 has shrunk about one-third, or $25,000,000,000— rather more than the total of our national debt; and that the purchase power of the farm dollar, measured by the manu- factured articles it buys, has shrunk about one-third since 1913 and is today fluctuating, like foreign exchange, some-

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102 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3187 where about 60 or 70 cents. So we face an emergency, and we must act. I have at all times been opposed to government by com- mission, to centralization of power in Washington, to con- trol of industry, and to special legislation giving special favors to industry and transportation. It is a bad policy, but it has become our established policy and we must do one of two things: We must either repeal all this special price-fixing legislation, or carry it out to its ultimate con- clusion and give every industry the same treatment. When special privilege is extended to everyone it ceases to be privilege. I do not believe in bureaucracies; neither do I believe in prairie fires. But when the prairie fire of bureaucracy is sweeping down to destroy agricultural life, then in desperation I am willing to set a backfire by estab- lishing another bureaucracy, and I look upon this kind of legislation as a backfire against the bureaucracy that is fast overwhelming us. Glimpses of Arthur Gleason By HELEN HAYES GLEASON [The death of Arthur Gleason on December 80, 1923, removed one who by his personality, his writing, and his direct cooperation was among the most honest and effective supporters of the liberal movement in his time. 77 cerpts which follow are from a manuscript by his wife, and arc reproduced here not only as a picture of a one-time Associate Editor of The Nation but as glimpses of an extraordinarily vivid and idealistic character.] I ALL manner and condition of folk found their way to us, all classes, all professions, all colors. All found him just as he was, without a trace of guile, honest even when it hurt, sympathetic, modest, a friend who never gave friendship lightly. In that respect he was like the English, many of whose characteristics he so much admired. To each he gave the same attention, always a touch of defer- ence, a real humility that recognized underneath the worldly symbol the mystery of an unquenchable inner spark. He gave the same unfailing courtesy to the friend and col- ored helper that he gave his wife. He wrote: This home is dedicated to good-will. It grew out of love. The two heads of the household were called together by a power higher than they. To its decree they are obedi- ent. Every tone of the voice, every thought of their being, is subdued to that service. They desire to be worthy of their high calling, as ministers of that grace. They know their peace will go unbroken only for a little time. And often they suspect that the time will be more short even than their anxious hope. They cannot permit so much as one hour of that brief unity to be touched by scorn or malice. The world's judgments have lost their sting inside this door. Those who come, seeking to continue the harmony which these two have won are ever welcome. The rich are welcome, so they come simply. The poor are welcome, for they have already learned friendliness through buffeting. Youth is welcome, for it brings the joy which these two would learn. Age is welcome, for it will teach them tenderness. * •>:■ -:-:- * -::- Animals had personalities and were treated with dig- nity. Among canines there were distinct branches; there were "rovers" and "barkers" and "twinklers" and "lions" and "milk dogs." A certain kind of feline was known as a "wuss." Our own tiger cat, named Lamb Chop, was spoken of as "The Chop." And a mere wisp of a rusty Persian kitten, picked up on the streets of Brighton, Eng- land, at once assumed the proportions of a Cinnamon Bear and was called "The Bear." He could not resist the sound of a rapidly moving pencil across paper. Times without number I have seen him leave a comfortable place, jump to the large table where my husband was writing, and curl up deliberately on the offending manuscript. With great gentleness my husband would pull out the sheet from under the little beast, move over slightly, continue to write. Very shortly the Bear would follow, again settling in a ball on the unfinished sentence. I have seen them work around the whole table that way, the Bear quite sure he was loved and wanted, the man expressing only gentleness, speaking no word. Three children attached themselves to us in Maine. They came for one swim a day at least, spending many hours putting us through stunts like "spanking the baby" from a boulder that hung over the water. For their amuse- ment one day A. G. lit and smoked two cigars at the same time. But one "Scout" had seen a man light and smoke ten cigars at once, .so that was no good. He never went to the village without buying some little treat for the children. And for each one, before we left, he planned and carried through a picnic party; that was so the youngest would feel as important and as much desired as the oldest. At all possible opportunities he found children and won their friendship. With them he discussed their interests and problems as seriously, with the same sense of equality, as he would discuss the production of coal with a miner or the joys of Saintsbury's "Prose Rhythm" with an English professor. As he made staunch friendships with these little folk whom he understood, sharing their naivete and frankness, he made equally staunch enemies because of this same frankness and honesty. As he met the challenges of his young friends, to "spank the baby" from a boulder or to flip or try to flip off backward from a float, without fear or hesitation, just so he met the challenges of life from friend or enemy. No consideration of salary or public opinion for a moment made him equivocate. When a job slid into ease or methods developed which were not acceptable to that "fine and accurate conscience," as twice happened in war- service, for instance, he would resign, returning the money received under the new order. From 1914 to 1922 he saved a total of $1,000. At the time he wished to invest it France seemed to be needing all her friends, so he put his thousand in her, though it was suggested that another security might be wiser. France looked shaky, but he believed in her power to recover; he believed still more in her finer spiritual powers and had to express it. During the first high-pressure days of the war

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Aug. 4, 1926] The Nation 10- when people were frantically drawing out their gold 1 remember him making a deposit in an English bank. He had to do these things. Hysteria could not touch him. In- stinctively he drew away from the crowd to do his own thinking. His mind sought balance, his spirit freedom and honesty. Some time after he was torpedoed (January, 1918) the State Department (U. S.) asked for an affidavit concerning his claim against the German Government for losses incurred. The loss had been real ; all the clothes and luggage he had in the world went down and a complete type- written manuscript of a book on the American army — it counted up into the pounds sterling. He thought it over carefully and decided not to enter a claim against the Ger- man Government. The old regime had fallen, a new and better mold was struggling to birth; it needed help, not further crushing. In the long future, payment would come out of women and children. They must suffer the cost of the war and he could not add a shadow of weight to their burdens. * X- * -X- * The deepest desire of his nature was to be free. Each change in his life was animated by that impulse for free- dom. When groups closed in about him he instinctively worked his way to the outside of the circle. He chafed under committee meetings and councils of war and organi- zations. He disliked his name on letterheads, he shrank from holding office. Though long years ago he identified himself with the Socialist Party and often voted a straight Socialist ticket, not because he subscribed fully to their plans but more nearly to their main principle than to another party, he never took an active interest in any of their locals so far as I know. His sympathies were with suffering humanity, the weak, the aged, the homely and obscure. Whenever it was possible to serve these he did so by gift of money or time; generally he could ill afford to do it. He felt "a certain grief in things as they are, in man as he has come to be, as he certainly is, over and above those griefs of circum- stance which are in a measure removable — an inexplicable shortcoming, or misadventure, on the part of nature itself — ." I was appalled to find the burdens he was carry- ing when we started out together. A gifted boy was being helped through college; another with doctor's Mils; another with an education; another suffering with tuberculosis was lifted for the last few weeks, at least, into comfort and beauty, "no expense to be spared." But to be tied in with clubs or organizations was to be caught. To give the best in himself he had to give it in his own way. He could bore into a subject, master it by sheer will and brain, identify himself with it and get the point of view. He could do something with both sides of a question, swinging pendulum fashion to each extreme, finally striking a balance with well-weighted and keen judg- ments. Artist type that he was, he wished rather to dip here and there, like a bird in flight, tasting this and that flavor, feeling the vibration of life with his uncanny sensi- tiveness, then retire for quiet reflection and absorption and writing. His was not the gift nor inner expression to speak at labor or educational conventions, though he believed deeply in such efforts and greatly honored those whose lives were given to them. But in endeavoring to give an honest pic- ture of my husband I want more than anything to present the side of him that made all these worthy, social-work expressions possible; the side I believed in most, the part of him that pushed through as truly as the tiny pulse of cold spring water finds its way to the surface in epite of heavy black rotting leaves, the impulse to write, to follow the path of freedom, to live with beauty — the beauty of sim- plicity, of truth, of suffering. It was a fight to give the artist and writer a chance, believing he could best serve causes through that medium, if only let alone. In "Marius, the Epicurean," this paragraph is underlined with his characteristic heavy black pencil mark: "How little I my- self really need, when people leave me alone, with the intel- lectual powers at work serenely." * * * * * Most of the so-called conventions of life had very little meaning to him, like living "correctly" and anniversaries; family gatherings, especially, made him suffer. Sunday was a day to be dropped from the calendar, if possible. A good speaker with an idea might hold him, but he preferred a lazy morning indoors, or out, picking up lunch when and wherever, a show in the afternoon, and open-house supper at home. He chose Sunday to be free from the week's turmoil. He chose Sunday to be free forever. That day has become a symbol of freedom, tragic and vivid. Early in life he had learned the lesson of concentration and so could apply himself to a grilling task for long hours, smoking a pipe continuously. He used pencils, like matches, one after another as they snapped off under the speed of his mind at work. It took ten or fifteen, freshly sharpened, to get him through a morning's writing, and that was his habit of mind and method when doing creative work, too, always with fierce intensity. But the artist balked at regularity; the singer went sad and silent under compulsion. Waywardness and whimsicality walked side by side with the trained mind. When we were first married he told me how much he longed to be free from all family connections. Since a small boy he had carried a sense of responsibility. It shocked me then. I came to see that this thing in him was the most priceless gift he had. It led him always after the gleam. Only when he failed to answer this impulse was he thwarted. It is possible to cage a wild bird, not his song; some there are whose passion it is to take pictures, focusing carefully on the passing caval- cade, but they lose the flow of motion while they fiddle v/ith mechanism. To capture his free spirit was to tether the rainbow. It curved toward the light, full of charm and color, did its work, vanished, returned, mounting ever eagerly and fearlessly. * * •>:- ■:«■ * I can see him now, the late afternoon of 5th October. 1912, the day we were married; the formality was uninter- esting enough and as brief as possible, but on that day, a Saturday when we had just returned from the usual vaude- ville, arrived Saintsbury's "Prose Rhythm." A few minutes before my uncle came to read the service, the lover of free- dom sat where he had dropped, with the book still in his hands, absorbed. Dress changed and hands washed, I stopped at his door to see if he was ready. And he was — ready to share the mystery of beauty, to share everything that delighted him. We read it together till the door bell scattered rhythm and I took my Uncle Toby one side, again to beg him to make it brief. * * * * •* As 1914 dawned the urge for a real change came upon him. The long winter bound to connections with an office —

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104 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3187 like a mirror, he was, to pick up the fret of human suffer- ing— and the sense of being caught-in were more than the artist could endure. For two years he had been struggling to break from a "regular job." In January, 1912, he wrote: If I can make it go in a small way (free lancing), I shall be pleased indeed at escaping the thraldom and the sadness of office routine and the overworked obscure per- sons who work in bondage, and for whom one sees no way out. . . . The Mounted Police, like the Texas Rangers, have long beckoned to me. Meanwhile I cling to New York with a senile clutch. It was ill luck to miss you. I would have come far to get your story while it was still young on your lips. I hope you will never settle, that you will always wander and catch the fleeting magic of things in your two beautiful arts of picture-making and word-painting. Then a regular job through the later part of 1912, with this reaction: "On July 3 I am returning to the free- lance game. I have an assignment of two editorials a week from Collier's. I breathe freely again." [To be continued] America Should Cancel the War Debts By PHILIP SNOWDEN THERE is one important aspect of the inter-Allied debts question which has received very little attention. The controversy between the interested governments has tered mainly round the capacity of the respective debtor nations to pay. When th( i States insisted upon the funding of the British debt it became incumbent upon Great Britain to try to collect the debts owing to her by her Continental debtors. Put this insistence- by Great Britain upon receiv- ing from the Continent in debt payments and reparations a total sum equal to, but not exceeding, the sum we have to pay to America has not altered the view of Great Britain that the best policy wou'd have been an all-round cancel- ation of inter-Allied debts. The attitude of the United States to the debts question, both at the Paris Conference and subsequently, has made that wise policy impossible for the present. But both eco- nomic and moral considerations must eventually force the adoption of that course. American opinion is by no means unanimous about the wisdom of compelling her European debtors to repay the loans advanced during the war, for what was admittedly a common enterprise. But, for the time being, political considerations prevent that opinion from expressing itself very vocally. One excuse offered by America for insisting upon the funding of the European debts is that the Continental countries have made no real effort, to reestablish their eco- nomic and financial prosperity, and that any help America might give in the form of remitting payments would simply provide more money to be spent upon provocative arma- ments and preparations for another war. This Amer- ican view of European unsettlement was recently bluntly expressed by Mr. Houghton, the American Ambassador in London, and there can be no doubt that it is an opinion widely held in the United States, and is in a large meas- ure responsible for the determination of that great coun- try to hold aloof, as far as possible, from participation in European affairs until the Continental countries show more willingness to settle down to peaceful lives. To the extent that that view of Europe is responsible for the unwilligness of America to join in the cancela- tion of the war debts, Great Britr-'n's heavy annual pay- ments to America are part of the burden she is bearing for the policy of militarism, imperialism, and po'itical in- trigues of her former Continental allies. If America's debtors desire to prove that America is wrong in holding this view, and if they wish to take away from her that excuse for not agreeing to the cancelation of the war debts, they can do so by changing their policies, reducing their armaments, and entering whole-heartedly into a united effort to make the spirit of Locarno dominate Eu- ropean affairs. But even if the unsettled condition of Europe were the real reason for America's attitude to the question of war debts, it is doubtful if it is a wise course for her to follow. She came into the war at a late period because she realized it was to her interest to do so. She took a very influential part in imposing the peace treaties upon the enemy, and then washed her hands of the whole business, and left a decimated Europe to struggle with the impossibilities and injustices of those treaties. Since that time her main interest, in Europe has been to collect debts from her war allies, whom she helped to impoverish by assenting to the violation of the peace conditions previously laid down by President Wilson. America cannot permanently maintain an attitude of detachment from the rest of the world with advantage to herself. She is the most nearly self-contained country in the world. She is rich and powerful. But more and more she will become dependent upon world conditions for the maintenance of her prosperity. It is not a wise policy for the United States to keep the other countries of the world poor. It is not to her real interest to drain the wealth of Europe. Apart from her claim that "destiny has made her the guardian of world economic and social progress" it is to her material interest that she should help, out of her great abundance, to make the rest of the world strong and prosperous. America should never forget that she owes everything to Europe. Europe has given to her her language, her literature, her science, and her population. Although she entered the war "seeking no material gain, no territory, and no indemnities," she has, by her funding arrangements with her late war allies, managed to impose upon them un- dertakings to pay her an annual sum, which at the maximum will amount to about £80,000,000 a year! Great Britain's share of this tribute to America will impose, for the next sixty years, if the agreement is main- tained, an intolerable burden on the British workers. It will require 76,000,000 days of labor each year by British workmen, for the next sixty years, to produce the means to pay America. Great Britain, a poor country by com- parison with America, has set an example which the United States might follow with credit to herself. Great Britain has undertaken to shoulder the £2,000,000,000 of

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Aug. 4, 1926] The Nation 105 debt due from her late allies, if America will forego her claims upon Britain of half that amount. America's capacity to cancel is enormously greater. Her national income is expanding at the rate of £2,000,- 000,000 a year, equal to half the total national income of Great Britain. She will pay off her internal war debt in twenty-five years. America has a great opportunity to be magnanimous: and magnanimity will be twice blessed it will bless her and the world at large England, at great risk to herself, has reestablished the gold standard. It is important for America that this should be stabilized and that other countries should get back to it. The cancelation of the European debts to America would materially assist that end. It would save America from the otherwise inevitable inflation. If America insists upon the payment by Europe of £80,000,000 a year on ac- count of these debts, there is bound to be such a dis- turbance of her economic life as will cost her far more than she receives from this source. The best side of the American nation cannot feel com- fortable in the thought that the tribute she is levying upon her late allies is keeping the workers in those countries for the next sixty years on short rations. It would be more in harmony with the altruistic sentiment which swept over the American continent ten years ago for her now to say that, out of her great abundance, she will make this further contribution to the restoration of the economic prosperity of the world. A Woman Without a Country By MARY K. DAS I AM an American-born woman. My ancestors came from England to America in the year 1700. By the existing double standard of the American Government, I am not only rendered alien, but a stateless alien. My hus- band, a Hindu, was a naturalized American citizen when I married him. He had secured his certificate of naturaliza- tion from a United States District Court in 1914, having previously resided in the United States for eight years. The United States State Department three times gave him passports with which he traveled all over the world. He still holds his American naturalization certificate, but today he is told by the State Department that he was never an American citizen, because "the judges, who during the last quarter of a century or more naturalized Hindus to Ameri- can citizenship, by due process of law, did not know the meaning of the United States naturalization laws, and so these judges from all parts of the United States acted illegally." This interpretation is based upon a recent sion rendered by a United States Supreme Court judge who is himself a naturalized citizen, who held that "high-caste Hindus are not white persons according to the commonly accepted meaning of the term, and thus are ineligible to American citizenship." Before we were married my hus- band went to several lawyers and asked if 1 stood the least chance of losing my citizenship in marrying him. These legal experts, one a former adviser to the State Depart- ment, told him that this could never happen, because the United States could not and would never apply a Supreme Court decision retroactively. Last year when I asked the State Department for a passport to go to Europe my request was refused on the •.■round that 1 was "no longer an American citizen, having lost my American citizenship by [myl marriage with an alien ineligible to citizenship." This I disclaimed, and still disclaim, for at the time of my marriage and up to the present day my husband is in possession of his naturaliza- tion papers. But by fiat of the State Department my hus- band and I are stateless. The amazing stand taken by the United States authori- is "that Hindus who are deprived of their American citizenship revert to their former British status." Is this stand due to total ignorance of the British law? The Brit- ish law says that any British subject who renounces British nationality willingly, by naturalization into any other coun- try, cannot revert to British citizenship automatically, in case the said subject wishes to do so; but must be natural- ized according to British law, after living at least five years in some British territory. Now, it is apparent that with- out a passport an alien cannot enter British territory for the purpose of taking up residence; and there is no record of British authorities offering safe conduct to an Indian who has become an American citizen and then been de- prived of American citizenship, to go to British territory, under promise of renaturalization in the course of time. Requests to the British Government to enter British terri- tory, made by Indians who have lost their American citizen- ship, have either been refused or no notice has been taken of them. So when the American Government arbitrarily takes from us (American women and Hindus naturalized as American citizens) our American citizenship and protec- tion, violating the scraps of paper given us in the form of naturalization certificates, it takes from us our safety and our standing in any community no matter where we may take refuge. According to the Cable Act, an American woman marry- ing an alien ineligible to citizenship loses her American citizenship. An American man may marry a Japanese, Chinese, Hindu — any woman he pleases. To do so does not lose him his citizenship. But an American woman is penalized when she exercises this right granted the Ameri- can man. She may marry a Negro from Africa and not lose her American citizenship, but if she marries a Hindu, Chi- nese, or Japanese, however high his reputation as a scholar, she loses her American citizenship. I feel that an American woman should not be penalized for marrying the person she loves. Marriage is not a matter of convenience; it has a spiritual bearing and none has the right to dictate the inner life of an individual. The National Woman's Party has sought to remedy the situation by amending the Cable Act, but the House Immi- gration Committee refused to report out the bill. Some Representatives and Senators, members of the Immigra- tion Committees of the two houses of Congress, hold that the ideal of Americanism should keep any American woman from marrying any foreigner, particularly an Asiatic. One Senator said that he would do all he could to defeat any amendment to the Cable Act which would give the ri^hl of American citizenship to any American woman marrying any foreigner. The American patriots who think that such provincialism is Americanism would do well to remember what Theodore Roosevelt said on an allied topic: Our nation fronts on the Pacific, just as it fronts on the Atlantic. We hope to play a constantly growing part in the great ocean of the Orient. We wish, as we ought to wish, for a great commercial development in our dealings

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106 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3187 with Asia; and it is out of the question that we should permanently have such development unless we freely and gladly extend to other nations the same measure of justice and good treatment as we expect to receive in return. ... I ask fair treatment for the Japanese, as I would ask fair treatment for Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, or Italians. 1 am not pleading today for the right of Asiatics to become American citizens. But I hold that the attitude of the United States Government toward Hindus who wen- naturalized before the adverse Supreme Court decision is worse than the alleged attitude of Soviet Russia or the Mexican Government, against which the United States State Department so bitterly complains, in enacting retro- active laws depriving Americans of their vested rights. The State Department, declaring that Hindus who were naturalized by United States judges according to due process of law, to whom naturalization certificates were given upon the authority of the United States Government, are no longer American citizens, is violating a solemn contract. Has the American Government fallen to such a state of degradation that to it the civil rights of its citizens have less value than property rights? In the Driftway THE noon sun was hot on the Come d'Or, but the Drifter had ordered the awning taken off his caique, and it was his own fault if he sweltered among the embroidered cushions. His boatman must be even hotter, benuing over the flask-handled, fork-bladed oars, but he still beamed on the Drifter and talked Turkish to him. They passed the fleet of fishing boats, anchored close together with their masts crowded like pins on a cushion. From the right bank came the notes of a song that sounded suspiciously like "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam"; in front of a large crosi topped building a column of girls was parading melodiously. The Drifter reflected that tolerance can be overdone. Yet the ferest of minarets on the Stamboul side was still intact after generations of missionary songs. Perhaps tolerance is good strategy after all. -:■:- -:■:- * ANGUAGE first originated in the use of gestures by primitive man; it is now used by children and idiots and in foreign countries, as in ordering a meal in Paris." The Drifter remembered his favorite definition, the i of three months' study of psychology on the brain of a college student, as he sought to explain to his boatman that he would like to go ashore and eat lunch. He pointed to bis mouth, he pointed to the shore, he talked English with a questioning inflection. He has a theory that any two humans, given time, can evolve a common language. Once he heard a fellow-American, abandoning words in despair, do complicated business with an Italian chauffeur by noth- ing but a series of eloquent grunts. This time too the boatman understood. He selected a little cafe with a balcony over the water and put the Drifter ashore. # * * * * COFFEE has the same name in all languages, and it is the national drink of Turkey. But the Drifter was hungry. In vain he asked for food in all the languages in which he is able to ask for food; in vain he appealed to the narghile-smokers industriously puffing at their long tubes, while a yard or so away their fire burned and their caldron bubbled. Better to interrupt a man at his prayers, his bath, his love-making than at his narghile. The Drifter tested his theory thoroughly and gestured like a very primitive man indeed. The more he pointed to his mouth the more coffee he was given. Nothing seemed farther from the Turkish mind at half past twelve o'clock than food. But Constantinople is an international city and the streets are full of amateur interpreters. Before long the proprietor led a boy to the Drifter's table. "Y a-t-il de quoi manger?" asked the Drifter hopefully. The boy shook his head. "Etwas zu essen?" No better. It was the boy's turn. "Russky?" he suggested. The Drifter pondered and at last found three words: "Ya chochu yest — I want to eat!" The boy smiled and explained. The proprietor was sur- prised but equal to the occasion. He led the Drifter, with many a bow, to the kitchen of his house next door, and let him select the materials for his own salad. If the Drifter had insisted he might even have mixed it. The Drifter Correspondence Officially Pure To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: It will interest Nation readers to know that the librarian of the Congressional Library is doing his or her part for the cause of purity. Havelock Ellis's "Studies in the Psy- chology of Sex" cannot be taken out of the library. "Books of that kind aren't circulated indiscriminately," the lady at the desk, age 25, told me. Washington, D. C, July 1J, John T. Moutoux Saving Germany for Chewing Gum To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The latest development in the Americanization of Europe prompts me to make the following remarks: America "saved" Germany for democracy. Then you sent General Dawes and Mr. Young to save German industry from bank- ruptcy and the German workingman from a fair wage. Your latest missionary is Mr. Wrigley. He is out to save German teeth and German digestion. And German newspapers, street ears, subways, back fences, and store windows are full of the M known "Spearmint" signs. Verily, the Americanization of Europe proceeds apace. With the help of a few more Dawes plans for other countries and a few more shiploads of chewing gum, you will soon have Europe safely in your vest pocket. Berlin, Germany, .July 5 Liesbeth Wender Oliver Cromwell on Prohibition To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: While we are having the truth about Puritanism and prohibition of alcoholic beverages, is it not to the point to rake out these sentences from one of Oliver Cromwell's letters? Your pretended fear lest Krror should step in, is like i In- man who would keep all the wine out the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise policy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge. The curious, and the dubious, will find this passage in the letter written by Cromwell to the Governor of Edinburgh on Sep- tember 12, 1650. Berkeley, California, July U B. H. LEHMAN

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Books For a Thief Lynched By JOHN WALDHORN GASSNER They shot you as they shoot a wolf near a pen, Fearing for their feathery food; and called it justice Because it was they who shot you, not you who shot them; And they hoisted the empty body on a hickory tree, to rot, For a warning that henceforth the chickens were theirs. But yours became the ravens and the crows, the larks and the thrushes, And over you trickled mother-of-pearl rain from emerald leaves And tumid cicada found solitude for songs in your hair! Fra Elbertus Elbert Hubbard of East Aurora. By Felix Shay. Wm. II. Wise Company. $3.50. rpHE career of Elbert Hubbard would furnish a not unsuit- able subject for scholarly investigation and no Kulturge- schichte of modern America can be complete without him. He, apparently, first made articulate the doctrine of "service" and first defended the "art" of advertising. He is the spiritual father of all the copy which begins with an anecdote about Socrates and ends with the adjuration to insist upon the only genuine article in soapless shaving cream. He, in a word, taught the merchant swank; and it would be interesting to have traced with scientific exactitude his influence in molding the whole esoteric philosophy of business. The present volume, written by an associate and disciple, undertakes no such task. It is weak in specific facts or figures and its chronology is far from definite; but from the chatty, journalistic pages there emerges a picture of the man who stumbled upon a set of ideas more apt than he knew for the needs of the moment and was himself molded by the forces which he let loose. At the age of thirty-five Hubbard, having accumulated a moderate fortune in the soap business, set out in search of an education. Disappointed in Harvard he went to England, where he met with William Morris, whose sumptuous editions appealed immediately to his superficial aesthetic sense. Returning to America a cross between the English aesthete and the homely philosopher, he founded his magazine, the Philistine, and it had an immediate success. To thousands of half-educated people it became a concrete symbol of the mysterious realm of art and intellect. Its strange paper and bold typography gave it the requisite touch of the esoteric, and it could lie upon the lihrary table as a tangible evidence that its possessor was not indifferent to culture. Moreover it could, unlike the standard sets which most of its subscribers had previously bought, actually be read, for Hubbard shared the limitations of those for whom he wrote sufficiently to know what they could stand. He had a genius for selecting or rephrasing aphoristic sentences from the works of the great and he was a master of that semi-literary jauntiness so vastly impressive to the unlettered. Moreover, for all his oddness, he was funda- mentally safe. Art, rightly understood, was not a seductive siren but merely an ornament to the useful life, and philosophy, properly interpreted, enforced the practical virtues. He might quote the tramp Whitman or the anarchist Thoreau, but he encouraged no one to follow them into idleness or discontent. "Get Out or Get in Line" was the title of one of his booklets, and this dominant sentiment was far more congenial to the spirit of America than any of the others which he had to retail. When finally his fame was sufficient to enable him to found the famous shops at East Aurora he based the appeal of the new institution upon the same foundations which had been so successful in the magazine. Here once more was art made tangible in sumptuous books or in bits of bric-a-brac which could be carried away and placed upon the mantelpiece, hut no one was seduced away from practical affairs. Instead, the famous brotherhood was surrounded with something of the hocus-pocus of the secret lodge, and the pilgrims were invited to come for a few days, be baptized in the new faith, and to go away, not outwardly changed, but flooded with a new grace. An excellent showman, Hubbard knew the importance of playing the part. His long hair and his flowing tie made him look the prophet as his disciples imagined the prophet ought to look, but here again he frightened nobody because he did not suggest that anyone else should do likewise. Even among the members of his permanent staff he was the only eccentric and it was his function to fulfil vicariously all the unconven- tional aspirations of his disciples. After a week in his pres- ence they could return to their homes and their businesses in the comfortable assurance that the service of art was being carried forward and that they need do no more than send in their subscriptions. His cult had the perennial charm of all the salvation religions which stress the importance of faith and do not insist too much upon works. In the beginning there does not appear to have been any- thing to give either unity or direction to the odd melange of ideas and enthusiasms which he drew from a wide variety of sources. He was nothing if not receptive, so that if he praised Ibsen he spoke in even higher terms of Walt Mason, and it is doubtful if he had ever himself attempted to unify the scraps of attitudes which he had adopted from the most diverse thinkers, real and near. But the spirit of the age gave him the direction which he could not find for himself. In the number of the Philistine for March, 1899, there appeared unobtrusively the article called A Message to Garcia in the course of which occurs the sentence "It is not book learning young men need, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do the thing — 'Carry a message to Garcia.' " A few days later an official of the New York Central Railroad asked for 100,000 reprints and since that time millions of copies have been issued. Business recognized in Hubbard the man who could give the necessary air of leaiming, suavity, and polish to its propaganda, and he accepted the task. The disciple of Thoreau and Morris, the long-haired admirer of deckled edges and hammered brass, became the Voice of Amer- ican Business. In the mood of the old Hubbard he had — apparently — invented the saying about the mousetrap and attributed it to Emerson, but it was the new spirit which led him to remark apropos of the controversy which arose over the question of authorship: "That mousetrap guff isn't true anyway. The world will never make a path to your door unless you advertise." Though Hubbard was doubtless always a little vague as to his aims, he had originally been interested in excellence not puffery. But when he discovered that culture, after its immemorial way, refused to hum he turned to something which would. The influence of that side of him which was interested in literature has dwindled until nothing remains except his note-books, which are now being sold as a royal road to culture for those who cannot endure even the fifteen minutes a day which Dr. Eliot recommends, but in thousands of little book- lets setting forth "The Romance of the Silk Trade" or "A Message from the President to his Fellow Workers" his spirit goes marching on. If he did not succeed in making business artistic he at least made it arty. Joseph Wood Kkutch

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108 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3187 Our American Empire American Foreign Investments. By Robert W. Dunn. The Vik- ing Press. $5. Dollar Diplomacy. By Scott Nearing and Joseph Freeman. B. W. Huebsch and the Viking Press. $2.50. THESE two books furnish an excellent basis for an under- standing of the precise nature of our foreign investments and of their effect upon our foreign policy. Mr. Dunn's volume, primarily designed for the research student, is a compendium of information about the quantity and nature of our invest- ments abroad, while that by Nearing and Freeman concerns itself in the main with the political consequences which have flowed from this export of capital. In 1914 European investments in the United States amour ver two billions more than our holdings abroad. By the end of 1924, however, the overseas investments in the United States had been almost wiped out, while the volume of capital which American nationals held in foreign countries was nine billions, and at present it is probably nearly eleven billions. Approximately a quarter of the total is invested in Canada and an equal proportion in Europe, while 40 per cent is in Latin America. To these sums should be added the twelve billion dollars of foreign obligations which are held by our government. The change is revolutionary. The chief value of Mr. Dunn's book is, however, not so much in the compilation of these general statistics, which is already adequately done by the Department of Commerce, but in the admirably detailed listing of the various American in- vestments in virtually every country. This furnishes an invaluable checklist by which American investments can in the future be identified. The volume is still further enhanced by the publication of many of the contracts providing f( r loans to and concessions in Caribbean countries. Nearing and Freeman's companion study of the influence which these in ive exercised upon our foreign policy is the most thoroughly documented general analysis that has as yet been published. While admitting that our investments in Canada have not led to any attempts to extend our political control there, they interpret our policy in China, the Near East, and Latin America as dominated by the desire to protect our business interests and to enhance their profits. John Hay's declaration of the open-door policy in China is thus shown essential y to have been an attempt to prevent the foreign nations from barring out American traders from their respec- tive spheres of influence. The later backing by our Govern- ment of the various attempts of Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and others to secure an interest in or control over the Manchurian railways is fully described, as is also the varied history of the Consortium, with its final negotiation in 1920 of an agreement similar to that which Wilson had refused to approve seven years before. The American demand for an open-door policy in the Near East similarly is shown to have been at least in part actuated by the desire to secure openings in Mesopo for the Chester, Standard Oil, and Sinclair interests. Evidence is marshaled to indicate that the fundamental reason why we opposed Huerta and supported Carranza was because the former was granting concessions to the English oil interests headed by Lord Coudray, while the latter had agreed to support the claims of the American concessionnaires. Perhaps the most interesting chapter of all discusses the American occupation of Haiti in 1915, of Santo Domingo in 1916, and of our maintenance of marines in Nicaragua from 1912 to 1925. The occupation of the first two countries was clearly a violation of international law and furnished a startling contradiction to the principle of the a .tonomy of the Pan- American nations which Woodrow Wilson was then so vigor- ously proclaiming. Taken as a whole, the book is as accurate in its statement of facts as such a study, based as it is on published documents, can be. It errs in some places by overstressing the economic motive, while in others it does not sufficiently emphasize the real economic forces. Thus, Wilson's refusal to recognize Huerta was undoubtedly largely based on his abhorrence of the latter's murder of Madero. That Wilson was not the tool of the American oil interests is known by all those who were close to him and who were aware of the determined resistance which he offered to the repeated attempts to stampede him into a military occupation of Mexico. Our imperialism in the Caribbean has moreover been compounded of many elements. A naive belief in national expansion, a desire to protect the approaches to the Panama Canal, and an acceptance of the doctrine that we must police countries where changes of govern- ment are made by bullets rather than by ballots, have all con- tributed their part to lead us on. On the other hand, there is far more to the story of the Hawaiian revolution than the authors tell, while the profits which the French Panama Canal Company, and those American banking interests which had probably bought shares in it, made from the Panama revolution and from the taking over of the soon-to-expire concession are, in a similar fashion, not men- tioned. The extraordinary story of the National Railway of Haiti is barely touched upon, while the reasons for the change of front on the part of Senators Lodge and Fall in 1921 when they secured the ratification of the Colombian treaty are not described, although published in the Coyigressional Record. Such books as these inevitably lead one to wonder what should be done with a country that refuses to meet its foreign obligations. Intervention by the creditor country itself is clearly unjust. Either no intervention at all should be permitted or temporary control over the country's finances should be assumed by some such international body as the League of Nations or a genuine Pan-American association. Only in such a way as this can the otherwise inevitable abuses be prevented, but to accom- plish this we must abandon our present interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine whereby we virtually declare that the will of the United States is to be the law of the Western Hemisphere. Paul H. Douglas Romantic Spain The Rise of tlie Spanish Empire in the Old World and in the New. Volume III: The Emperor. By Roger Bigelow Merriman. The Macmillan Company. $5.50. •pain: A Short History of I In Politic*, Literature, and Art from Earliest Times to the Present. By Henry Dwight Sedgwick. Little, Brown and Company. $3.50. rPIIESE attractive volumes show that the American interest * in Spanish history and literature which blossomed in the days of Prescott and Tieknor has not died. The books under review are of decidedly different types: one is a detailed sur- vey of an era which is important in both European and Ameri- can history; the other is an impressionistic account suitable for ei nners in the study of Spanish civilization. Mr. Sedgwick's book is neither a chronological sketch of political events nor a well-proportioned summary of Spanish economic and social history. It is rather a series of more or hss charming essays on select topics, with special attention to history, literature, and art. It is more reliable and useful for the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance than for either the Moslem or the Modern period. The author has drunk inspira- tion from a varied number of sources, and, with the possible exception of Ballestero's "Historia de Espafia," has consulted the standard secondary treatises on Spanish history and litera- ture. Inquisitive scholars will encounter in the appendix a tantalizing list of authorities for statements made in the text. Those portions of the book concerning the Catholic Sovereigns Charles V and Philip II are useful and suggestive. As the historical narrative proceeds, the interspersed chapters on paint- ing and sculpture furnish agreeable digressions. In the chap-

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Aug. 4, 1926] The Nation L09 ters concerning the influence of French and Italians on Spanish architecture students of the fine arts may occasionally discover a fresh interpretation. Neophytes in Spanish literature will find useful chapters on Cervantes and Lope de Vega. But those who would quickly obtain a bird's-eye view of Spanish history will still read Chapman, and those who would consult an au- thoritative account of Spanish literature will still consult Fitzmaurice-Kelly. Mr. Merriman's contribution to the literature of a most important epoch of Spanish history is the third of a series of four volumes which he planned some sixteen years ago. Of this ambitious series the two volumes which appeared in 191 S were appropriately dedicated to William Hickling Preseott. Al- though the volume on "The Emperor" is in part based on secon- dary accounts, the work has been done with such thoroughness that Hispanic scholars will read the bibliographical notes and many of the footnotes with interest. To the reviewer the ab- sence of a systematic bibliography is a cause for regret. Perhaps an occasional reader will vainly look for a glimpse of those mountain peaks which are supposed to adorn the his- tory as well as the landscape of the Iberian Peninsula. The volume here reviewed, which covers the period 1516-1556, is composed of two books, Spain in the Old World and Spain in the New World. In the first we are given the personality of Charles, his policies in the Iberian Peninsula, his foreign policy, diplomacy, and wars, and his withdrawal from the political stage. For a fuller account of Charles and of certain phases of his European activity the English reader will still turn to Armstrong's biography. In the second book we are again told the fascinating story of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe, of the achievements of the conquistadores in Mexico and Peru, of the daring exploits of Spanish explorers, and of the origins of the Spanish colonial system. Though the narrative has been pieced out by new evidence at many points, yet it seems a contribution to knowledge less on the American than on the strictly European side. In dealing with the Old World some manuscript collections have been personally examined and util- ized; but in dealing with the New World such valuable works as Prince's "Bosquejo de la Literatura Peruana Colonial," Weisse's "Las Civilizaciones Primitivas del Peru," Medina's "La Araucana," and Riva Palacio's "Mexico a Traves de los Siglos" are not even mentioned in the erudite footnotes. In his earlier volumes Mr. Merriman paid relatively slight atten- tion to the rise of the Spanish Empire in the New World. In the present volume little more than one-third of his space is devoted to Spain's achievements in the Indies and to the administration of her American dependencies. The series to which it belongs will thus remain an account of Spain in the Old World with generous attention to her expansion in the New rather than a balanced narrative of her activities in both hemispheres. William Spence Robertson A Poetic Palate A History of English Literature. By Emile Legouis and Louis Cazamian. Two volumes. Volume I : The Middle Ages and the Renascence (650-1660). By Emile Legouis. Trans- lated from the French by Helen Douglas Irvine. The Macmillan Company. $3.75. IT is delightful and refreshing to review the history of our literature through the slightly detached but very discerning and friendly eyes of M. Legouis. M. Legouis has the charac- teristic virtues of the French critic — a just and delicate taste, a refined perception of aesthetic nuances, a sense of order and proportion, and a talent for lucid and pointed expression. When these gifts are combined with a faithful and thorough scholar- ship, the result is a very superior kind of history. Since his design is merely to introduce French students to the riches of a literature which is new to them, M. Legouis does not seek interest in novel points of view. What guides him in his sur- vey is a sense of those qualities in English poetry and prose which are likely to affect most agreeably the aesthetic palate of a Frenchman. The steadiness with which the test of beauty is applied, whatever else there may be in a work to merit at- tention, is the distinguishing and agreeable feature of this book. Some persons may discern the workings of national preju- dice in the opening section. M. Legouis is apparently not very fond of Anglo-Saxon literature, though he tries to do justice to it. He maintains that the literature written in England before the Conquest is not really an integral part of English literature, arguing quite soundly that the true unity of a litera- ture is constituted by the persistence of a language which re- mains fairly intelligible from one age to another and by the continuous active influence of the works which are literary landmarks. The absoluteness of the literary breach between Chaucer and King Alfred is beyond dispute. Nevertheless a score of years ago a challenge such as this would have roused the Teutonic fervor of our scholars to no mean pitch of indigna- tion. And in how many will not the bile still rise at the charac- terization of "Beowulf" as "a poem which has come out of a cold cell in a Northumbrian cloister and breathes the air of the tomb"! Perhaps M. Legouis exaggerates the gloom of Anglo- Saxon poetry. But what would you? He is a Frenchman who loves warmth and sunshine and he likes to think, as others have thought before him, that sweetness and light came into England from across the Channel in the wake of Norman William and his joyous minstrel Taillefer. He is indeed never so happy aa when he discovers that grace and genialty, that love of life and of light which speak to him the language of his own race and soil. He has a feeling of deep sympathy with Chaucer, "the lineal descendant of the French trouveres," and a genuine affection for the humaneness of such purely English natures as Dekker and Izaak Walton. It is good, too, to have certain aspects of English literature appraised by one who does not belong to a Bible-worshiping na- tion and is untouched by the Puritan tradition. M. Legouis does not underestimate the influence of the Bible in strengthening the moral sense of the English and in imparting an imaginative and poetic coloring to their speech, but perhaps only a French- man, certainly no Englishman, would have trusted himself to say that the assiduous reading of the Bible might be in a measure responsible for "the troubled and confused eloquence, interrupted by usages violently subversive of logic, of which many English writers have been guilty," that the poetry has been won at the expense of intellectual clarity. The immunity from Puritanic prejudice is even more striking in the discus- sion of Spenser, "the admirable painter and enchanting mu- sician who posed as a professor of morals." With a deliciously suave mockery M. Legouis brushes aside all those elaborate pretensions to an ethical system which recent American scholar- ship has been so earnest to elucidate. The English, he says, "were beginning to take a national pride in their seriousness, as a quality which distinguished them from the Southern peo- ples whom they considered more frivolous and dissolute than themselves. Spenser was the more inclined to this attitude because he wished to emulate Ariosto and counted on superior virtue to enable him to surpass 'Orlando Furioso.' " Indifferent to the moralist in Spenser, he yet rises to the full grandeur of Milton's moral earnestness and treats his thought with as clear a feeling of its greatness as his art. Anything truly clas- sic finds an adequate response in the critical judgment of M. Legouis — a judgment which sets a high price on Massinger but is rather cold to writers like Donne, and too sensitive to the faults of the "conceited" style to take much pleasure in the lyric poets of the seventeenth century. M. Legouis is most individual when writing on the great figures. His treatment of the lesser writers is competent and, in view of the limits of his space, remarkably concrete. Hi3 skilful summarizing of the substance of books and his gift of precise generalization should gain favor for his work as a

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110 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3187 manual. It is therefore to oe regretted that the bibliographical footnotes in the English translation have been so badly handled. The references to editions are quite haphazard, often omitting the latest and most authoritative, and the names of German and American scholars are repeatedly distorted. Grain and Wiilker, for instance, are almost unrecognizably disguised as Green and Wilkes. Jacob Zeitlin Negro Eloquence Negro Orators and Their Orations. By Carter G. Wi Washington, D. C. The Associated Publishers. $5.25. rT,HIS compilation of orations and addresses by Negro leaders, * from as early a date as the first pamphlet broadside against slavery in 1788 — by a Negro who wisely chose a pseudonym — to race leaders recently dead or still living, is a brave and on the whole quite successful attempt to make oratory interpret social and historical issues. Ordinarily oratory is an unreliable weather-vane of social opinion, but for most of the period cov- ered by this particular study the issues were so vitally serious in the mind of the Negro as to give an unusual sobriety and seriousness even to his oratorical pointings. Careful historical comment upon the issues under discussion has given the collec- tion unsual interpretative value. The volume becomes, there- fore, a somewhat unique source-book for the history of the various social and political problems of the Negro. Comparatively little eulogistic and occasional oratory lias been included, and though there are many selections which are not brilliant examples of oratorical style and form, few of the selections fail to qualify as important social documents. And when figures as significant as Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Booker Washington are eulogized by contemporaries and coworkers, there is more than transitory value to what was said. Perhaps the m st illu- minating and valuable sections are those dealing with the early protests, which are surprising in their advanced tone and com- petent character, with the Negro anti-slavery orators, and with the speeches of the Negro Senators and Representatives during the period of congressional representation. But the outstanding virtue of the book is, after all, that it is comprehensive — that it gives a vivid and yet reliable panoramic view both of representative Negro thought and of the whole Negro question. Alain Locke The Awakening of China. By James H. Dolsen. Daily Worker Publishing Company. $1. A Communist study of China full of minor errors, exag- gerations, and distortions, yet revealing an understanding of economic forces which might have made many better-documented works more useful. The Great God Brown; The Fountain; The Moon of the Cari- bees; and Six Other Plays of the Sea. By Eugene O'Neill. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. This volume brings up to date the handsome collected edition of Mr. O'Neill's plays, now complete in five volumes. The English Madrigal. By Edmund H. Fellowes. The World's Manuals. Oxford University Press. $1.40. Mr. Fellowes, well known for numerous works on Tudor music, here condenses his knowledge for a most interesting series of books. fnside the Moscow Art Theater. By Oliver M. Sayler. Brentano's. $4. This elaborately illustrated book deals informingly with the history and purposes of the Moscow Art Theater. It is more particularly devoted to the Musical Studio, and was pre- pared in connection with the recent visit of Nemirovitch- Dantchenko to this country. Essays in Biography: 1680-1726. By Bonamy Dobree. Oxford University Press. $5. Vanbrugh, Etherege, and Addison furnish the subjects for these essays, which are written in a manner more nearly that of the modern school of biographers than is usually found in studies of those literary personages who have been regarded as the exclusive possession of the schools. The essay on Addison, "the first Victorian," offers a brilliant reinterpretation. Black Haiti. By Blair Niles. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.50. A conscientiously sympathetic travel book, containing sprightly historic material in anecdotal form, which, however, does not rise to its descriptive and interpretative opportunities in picturing a unique land. The romance, gorgeous color, fragrance, and picturesque charm which are intensively and peculiarly Haiti's are inadequately conveyed. The classic about Haiti remains to be written. Books in Brief Mr. Shaw and "Tin- Maid." By J. M. Robertson. London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson. 5/. The preface to "St. Joan" is subjected to some mordant and illuminating criticism. A Study of the Oceans. By James Johnstone. Longmans, Green and Company. $3.75. An introduction both to the science of oceanography and to the history of that science. The Life of Racine. By Mary Duclaux (A. Mary F. Robinson). Harper and Brothers. $4. A valuable because inviting account of one of the great poets of the world — one whom hitherto we have known with too little intimacy. The Oxford Book of English Prose. Chosen and Edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Oxford University Press. $3.75. An interesting but inferior companion to the same editor's famous "Oxford Book of English Verse." All that was pos- sible has perhaps been done, but success was impossible in a world where there is so much good prose and where chapters, not pages, are the smallest judgeable units. A Merchant of Dreams. By Abbie Graham. The Woman's Press. $2. A rather amateurish life of Grace Dodge. Miss Dodge was a remarkable example of the philanthropic woman who, profiting enormously through our present organization of so- ciety, yet feels the responsibility of wealth and gives largely not only of her means but of herself. [ 1 THEATER THE 4th Annual Revu* of GRAND STREET FOLLIES Playhouse. 466 Grand St. Drydock 7616. NEIGHBORHOOD Evenings (Except Mon.) at 8:30. Matinees Saturdays. -THE THEATRE GUILD Presents- AT MRS. BEAM'S A Comedy by O. K. MUNRO with ESTELLE WINWOOD. JEAN CADELL. EARL LARIMORE. HELEN WESTLEY. HENRY TRAVERS AND OTHERS. OTTTT r» TT-TTTATTJT? 52nd St-> WeB' ot B'way. Ev». 8:80. (j\JIL,U iniVMRt, Matine«» THURS. and SAT., 2:80. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section The Shrinking" Globe THE International Air Conference, held at Paris during the past winter, resulted in the removal of restrictions which had not only limited German aviation to its own frontiers but had also barred other nations from crossing those boundaries. The demolition of these barriers caused the sprouting all over Europe of plans for air-lines, the vast- ness and the probability of which are suggested in the fol- lowing article from the Berliner Tageblatt of June IS: On January 15, 1918, the first regular air-lino was opened in Germany, the Berlin-Hanover-Colognc line. But this was only a military experiment. With the exception of the air mail, which was established on the Eastern front as early as 1917, this line, which lasted only three months, was the beginning of German air traffic. Out of that grew a whole network of air communication, although development was hampered until recently by the fetters which the Treaty of Versailles had welded. . . . The new arrangements permit Germany to com- pete on a friendly basis with other nations in the air. These new agreements were no gift; the arrow which was aimed at Ger- many proved a boomerang. All disabilities which were placed upon German aircraft applied also to the craft of other nations crossing German territory. But it was impossible perma- nently to avoid German territory. The French attempted to negotiate the section Strasbourg-Prague despite the fact that they had to cross Southern Germany, but they lost their enthu- siasm when every plane that was forced to land was confiscated. The situation itself finally compelled a sensible arrangement. Now the great international lines which have to cross Germany have become possible. . . . The stage-coach brought cities together, the railroad whole countries, but aircraft unites continents. The world is shrink- ing; the means of communication among nations, economic and intellectual, have doubled. Daily fifteen air connections are made in Berlin. How these facilitate travel may be seen from the following table in which the fastest trains and aircraft are compared: From Berlin to Fastest train Airplane Amsterdam 10 hrs. 5 hrs. 50 min. Basle I* " 7 45 Breslau r> ' 2 30 Cologne 8 Danzig 1° " 3 15 Dortmund 7 ' 3 35 Dresden 3 ' 1 Essen 7 " 4 50 Frankfurt a. M 8 " 4 45 Hamburg 3 " 30 mln. 2 Kiel 6 " 3 15 KBnigsberg 10 ' 5 10 London 20 " 10 Munich 9 " 4 35 Paris 19 " 8 " 15 Prague 7 ' 3 Stuttgart 12 " 4 ' 15 That is, on the average, half the time required by the fastest trains. Last year the companies now united as the Deutsche Luft-Hansa flew 4,034,979 kilometers (about 2,400,000 miles) and carried 48,184 passengers. Mail and freight traffic has also achieved considerable volume. The area covered by the Luft- Hansa today reaches 17,000 kilometers, over which 110 air- planes fly. . . . A means of transportation like aircraft is in the long run not economically feasible if it is limited by national frontiers. Air-lines cannot stop at the boundaries. This has hitherto been the greatest hindrance to German air development The Btretchea to Essen and Cologne had no connection with France, Dresden no connection with Prague, Gleiwitz none with Poland, Vienna and Innsbruck none with Italy. With England there was a connect ion, but it was temporary. On the other hand, lie to Holland. Denmark, Sweden, the Soviet Union, Lithuania, Switzerland, and of course .Austria were in operation. Since the close of the London conference the connection with London has been regularized, that with France, Belgium, and Czecho- slovakia established. Air service to Paris, Brussels, Ostend, and Prague is now a reality. We have agreed with France that a French line may cross German territory to Prague. In return we are permitted to carry a German line over southern France to Spain, an undertaking in which trial flights will shortly be made by German super-machines. Here is a begin- ning of that which only the future will be able to realize. To order this future, perhaps a very near future, properly, it is issary to envisage the situation in enormous world space. What we have hitherto been observing was essentially Mid- Europe, the territory between London and Moscow, Stockholm and Zurich. A real picture of future development may be gained only by a survey of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. In that perspective the main line of today will be but a branch line. Today the longest line that crosses Germany is the line London-Moscow. It is evident that the Russians are planning to extend this line through Siberia to Vladivostok, with a branch line to Peking. The way to that is pointed by the Trans-Siberian Railroad, with the difference that the air-line to Peking would probably cut across Mongolia. The connection from Vladivostok to Tokio is near at hand. The second great transcontinental line also starts with the London-Berlin stretch. It is the beginning of the line England-India. This line England must carry across Germany. That was one of the chief reasons why the English demanded the freeing of German aircraft. The line which the English intend to develop in the next two years will follow the route Berlin-Constantinople-Angora-Aleppo-Bagdad-South Per- sia-Karachi-Calcutta. Hydroplanes will connect Calcutta with Rangoon and Singapore. From Singapore the line will fork, one line crossing the Malay Islands to North Australia-Sydney-Mel- bourne, the other going from Singapore to Hongkong, with ex- tensions to Peking and Japan. Here the lines that divide at Berlin meet again. From Aleppo a branch line will go to Pal- estine and Egypt. Thus England has covered its chief terri- tories, with the exception of those in America and Africa. With this line another is closely related: the African North-South line. The English flier Cobham made the stretch from Alexan- dria to Cape Town last year in ninety flying hours. Consider- ing the importance which England places on its East African colonies this was a great event. London will probably also be connected with Cairo by a line crossing France. Thus far the English plans. France has already developed several international lines. Its airplanes fly from Antibes over Corsica to Tunis, from Strasbourg through Prague, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Constantinople to Angora; from Tou- louse via Marseilles, Barcelona, Alicante, Malaga, Tangier, and Rabat to Casablanca; and from Alicante via Oran, Fez, and Rabat to Casablanca. From Casablanca this line is extended via Agadir, Cape Juby, Port Etienne, and St. Louis to Dakar, south of the mouth of the Senegal. Political considerations have in this case determined the east-west course. Political consid- erations determine the further plans: the stretch Paris-Mar- seilles-Genoa-Rome-Brindisi- Athens-Crete-Syria, with a probable branch line from Crete to Egypt. Another plan is for a Mar- seilles-Corsica-Sardinia-Sicily-Cairo line. Holland, too, intends to establish a connection with her colonies, and Belgium with the Congo. The German plans have been indicated. The connection with Poland and Italy will be established sooner or later. Of these the Italian line is the more important. The trans-Alpine

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112 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3187 lines will probably go from Zurich to Milan, from Munich to Venice, and from Vienna to Trieste. At Berlin these trans- Alpine lines connect with Scandinavia and the East. An Italian program has recently been published. It includes of course the trans- Alpine lines from Milan to Lausanne, Zurich to Constance, Innsbruck to Munich, and Trieste to Vienna. An- other east-west line goes from Tangier via Barcelona, Genoa, Rome, and Naples to Brindisi and thence via Valona and Saloniki to Constantinople. From Milan likewise a line goes to Brindisi, which is continued to Crete (Candia), Cyrenaica, and Egypt. A great line is that from Italy to Tripoli and Tunis, with branch lines from Tripoli to Ben-Ghasi and Derna. The Italian pro- gram is very extensive. Whether it can be realized soon remains to be seen. Such are the air-lines which will unite the countries of the Old World and Australia. Two questions become urgent: What about connection with America? What about airships? Both questions are interrelated. A German airship has crossed the Atlantic from Spain to the United States. For this voyage air- ships seem to be the proper means. But a German Dornier-Wal hyi roplane has also crossed the Atlantic from Spain to Per- nambuco, under the command of the Spanish flier Franco, in thirty-five hours. Both accomplishments are individual feats, on which as yet no air-lines can be built. To be sure, we hope that some day the German line to Spain can be continued to South America. But despite the flight of the Z. R. Ill, the use of dirigibles for regular transportation is still problematical. This needs emphasis, especially in Germany. As matters stand today the airplane has a great advantage over the airship. Plans for airship lines, however, are under consideration. Eng- land contemplates several great lines, one from London down the west coast of Africa to Cape Town; another via Egypt to India, with a continuation to Australia and Eastern Asia; a third to Canada. Trial flights are planned for these stretches, but these are more plans. Air travel is still a child in swaddling clothes. It is not yet free from the influence of the seasons and the weather; the problem of night flying is not solved. Much remains to be done, not only in the development of the various lines but also in tech- nique of aviation. But when we consider how short a time has passed since men first went up from the ground in heavier-than- air craft and what development has been achieved in those short twenty years, many things which seem wild and daring dreams are not at all fantastic. Contributors to This Issue Henrik Shipstead is United States Senator from Minne- sota, the only representative of the Farmer-Labor Party in the Senate. Helen Hayes Gleason is Mrs. Arthur Gleason. Philip Snowden was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labor Government of England. Mary K. Das is the wife of Taraknath Das. JOHN Waldhorn GASSNER is a contributor to literary reviews. Joseph Wood Krutch is Associate Editor of The Nation and the author of "Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius." Paul H. Douglas is professor of industrial relations at the University of Chicago. William Spence Robertson is professor of history at the University of Illinois. Jacob Zeitlin is associate professor of English at the University of Illinois. Alain Locke edited "The New Negro." SUMMER COURSES IN JEWISH SOCIAL WORK The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers summer institutes for Social Workers in addi- tion to its regular course of fifteen months' graduate study in preparation for Jewish social work. The following courses will be given during the second term of the Summer Session which will begin August 16, 1926: Social and Religious Institutions of the Jews..M. M. Kaplan Modern Jewish History I. B. Berkson The Field of Jewish Social Service in the U. S...M. J. Karpf Adiminstration of Jewish Family Case Work Agencies M. J. Karpf Administration of Jewish Federations M. B. Hexter Post War Problems of the Jews I. B. Berkson The Fall Quarter Will Begin October 5, 1926 For a description of the Course of Study write for the General Announcement The Training School for Jewish Social Work (Initiated by the National Conference of Jewish Social Service) 210 West 91st Street, New York City Summer Time! Camps, hotels, summer homes, boarding houses, — and those who seek such accommodations we recommend placing an advertisement in the classified section of The Nation, as the best means of bringing the rifjht person and the right place together. Rates on re- jitiest. Address Dept. C, care of The Nation. nMau Non Depressant non Habit Forming Id Convenient Aluminum Boxes At every drug .-.tor' 3 T«bl«( tfo 10 T.Htt. 40.- for HEADACHE GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New York When writing to advertisers, pleats mention The Nation

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The Nation F o U N i) E n Vol. CXXIII YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11. 1926 No. 3188 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 11:1 EDITORIALS: Puttinpr Mexico in Her Place Ufi The Unwilling Censor rig IK lei Zangwill Irik van Loon. MY ADOPTED MOTHER. Bv Henrv W Nevinson CHINA: TIIK WORLD'S PROLETARIAT. B' MUNISM IN MARRIAGE: HUMAN RELATIO rilE ONEIDA COMMUNITY. By C. C. Church AMERICA'S CROP OF HATE. By Oswald Garrison Villnrd ...... IN THE DRIFTW \Y. By the Drifter CORRESPONDENCE 1 2 ■; BOOKS : Poems. By Laura Riding Gottschalk . . . A Dose of Democracy. By \\ icDonald A Master of the Accessible. By Joseph Woo. I Krutch The Crown Prince as Archivist. By Harry Elmer Barn. Oil Under the Water. By Lewis s. Gannett Toward a Synthesis. By Ernest Sutherland Bates. What Not to Do with Criminals. By Lorine Pruette The Canary Islanders. By Melville .1. Herskovits Books in Brief INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Propaganda War in China The French Activities in Syria. By Nazmie H. Anabtawy 136 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. I [ate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor LiterarV FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAX DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico: to Canada. $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union. $6.00. THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation. New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Ai Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1, England A YOUNG MAN applied to a medical school for ad- mission. He was well prepared, but he filled out the application blank too accurately. He stated that he was an agnostic, and received this answer: Dear Sir: I have been requested to advise you that the Committee on Admissions has examined your creden- tials and recommends that you be not admitted because no one can be an acceptable doctor who does not believe in God. Sincerely yours, Veronica Dooley, Regi It was Loyola College of Medicine, part of a Catholic univer- sity, which refused to teach an agnostic to cure disease. Its attitude throws light on the ardent desire of the Mexi- cans to rid themselves of Catholic control of their schools. THE REMARKABLE and most disgraceful fact about the Republican Senatorial primaries in Illinois is the amount contributed in behalf of public-utility interests. Since our brief comment on the subject last week, the inves- tigating committee has brought to light contributions totaling almost $1,000,000, and there is probably more to be accounted for. Although this sum is only a third of what was used in Pennsylvania, the sinister fact stands out that a fourth of the amount was public-utility money, most of which went into the successful campaign of Frank 1 and still is chairman of the Illinois Com- merce Commission, with wide regulatory powers over gas, electricity, and street railways. Of the $241,234 of public- utility contributions four-fifths was put up by Samuel Ensull, who controls the Commonwealth : and other similar companies. Mr. Insull gave $125,000 to the Smith campaign direct and $33,734 indirectly for anti- World Court propaganda. Ira A. Copley and Clement 'taker, prominent in the public-utilities field, gave $25,000 and $20,000 respectively to the Smith war chest. In view of the enthusiastic support of Mr. Smith by the utility interests it would doubtless be a good thing for Illinois to have him plucked from the chairmanship of its Commerce Commission, but it would be a danger to the people of the United States to accomplish this by sending him to Washington as a Senator. IT WOULD BE HARD to find a more convincing illus- tration of the futility of that vague liberalism which crystallized about Theodore Roosevelt in the early years of this century than the career of Senator Albert B. Cummins of Iowa, who died on July 30, at the age of seventy-six years. Senator Cummins's life was the picturesque and varied romance of self-building that was typical of most Americans of his era. Brought up by his father as a car- penter, he later drifted accidentally into surveying and became a successful builder of railroads. Ho threw this work over to study law and then went into politics. When he was sent to the United States Senate eighteen years ago he was regarded as a progressive if not a radical. He fought his party, the Republican, for tariff reduction, and although not formally affiliated with Mr. Roosevelt's Pro- gressives he declared in 1912 that he would not vote for President Taft. Then came a gradual hardening of his liberal arteries. In 1919 he was one of the authors of the Esch-Cummins act, a decidedly pro-railroad measure, and his last year in the Senate found him a thick-and-thin sup- porter of Coolidge and Coolidgeism. AMERICA'S PROPOSAL to carry further the limitation of naval construction agreed to by Great Britain and Japan at the Washington conference called by President Harding has come to naught, according to a dispatch from Geneva to the New York World. Japan informally accepted our invitation for a conference to extend the 5 — 5 — 3 agree- ment, but Great Britain, says the World correspondent, has refused. A number of reasons are assigned, including the reported reluctance of the British Admiralty to reduce its cruiser strength in the face of the extensive submarine program of France and Italy, but Senator Borah puts his finger on an indirect but probable cause of Great Britain's fear when he recalls our own refusal to recognize Russia, and the general failure to receive that nation into the fold of international comity. Senator Borah reminds us that some time ago Great Britain was declared to be unwilling further to curtail her navy until other countries reduced their land forces. "There will be no land disarmament," Mr. Borah observes, "so long as Russia, with an army of U&,

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114 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 some 700,000, is treated as an outcast among nations. The Russian problem must be settled before European armies are reduced." THE FARCE of the reservations laid down by us as a condition to entering the World Court should become increasingly evident with the announcement that after six months' time only three of the forty-two nations adhering to the tribunal have accepted our proposals. The three nations that have accepted our reservations are Greece, and Liberia. Fourteen countries, including Great Britain, Japan, Italy, and Belgium, have not even acknowl- edged receipt of the State Department's communication; nineteen have returned simple acknowledgments; six have stated that they are reserving decision. The State Depart- ment regards this situation as "perfectly normal." So do we if by that is meant natural or inevitable. It has seemed to us ever since the Senate passed its extraordinary reser- vations that it was highly improbable that they would be accepted by the members of the World Court or, if they were, that we would make an effective use of the inter- national tribunal. Doubtless the reservations were swal- lowed by some genuine but not too acute friends of the World Court in the Senate, but a great number of our legislators mus*. hava voted for the limitations with a ghoulish satisfaction that thereby they were ditching the measure while ostensibly "standing by the President." The actual decision on our reservations will presumably take place at the international conference called to con- sider them in Geneva in September, but our refusal to send delegates to this meeting seems to preclude he possi- bility of progress there through compromise. IT WILL NOT BE THE FAULT of the "Citizens' Com- mittee of Passaic, Clifton, Garfield, and Wallington" if the textile strike in that section is settled. The hopeful intervention of Senator Borah, the more friendly attitude of the American Federation of Labor, the expressed willing- ness of Weisbord (the strike leader who has been attacked because he is a Communist) to step out in favor of a mittee of outside sympathizers which has been given power to negotiate terms — these steps may eventually lead to peace. But the so-called Citizens' Committee does its utmost to prolong and intensify the war. The other day the newspapers printed a story released by the committee purporting to give "incontestable documentary evidence that the strike of the woolen textile workers ... is engi- neered from the headquarters in Chicago of the Communist Party of America." The evidence consisted of a letter from the National Pioneer Department of the Young Workers' League to the Pioneer Department of District Two — which seems to include several Eastern States. The letter outlines a rather pretentious plan for utilizing the events of the Passaic strike for Communist propaganda in the district. It urges discussion among young people of the lessons of the strike, the formation of relief committees among workers' children of all shades of radicalism, and other similar activity in and out of Passaic. There is not a hint in the entire document that the author has or is trying to exercise any influence over the strike leade s or the conduct of the strike. In fact it concludes rather plaintively: In spite of the fact that we have asked several times we have not yet received any definite information as to the situation in Passaic. We still don't know how many child- workers there are, how many are involved in the strike, how close they are to us, how many strikers' children there are, etc. We don't even know whether we have a Pioneer organi- zation in Passaic although we assume we have. Please send us a detailed report on all these matters. THIS IS THE DOCUMENT which offers the "incon- testable evidence" of Communist control of the strike. It is described by the Citizens' Committee as a "Letter to Weisbord" — which is patently false. The Citizens' Com- mittee headlines the letter thus: "Communist Party Chiefs Directing Passaic Strike from Chicago Office," and the fac- simile letter is said to be "from the headquarters of the Communist Party of America to Passaic strike leaders." Is it asking too much of the New York Times or the New York World, which pride themselves on accuracy in news, that they investigate a news release like this before print- ing it? It would have been easy to find out from the local office of the Workers' Party what the Pioneer Department of the Young Workers League was up to, and what its connection was with the Passaic strike. It would have been easier still to scrutinize the "evidence," which was kindly provided by the Citizens' Committee, and then, in the inter- ests of honesty, to throw it all in the waste basket. ALBERTA, CANADA, is largely populated by farmers. This being true one would expect to find the province in the hands of a government made up of bankers, lawyers, grain dealers, and professional politicians. Strangely, this is not the case; Alberta is run by farmers. In 1921 the United Farmers of Alberta went into politics, and when the smoke of the provincial election battle of that year cleared away it was found that the farmers had captured thirty- eight of the sixty seats in the provincial legislature. On June 28, 192G, another election was held and the U. F. A. won forty-four seats, which, with the six seats won by Labor, left the old parties smaller and weaker even than before. The United Farmers of Alberta is not a political party. It is an industrial organization with a paid-up mem- bership. It went into politics as a class-conscious union; it has held its ranks and kept its character through five years of power and reelected itself with a triumphant majority. "Class government" is freely denounced by per- sons of all parties — even such as support Mr. Pepper for the United States Senate. It is interesting to note some of the results of class government in Alberta. In five years the farmers' Government cleaned up a legacy of debts left by the old Liberal Government, wiped out an annual deficit of $2,000,000, and balanced the budget. At the same time it has improved government service and eliminated much obvious corruption. The farmers of Alberta believe that their government has succeeded for one reason — that it rep- resents a solid, well-organized class, instead of the usual hodge-podge of conflicting interests and apathies rep- resented in the ordinary political party. A "WHITE-COLLAR STRIKE" is a rare bird, and a successful white-collar strike is even more remark- able. Organization in the professions has almost invariably broken against stone walls of prejudice or indifference in the workers themselves. But on June 30 the engineers in Chicago's department of engineering walked out, and twenty-four hours later returned with a 30 per cent increase in wages. The prospect of suspension of civic improve- ments, which were costing $10,000,000, convinced the city

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Aug. 11, 1926] Tin- Nation 115 councilmen that the minimum wage of the engineers be increased from $160 to $2:50 a month and the maximum from $708 to $900. The union, which is a member of the American Federation of Labor, is now 800 strong. During the past month organization of the technical men cm- ployed by New York City too has gone vigorously forward. Two hundred and fifty engineers voted to join the union; a referendum is planned among a thousand more. The white- collar worker is learning the strength of unity. WE HOPE that the cotton manufacturers may draw some useful lessons from the men's clothing in- dustry. Once the men's clothing industry was the black sheep of American business. It had the twelve-hour day and sweatshop wages. It spent much of its energy in union-smashing lockouts. The industry was corrupted by sharp business practices. Then gradually both capital and labor learned the lesson of organization. Finally the day came when a national clothing manufacturers' association and a national union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, established reasonable conditions for the whole industry'. The employers united against any manufacturer who re- fused to cooperate in maintaining the standards of the in- dustry. The workers have doubled their wages, and won the eight-hour day and union protection, while the manu- facturers are making more money than they made in the days of chaotic competition, and economies in technical processes have saved the consumer from exploitation. That is the kind of organization which the cotton industry needs. THE NEWS that the cotton manufacturers of the coun- try are forming a gigantic combine to control output may arouse some apprehension in the minds of those who know the power of industrial combination to squeeze the consumer. But if there is one industry in the United States that has paid a penalty for disorganization it is the cotton industry. Overdevelopment, miscalculation of markets, and competition have left empty villages in the North and appalling poverty in the South. Women work- ers in Southern mills average less than $12.50 a week; a Georgia professor discovered a woman working in an Athens textile mill last year for $3.50 a week for an eleven- hour day. In spite of these low wages and favorable tariff there is no guaranty of steady work even in the South. Scores of mills are working half-time, nearly all have cur- tailed production, many are losing money. Judged by every standard of human and material efficiency the cot- ton-manufacturing industry is a disgrace to American business. It pays lower wages, has longer hours, and prob- ably hires more workers than any other factory trade in the United States. THE PRAYERS OF MEXICAN CATHOLICS for miraculous intervention against Article 130 of the Constitution did not go unanswered. In San Luis a group which had gathered before the closed church heard footsteps and the sound of a bell within. Women declared that they could see the image of the Holy Virgin walking up and down the nave of the church, moaning and lamenting her cap- tivity. The excited crowd sought to break down the doors and liberate their patron. A police inspector arrived, ob- tained the attention of the crowd, and then courteously addressed himself to the image. If the Virgin, he said, would be good enough to come out into the streets of the city, he would himself accompany her on her nocturnal walks. "The image," says the Rumbm . "did not take advantage of the offer." unbelievers insisted that Franciscans had entered the church by a secret door, but this was not confirmed; in any case, the empty church thereafter remained silent. Another miracle, in San Pedro, received ruder treatment. A family announced that an image of the Heart of Jesus, kept under a glass case in a niche in their home, was weeping. The community flocked to see the miracle, which they interpreted as a symbol of divine sorrow at the persecution of the church. But the agnostic mayor looked more closely, and found that bits of wax and a strong lamp behind the image cooperated to pro- duce the tears. Thereupon the owners of the image were imprisoned. Earnest Catholics must deplore such humanly arranged divine interventions, which add complexities to an already complex situation. DANGEROUS THOUGHTS" flitting through the minds of Japanese university students are again disturbing the authorities. Mr. Okada, the Minister of Education, recently called together the heads of the Tokio colleges and recommended suppression of student organi- zations for the study of perilous subjects like sociology and socialism. The Tokio Kokumin says that at a sup- posedly secret conference held in the Ministry the Vice Minister declared that the secret police had discovered 1,500 students who were thinking dangerously and had put their names upon a student black-list at the Police Department. Meanwhile the Kobe customs officials an- nounced with horror that they had confiscated a consign- ment of books, including a life of Lenin, sent from Moscow to students at Waseda University. The immediate results of these deliberations were not encouraging. Students in fifteen higher schools have joined in a League for the Defense of Freedom, and the net result has undoubtedly been to advertise the fascinating perils which the Minis- ter wanted to suppress. Japan offers curious contrasts between the absurd medievalism of Mr. Okada and the fresh adventuresomeness of these students; but there can be little question of the direction in which she is traveling. The Kobe Chronicle reminds us that it was only three- quarters of a century ago that Yoshida Shoin had his head cut off for suggesting that a few young men should study foreign ideas in order to know how to combat foreign influences; and the spirit of "Present Day Japan," just issued by the Asahi, a newspaper with a larger circulation than any American daily can boast, is evidence of the growing liberalism of young Japan. BY WA\ OF DIVERSION from matters of finance the French Chamber of Deputies recently found time to pass a measure declaring the sale of "pacifiers" for babies illegal. The momentous decision was recorded by a vote of 370 to 153 after an able address by Dr. Pinard, a mem- ber of the Chamber and sponsor of the measure, who vividly depicted the dangers facing the rising generation unless the use of these diabolic devices was summarily suppressed. A chemist who attempted to defend the despised "pacifier," on the ground that babies without this diversion might be inclined to resort to buttons or similar "bootleg pacifiers," received scant encouragement for his pains. This is a prohibition age.

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118 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 318S Putting Mexico in Her Place THOSE weeping women, those long lines of last-minute communicants, the edicts and excommunications, the huge popular demonstrations for and against the Govern- ment—the whole vast picture reflected in the cabled dis- patches from Mexico — are only new scenes in a centuries-old drama, and there is hardly an action or a phrase that could not be matched from the history of disestablishment in other countries. The secular authority of the church dies hard; church and state have never been separated without a strug- gle, nor church control of the life and thought of a nation thrown off without violence and bitterness. Mexico's history is particularly full of the bigotry of the church. It is a curious and often-forgotten fact that Mexico owes her independent existence to her reactionary church. The rich and powerful bishops who controlled Mexico a cent".1';: ago crushed in blood the popular upris- ings led by the parish priests Hidalgo and Morelos from 1810 to 1815; but when Spain herself turned liberal and adopted a potentially anti-clerical constitution they feared for their own dominating position and in 1820 sponsored a new independence movement which of course succeeded. Mexico's first revolution was a revolution to save the estab- lished church and the large estates, in opposition to religious toleration. Forty years later, when, under the Indian patriot Juarez, this bishop-born republic became liberal and anti-clerical, the ecclesiastics turned again to monarchy. After the downfall of the butcher Miramon they supported the sickly regime of the Emperor Maximilian. The Juarez constitution of 1857 remained on the statute-books — indeed in 1872 its anti-clerical clauses were intensified — but it was never enforced. Through successive regimes the church maintained its control, defying these mere scrap:; of paper. Sporadic outbursts of hostility to its domination never got beyond the law-making stage until the advent of President Calles. The Roman Catholic church in Mexico has not built up a strong native priesthood; it has not used its opportunity as almost sole custodian of the education of the people. Rather, it has guarded its property and fought those who sought to alter its position, repeating the bitter history of the battles of church and state in other countries. Even in Spain, "most Catholic of countries," this war has waged in our own day. The church fought, in 1910, a decree ordering collection of taxes from religious bodies carrying on commercial and industrial enterprises! And when the Government sought to establish "liberty of conscience" for those of other than the Catholic faith the cry of persecu- tion of the church rent the air. Seventy-two Spanish arch- bishops and bishops united in a protest to the Government— a tactic singularly like that adopted in Mexico today. The current Catholic pleas for "liberty of conscience," indeed, must make an historian smile. It is less than a century since Gregory XVI issued an encyclical denounc- ing "the absurd and erroneous maxim, or rather insanity, that liberty of conscience should be procured and guaran- teed to every one." "With this," he added, "is connected the liberty of publishing any writing of any kind. This is a deadly and execrable liberty for which we cannot feel sufficient horror." The Syllabus of 1864 and the encyclical Pascendi gregis of 1905 repeated the pontifical sneers at "liberty of conscience." The Catholic church has seldom inculcated tolerance ; and if the Mexican Government shows intolerance toward it today it is in no small measure responsible for its own troubles. We would not defend intolerance; we do not defend in every detail the present policy of the Mexican Government; but we believe it important that Mexico's policy be set against its historical background. This is no isolated outburst of Ku Klux Klanism; it is a belated chapter in the national history of our neighbor-republic. The United States is fortunate that from its beginning as a nation church and state have been separated; it has had so many sects that it has scarcely felt the threat of domination by one organized body filled with the passion of religious faith. Even without an established church it has seen enough of religious bigotry to make Americans pause before attempt- ing to judge Mexico. No people is safe in the hands of an established church owing primary allegiance to a foreign potentate, and no truly modern country endures foreign control of its religious life. Even Spain has struggled to free itself from control by the Church of Rome. Italy's conflict was so bitter that to this day the Pope refuses to cross the Tiber and step upon Italian soil. France went to the verge of revolution twenty years ago in her battle to free herself of the incubus of the church. Twenty-two years ago, pro- hibiting members of the religious orders from teaching, she closed 24,000 schools, and without that act she might never have attained her great public-school system of today. Aristide Briand, ten times her Prime Minister, first made his name known beyond St. Etienne when he brought in a report recommending abrogation of the Con- cordat and disestablishment of the church. In France, too, the church yielded nothing willingly. The law provided that the bishops might remain in their palaces for two years, and that the presbyteries and seminaries might continue five years, but the church, demanding all, conceded nothing, and intransigents refused the half loaf offered her. She has long since regretted her folly. She did not, in the case of France, make such an effort to create and use inter- national hostility as a weapon as she has made against Mexico, but the difference is to be traced to Mexico's lesser size and weakness. Thus far I lie Mexican struggle has proceeded peace- fully. The church seems already to regret its haste in ordering religious services suspended; perhaps it recog- nizes how remote such a measure is from the spirit of The members of the Confederation of Labor have marched, fifteen thousand strong, through the streets and past the churches of the capital, pledging their support to the Government; and no untoward incident occurred. Wild rumors of riots and killings, as well as of supernatural interventions, have flown about; but the threatened boycott of business seems to have been ineffective, and the passion of the people seems to have been stirred less than the head- lines indicated. It may be too much to hope that the Cath- olic church in Mexico will show the world that it is possible for an established church to resign itself gracefully to a purely religious function; but strange things happen in Mexico.

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Aug. 11, 1926] The Nation 117 The Unwilling Censor THE unhappiest of men is, o to be, i because he is a friend o{' literature, feels forced time to time to play the role of censor. He may not think of himself as occupying this position, and the public may never be aware that he has joined this on which, after all, it does not consciously consider objectionable; but the fact remains that against his will he has allied him- self with the Comstocks and the Sumners through the mere process of consenting to exercise their function. He is the man, in short, who consents to testify before a court his belief that a given book is nut indecent, lewd, di, ing, pornographic, and the rest, but is "art." His friend has written the book, or he knows the publisher, or he per- haps is no more than one who seizes any opportunity to defend the printed word from the hungry hands of mora- lists. So he steps up before the judge and swears that the author in question had the purest — that is, the n ous" — of intentions; or he allows his nam*1 to be published among those of other men who call the shrinking author blameless. The embarrassing implication here is that the m ; ■ has spoken for the book might have spoken again might conceivably cherish the opinion that it is possible for a book to be censorable. A wholly enlightened person will never provoke this suspicion. He will realize that to be a censor who always absolves is after all to be a censor, is to lend support to the institution of censorship; and if he is possessed of a meticulous conscience he will recognize the dishonesty of an attitude which forces him invariably to vote no on a question to which in theory it should be ble to give the answer yes. Such was the predicament of certain citizens who allowed themselves last winter to serve as members of the play jury in New York. They voted to let certain plays live, which was a good thing; but it would have been a better thing in the long run to refuse to vote at all. The citizens referred to, as it happens, did not believe in suppression. The implication, however, was that they did, for they had given countenance to the supposition that there are two ways of answering the question whether a given piece of writing should be removed from the public eye. What of him who is convinced that the answer must always be no? He will prefer to discuss those books which he has not yet read, those plays he has not yet seen. He will wait for a chance to say: "I have never heard of Pai- dolpho Lascivio and I have not so much as opened 'Th > Loves of Messalina'; I naturally cannot decide whether it has merit or no; but I am wholly of the opinion that those people who can or wish to read it should be allowed to read the book." Then, perhaps, he will do what he can to dis- courage the making of more laws against books for any reason capable of occurring to a legislator's mind; beyond that he will not proceed. He will sigh with relief over his freedom henceforth from the responsibility of passing upon either the art or the morality of authors. Time, he knows, has a way of settling those problems, and settling them very well. News now comes that copies of a novel written by an American and published in Paris have been confiscated by United States customs officials. A few review copies, sent separately and in advance of this shipment, arrived unmo- lested in America, and one of them was addressed to The We wis!) that we had neglected to read our copy of "What Happens," by John Herrmann, before the conl on took place and before it became probable that we should be asked whether we thought the story harm! We should so much have preferred to be abl< course it was, since all books are; or that if it was harmful, then (lie world must make up its mind to consider itself and perhaps later on feel better about it. Many good books thai we know, books written by Socrates, the followers of Jesus, Rabelais, John Bunyan, Voltaire, and Bernard Shaw, have been considered harmful, and we are glad to renumber that because of this fact people were frightened into reading them. Many bad books that we know have been considered harmful, and it is agreeable to. know that most of them already are forgotten. Some of them are still remembered; but we do not grow unhappy over that circumstance either. "What Happens" is not a very good book, and for that reason perhaps is the best sort of book to defend against censors and customs officials. We cannot pretend that it is great and pure art, though incidentally we should call it art. It is one of several works, published in Paris under the name of The Contact Editions, which have had hard sledding in America, whence all of the authors — Gertrude Stein among them — hail. The story is of a commonplace American high-school boy who falls in love, has experience of women, sells seeds and pearl necklaces, lies and steals upon occasion, and in general exhibits about the same strength of character that failed to distinguish the hero of Theodore Dreiser's recent masterpiece. The author is frank ; the material is true ; the moral is that human nature, particularly perhaps in America, is weak. "What Happens" is not a bad book. But if it were the worst book we had ever chanced upon we should defend its right to come into the country. Ulysses Singing N the half a dozen years since we pointed out that the unsung life of wandering Negroes in America offered one of the richest fields for picaresque fiction in the world, more and more material has come forward to make good the claim. The latest item is the story of Left Wing Gor- don, briefly told by Howard W. Odum and Guy B. Johnson in "Negro Workaday Songs," published by the University of North Carolina Press. If Wing has not yet fallen a victim to any of the mishaps which lie in wait for men of his perilous career, he is no doubt still drifting, in his early thirties, over the continent which he has traveled as others travel counties. Missouri seems to have bred him. "You see, boss, I started travelin' when I wus 'leven years ol' an' now I'll be thirty this comin' August 26. I didn't have no father an' mother, so I jes' started somewheres. I'd work fer folks, an' they wouldn't treat me right, so I moved on. An', Lawd, cap'n, I ain't stopped yet." Indeed, the next day, when further inquiries were made about him in the construction camp where he had been found, a fellow-laborer said that Wing had "done gone to Philadelphia." But in a brief meeting he had given an account of himself which it would be difficult to match. His name was really John Wesley Gordon, but the loss of his right

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118 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3138 arm at eighteen had furnished him with a racier title. That loss, however, had apparently no more checked his Odyssey than if he had belonged to the fortunate orders of existence which grow new arms and legs at need. From Missouri he swung in amazing circles through thirty-eight States, always in the underworld of the unskilled laborer, as free as a migratory bird. "Didn't do nothin' in Texas, had a little money to spend," he said. And so was he a person of leisure in Wyoming and Arizona and Massachusetts. He worked on the roads in Florida and South Carolina. He worked on boats in Louisiana, Missouri, and Mississippi ; at steel plants in Alabama, New York, and Pennsylvania; in mines in Iowa and West Virginia; in harvest fields in Kansas and South Dakota; on the railroad in Wisconsin and North Dakota; at a hotel in Arkansas; at odd jobs in Illinois, Ohio, Virginia; at a packing house in Nebraska; at a Ford factory in Michigan; at "a maloominium plant" in Tennessee; at unspecified occupations in the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island. During the war he was in a government camp in California. In Georgia, reputed for its hostility to his wayfaring kind, he was "comin' in a hurry, never fooled 'round there much." And once he wandered far into the North to work in a Montreal broom factory. He did not yield .nuch general information, but he was full of details. For instance, there were the heroines of his innumerable songs. I had some mighty fine women. Fust one was Abbie Jones, 'bout Ioway Street. Nex' was in M , Missouri, Jennie Baker, Susan Baker's daughter Nex' one St. Louis, lady called Bulah Cotton, Pete Cotton's daughter. Nex' one was in Eas' St. Louis, her name Sylvia Brown. Nex' I had in Poplar BlufT, one dat took my money an' went off. Nex' Laura, she's in Memphis, Tennessee, she's 'nother took my money and gone. Jes' lay down, went to sleep, jes' took money and gone. Wake up sometimes broke an' hongry, they jes' naturally take my money. Nex' woman was at Columbia, S. C, 'bout las' regular one I had, Mamie Willard, mother an' father do; 1. Sweethearts I can git plenty of if I got money. If I ain't got none I'se sometimes lonesome, but not always, 'cause sometimes dey feel sorry for you an' treat you mighty fine anyway. Such a theme did stir Wing to generalization. "Can't count 'em, take me day after tomorrow to count 'em. Find fifteen or twenty in different cities. New Orleans best place to find most fastest, mo' freer women — person find gang of 'em in minute." If this is not true picaresque material, nothing is. Here is a hero who ransacks the world, on the simple quests of food and love. Space and time do not bind him. His desires and deeds are always simple, and yet always varied by fresh circumstances. And to the qualities of the picaro he adds the qualities of the strolling minstrel. Wing, after working all day, could sing all night, impro- vising, combining familiar words with new, packing his own experiences into the form of some "blues" air which he had picked up, using a musical arrangement of his own to give variety to a traditional tale. He had traveled far- ther than Ulysses, and he came sir His blues die away on the air. What chronicler will take up his story, or the story of some adventure:' like him, and weave it into the tougher fabric of a narrative prose worthy of him? Israel Zangwill THE world beat Israel Zangwill at his own game. It answered paradox with paradox; it honored the ordi- nary man of action in a great artist. Thus during his life- time this cynical sentimentalist, this idealistic iconoclast always found the spotlight of public interest trained on his talent and his ephemeral work rather than on his genius and his enduring works. And at his death the newspaper obituaries, quite characteristically, emphasized his fleeting controversies on Zionism, America, and what-not while they ignored his lasting contributions to literature. It may be said that Zangwill himself did most to dis- tract attention from his art to his arguments, but this will not be altogether true. With that peculiar unanimity which characterizes English critical opinion the dogma was accepted from the first that Zangwill was a brilliant inter- loper in the field of English letters to be dealt with justly whenever he appeared on the scene but to be severely let alone between publications. Nor could the genuine enthu- siasm aroused by such individual works as the play "Plaster Saints" and the novel "Jinny, the Carrier" sway critics and cataloguers from this doctrine. Partly because his earliest significant work was on Jewish themes, partly because his social activities linked his name so closely with his race Zangwill's writing was not merged in the current of contemporary English literature. Yet it is impossible to deny that he wrote in the English tradition, for "Plaster Saints" and "Jinny," lighter pieces like "The Bachelor's Club," and even the numerous volumes on Jewish subjects reflect a dominant Anglicism of temper and expression. This the Jews recognized. For them he was ever a great English author who considered sympathetically, if somewhat dogmatically, their problems, their activities, and their ideals. They were grateful for his interest but they seldom appreciated his advice — until too late. His custom of wrapping the pearl of wisdom in the tinfoil of epigram antagonized this literal-minded people. They suspected the sincerity of one who could joke about matters of great seriousness and import, and they failed to see the justice of his comments for the jest. Zangwill was fully aware of the extent to which his manner injured the substance of his appeals to reason, but he would not change his style. It was a sacrifice he was not prepared to make for any ideal. His case was a practi- cal illustration of Johnson's far-fetched quip about Shake- speare: A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world and was content to lose it. Without doubt it was this trivial weakness that deprived him of the acknowledged leadership in Jewry and — far greater loss — deprived the Jewish people of his leadership. Thus did the writer injure the man, even as the man had injured the author. Zangwill had much to give to any movement. Capable of enthusiasm and sentimental attachment to an ideal, he nevertheless was not blind to weaknesses in the program for its accomplishment. He saw things early as well as clearly. He not only attacked opponents boldly; he faced facts courageously. In this world so thickly strewn with shams and evils his tendency to lay about him militantly and recklessly did less harm than might have been ex- pected. These virtues, of course, die with the individual; -iH's qualities as a writer will not pon'sh so easily.

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Aug. 11, 1926] - The Nation In Mexico Alas ! my child, someone smote our Lord. And our Lord tu.ned His olher cheek?" 'No. He got angry and went away."

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120 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 My Adopted Mother By HENRY W. NEVINSON OTHER people adopt a child, but I have adopted a mother, and her name is Ireland. I know very well how risky such an action is. My own countrymen have for many years regarded me with suspicion on account of it, and no one is more distrusted in Ireland than the English- man who adopts her cause. My friend Erskine Childers was a mournful instance of that, for in spite of his bril- liant mind and devoted sincerity, he was distrusted, or only half trusted, by all Irish parties long before the Free Staters shot him in the prison yard. But I cannot help it. There is something in my nature (perhaps it is the old Celtic name of "Nevin") that makes me look upon Ireland as the most beautiful country in the world and the Irish people as the most akin to myself. And so I cross to Ireland whenever I possibly can, and every time I feel that I am going home. For the last fifteen years or so my visits have usually been disturbed and often risky. For I was there during the Home Rule troubles, the Carson's Covenant, the forma- tion of the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers, the mutiny at the Curragh, the shoot ing in Bachelor's Walk just before the Great War, the sequels of Easter Week, the attempt of the English Government to enforce con- scription, the abominations of the Black-and-Tans, the bit- ter civil war when the Four Courts was burned, and the prolonged troubles since. But in the visit from which I have just returned I found a hopeful spirit of security and peace. I was not once shot at nor did I see anyone else in danger from violence. That in itself is a vast improvement. Most people prefer security, as gentlemen prefer blondes. But, of course, there ar , and I think the exceptions to both rules are most common in Ireland. The best type of Irish woman has black hair and gray eyes, and tvere are large numbers of Irish boys and girls who regard security as tedious. For many years they have lived the life of the films — carrying revolvers, rushing over rivers and mountains on perilous errands, hiding in moorland cot- tages, climbing over the roofs of cities, lying in ambush for "the enemy," cycling with food and ammunition for "the boys." It was a kind of life well suited to the Irish nature. and hundreds enjoyed it to the full. Especially the young women enjoyed it, and all the romantic traditions and re- bellious literature of their country inspired them to believe that no other life was much worth living. No wonder they still yearn for the glamor of adventure and refuse to be comforted by the common light of peace and useful labor. So the danger still persists, though I think it is dying fast. Adventure and tradition are the two perils that threaten the Free State, and give some appearance of power to the Republican youths and maidens. The power would be greater if they had not yielded to the Irish passion for division into parties ever smaller and smaller. In Dublin I was present at a great meeting in the old Rotunda beside the Maternity Hospital, where I have seen so many hurri- cane assemblies gather and disperse in storm. How the round building escaped Easter Week I cannot tell, but there it still stands, and in it was crowded a mass of the Dublin people, chiefly the young, all clamoring to depose their late hero, Mr. De Valera, and to appoint in his place Mr. Art O'Connor as President of the Irish Republic. Old Count Plunkett, who gave one son to execution and another to imprisonment in Easter Week, was in the chair, and Mary MacSwiney was on the platform as the real moving spirit of the new rebellion. A few youths in cloth caps, but wearing a kind of uniform under their coats, and revolvers sticking obviously from their pockets, assumed a martial and dangerous air, but there was nothing more dangerous in the meeting than the customary abuse of England, coupled with brand-new abuse of De Valera, so lately the hero of similar occasions. The conflict arose over the oath of allegiance to the King as representing the British Commonwealth of Nations. De Valera is willing to take it in order that his party should be represented in the Dail and Senate. But Mary Mac- Swiney is obdurate. She would leave no sign of connec- tion with hated England. Ireland's separation must be absolute and eternal. In her mind, "England's cruel red" is still the symbol of tyranny, though the red has long given place to khaki, and there is not a single English soldier remaining in the Free State. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of the winter of 1921-1922 was to me one of the two happiest events of my life. It ended the struggle of seven centuries between my own country and the country of my adoption. I had never hoped to see such a blessed end, nor had Parnell, Redmond, and the other great leaders of Ireland ever thought it possible. It won for Ireland incalculably more than they had ever asked. But to Miss MacSwiney it was nothing. So long as a ves- tige of English tyranny remained, it was nothing. Well, the eloquent lady has suffered grievously. I shall not forget the day when I marched through London with the proces- sion that escorted her brother Terence's body to the station or that other day in Cork when I marched as representa- tive of the universities behind his coffin up to the church in Cork and far out to the patriots' cemetery. One cannot argue with a woman who has suffered so mu :h. She has now appointed Mr. Art O'Connor President of her Irish Republic, and he seems a fairly quiet and peaceable sort of person, with far less power of speech than hers, but still considerable power. How far he enjoys his new position I cannot say. The Republican Party claims for itself the title of "Sinn Fein" to the exclusion of the Free Staters. That is rather hard, for I remember when the phrase was invented about thirty years ago by Arthur Griffith, who will always be remembered as the real founder of the Free State. The words mean "ourselves," and they signified his insistence upon a policy of self-help for Ireland, as distinguished from the old policies of looking for every advantage from the British Government. It was like the "Italia fara per se" of the Italian independence movement seventy years ago. It destroyed the old home-rule movement of the end of last century. It led to Easter Week, out of which the Free State really sprang. But now the I :ans have monopo- lized the words, and the Free Staters must acquiesce in the theft. What is far more serious to an Irishman, they have

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Aug. 11, 1926] Thr Nation to acquiesce in being regarded as the party of material contentment, uninspired by tradition and unillumined by romance. It is quite true. The Free Staters are resolved I their distressful country at all events an interval of peace. They would even add prosperity. The chief job of Senate and Dail is to clean up the mess of the last ten years. And a hard job it is proving to be! Compensation for the enor- mous damage inflicted upon country houses and the bridges, upon roads and railways, by the Republicans during the civil war landed the new state into a large national debt, which is being paid off with extraordinary rapidity. I believe at one time it rose to something between £35,000,000 and £40,000.000. but now the Finance Minister tells me it is only about £13,000,000 plus £5.000,000 due to England as the share in the old English debt — the share being reduced to this small amount as balance against the damage done by the Black-and-Tans (now always known as "the Tans"). Such debt as remains is being paid off, some think too rapidly, by maintaining the taxation at the high figure imposed in England during the Great War. As the same authority tells me there are not more than one hundred people in all the Free State with incomes over £5,000 a year, it is evident that there is not much to be gained by supertax or death duties. The Government dares not impose a high income tax in any case, because the farmers, like all farmers, strongly object to paying out hard cash and would raise a revolution rather. So the chief revenue is raised by indirect taxation upon tobacco, wines, spirits, and imports, and the farmers swear at the prices, but pay. Like most of us, they swear and pay. In regard to finance, it appears to me that nationalism is just about to commit a serious error. The Free State Government has agreed to manufacture a new and separate coinage. I suppose there are people who object to seeing the King's head upon our silver coinage (no gold is now used in either country), and so they have insisted upon hav- ing an Irish coinage, as they have Irish postage stamps. Even if the values can be maintained identical (which is very doubtful) this will be an intolerable nuisance to every foreigner visiting Ireland, to every Irishman going to Eng- land, and to every Irishman crossing the Ulster frontier either way. Every traveler knows what a plague the varia- tion in Continental coinages becomes as he passes from one country to another, and now, without the smallest necessity except the call of separatism, the Irish Government is about to increase the plague, and render communication between England and their country even more troublesome than it is, and the customs at Dun Leary (Kingstown) and Holy- head give trouble enough. Besides, as much as 98 per cent of the Free State's trade is still done with hated England, and the difference in coinage will make further trouble, becoming unbearable if the standard of value goes up and down. The dangerous question of the frontier between the Free State and the Six Counties (still sometimes called "Ulster") has fortunately been, not indeed settled but shelved on a condition of status quo. The two most pressing problems now before the Dail are housing and unemploy- ment. There is a lot of building being done around Dublin, especially on the north side and toward Howth, and the new houses are decent little models, usually of the bungalow type, very neat and clean, but too expensive for the Dublin poor. They are rapidly filled by small clerks and officials, but the poor are left in the appalling slums, to which indeed they cling. Outside Moscow, I have nowhere seen slums so filthy and degrading. They mighl be .-how-places of squalor. Bui the people are long accustomed to them; they like living in the center of life; and what can you do when so many thousands are unemployed? Out of a population of about 100,000 in Dublin 10,000 ire now unemployed. Out of a total of about 3,500,000 in the whole of the Free State about 00,000 are unemployed, and in "Ulster" the proportion is still higher. For our vic- tory over the Germans, whose ships have passed to us, has almost ruined the great shipyards of Belfast, and England has now become so poor that we cannot afford linen sheets and tablecloths, but must put up with cotton. Thus the two main industries of Belfast are checked. In the Free State live many thousand youths who have been "on the run" for years during the "troubles," have never learned any trade, or indeed worked at anything in particular. The wise and prudent cry "Emigrate! Emigrate!" but where are they to emigrate to? The whole world is getting hor- ribly full, and your country, which would have been their refuge in old days, refuses to receive anyone above the "quota." A few weeks ago I was out among the rocky islands of the west coast, where the strange and almost foreign population has lived starving for generations on potato patches. The one thought of all the young was to get to America, or at least to Canada, but with every year the blissful change becomes more difficult. In Dublin I saw crowds of the unemployed marching about in military order, but with no warlike intention. And I saw crowds of them addressed by Jim Larkin, who seems hardly to have changed since I knew him in London thirteen years ago. He has followers, but hardly enough to split the Labor Party, which is led in the Dail by Mr. Tom Johnson, an Englishman by birth and temperament, a shrewd, cautious, and honorable politician, always work- ing for the working class. But on those two vital questions — want of houses and want of work — his Labor Party can effect little. There is very little Socialism in the country. A com- munity of small farm-owners is never Socialistic, even in Russia. Yet the Free State has embarked upon the largest venture in State Socialism I have ever seen. I mean the great scheme for converting the Shannon waters in a vast electric force to diffuse lighting, heating, and the motive power for manufacture. The work is being carried out by a great German firm of engineers, but few German work- men are employed. Irishmen are crowding to Limerick in the hope of being taken on at the average or standard rate of 32 shillings and sixpence a week. The wage is not high, but it represents the Irish worker's demand. The scheme is to be in working order in about three years, and what the result will be one cannot say. No one, certainly not the promoters, wishes Ireland to be converted into a manu- facturing country, but it is hoped that small industries will spring up in the villages to which the power will be supplied. Whether the Six Counties will petition for a share is not known, but in that case the desired unity cannot long be delayed. One remaining difficulty, and a very serious one, is education. Nearly the whole of education is now in Catholic hands, and the division between the Christian churches is not growing less acute. I will not argue the theological point, but one disadvantage the "Protestants" (a name obso- lete in England) feel deeply. The Nationalist Government has determined to make Ireland bilingual. The Irish Ian-

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122 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 guage has to be taught in all schools, and no government appointment is given to any candidate not possessing the knowledge of that very difficult tongue. In the western islands I found the whole population talking Irish among themselves, and the children in the schools could speak nothing else. But in other parts the tongue has been so long obsolete (chiefly owing to the Penal Laws of the eighteenth century) that it has to be studied as a foreign language, and it is doubtful how far a real Irish-speaker could understand the result of such study. It has, in fact, become an artificial language, and one may doubt whether it is worth the immense pains now taken to revive this mere semblance of the ancient tongue. Naturally, the teach- ers complain that they have to spend all their holiadys in trying to cram it up, and in the schools it has driven out drawing, physical drill, and French. In Wales the Welsh language has been preserved by the people themselves, and nearly all are bilingual. But I am not sure whether even nationality can make it worth while to preserve an almost extinct tongue at so great a sacrifice as Irish demands. For it is a language that the Irish themselves never use in common conversation, except only in those remote districts, and it is entirely useless across the seas. The Protestants acquiesce in the law, but feel it as a heavy burden. China: The World's Proletariat By LEWIS S. GANNETT IN China the economic and nationalist struggles are inex- tricably intertwined. For China has the greatest cheap- labor supply on earth. It is good labor, too — and Euro- pean capital, which at first merely bought native products cheap, has for two or three decades been attempting to instal Western factories with Western methods to make Western products with the labor of China. When New England passed anti-child-labor laws it exported its low child- size machines to China as well as to our own South, and the little girls of China are today competing with the children of our South Atlantic States. And in China this whole industrial system, whether the immediate employer be a Chinese or a for- r, is rightly regarded as a Western importation. The mills have sprouted like mushrooms along the coast and rivers of China. The first a mill came to China in 1890; there were 14 in 1906, with 400,000 spindles; 42, with 1,154,000 spindles, in 191G; 83, with 2,666,000 spindles, in 1923; and there is no i to suppose that the number will not continue to double every six or seven years. China still imports the blue cotton which has become the national uniform of her mas: fantastic statistician once figured that China's annual sumption of cotton cloth would pave a roadway sixtj wide to the moon. And the workers in these mills live in a manner that would shame a self-respectin A:l about the industrial outskirts of the great Western city which is the pride of the foreigners in Shanghai one may see the disreputable sheds, built of bamboo, mud, lime, and straw. Six or eight people live in one-room floorless huts, through whose flimsy roofs the rain leaks in a storm; whose walls, falling or riddled wit afford no privacy. There is no drainage, no lavatories; ga heaps and pools — or rather cess-puddles — surround the hovels. A big rain often floods the whole neighborhood, and the ra The daily life of the lower classes — poster from a Canton wall babies wade about coated with mud and filth. In smaller cities, where the concentration is not so great or so sudden, conditions are somewhat decenter. But while a few enlight- ened Chinese talk of decentralization, the factory owners continue to build their prisons in the overcrowded centers where they can be sure of coal and raw materials — Tientsin, Tsingtao, Shanghai, Hangchow, Wusih, Hankow, and the rest. Wages are desperately low. They can best be understood when translated into goods. A Shanghai cotton-mill worker would have to work two weeks to buy a hat; longer to buy a pair of leather A pair of sheets would cost a month's wages, an overcoat t h r e e months' toil; a daily paper one- tenth of the daily income; a ton of coal four months' earn Of course these industrial workers do not use coal, wear hats or shoes or overcoats, or buy newspapers — they live on a lower level. And yet these wages seem high to Chinese of the coolie type; there is no dearth of labor, it flocks in from the country, constantly replenishing the worn-out supply, for the working life of a Chinese mill-hand is generously estimated at from two to eight years. Li iht cotton mills and silk filatures (where silk is reeled from cocoons which bob up and down in basins of boiling water) the vast majority of the workers are women and children. Men complain that they are discriminated against in Shanghai, which is true, largely because they are more likely to form labor unions and strike. The Shanghai Child Labor Commission found in 1923-24 that of 154,000 workers in the mills it studied more than 86.000 women and more than 22,000 were children under 12. (It is worth while noting that in the Japanese-owned mills of Shanghai only 5.5 per cent of the workers were children under 12, and in the Chinese only 13 per cent; while the British mills had nearly 18 per cent children and the

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Aug. 11, 1926] The Nation L23 French and Italian 46 per cent. The few American nulls had a slightly lower percentage than the Chinese.) In the silk filatures of South China nearly all the workers are women and girls. Often the children are brought in from the country by a contractor, who follows disaster like vul- tures and pays starving parents about a dollar a month for a contract which amounts to slavery; the girls live for years in his compound, eating his food, or in the factories, eating factory rice, working sometimes fifteen or sixteen hours a day, and often sleeping on the floor beneath their machines. It is the common excuse of the mill-owner that the mothers do not want to leave their children unguarded at home, and doubtless that is sometimes true. Walking through these dimly lit mill-rooms one sees basket taining children, sleeping or awake, between the whirring, clacking machines. Sometimes a tot of two or three sits cheerfully playing with cotton waste in the aisles through which the foreman guides the visitor. Girls a little older help their mothers tend the rows of spindles, and the deft- ness of five-year-old fingers is amazing. But when I asked ages of children smaller than my seven-year-old son, the foreman always replied monotonously "twelve." Except in the Japanese mills little attempt is made to keep the chil- dren out of the mills; there a rigid standard of height is set, and maintained. Native-owned mills are likely to be dirtier and more dangerous than foreign-owned. The machinery is seldom protected, the ventilation is atrocious, the crowding ter- rific. But even a foreigner can sense the more human atmosphere. In the Naigaiwata mills (Japanese-owned) of Shanghai, where the great 1925 strike began, wages are fair, hours relatively short (only lOVaO. and all sorts of modern welfare-devices have been installed. But the girls stopped talking and kept their eyes rigidly on their machines when the foreman appeared and the foreign visitors passed by. In a far dingier Chinese mill the girls showed no fear of the foreman, and pointed and giggled at the ridiculously garbed aliens who marched through the aisles. One of the demands of the strikers last summer was that foremen should no longer be armed, and the de- mand was tvpical of the spirit of the efficient, clean, mili- taristic Japanese mill. There are vast profits to be made in these early stages of Chinese industrialization. But I doubt if the white men are to have as large a share in it as they expected. There are fewer British cotton mills in China today than there were three years ago, and there are no American cotton mills. Even the Japanese, who so proudly identify them- selves in China with the imperialist West, are feeling the pinch of native competition that is driving the British to the wall. The great Naigaiwata mills have been on a kind of intermittent strike for nearly two years now — and it is a safe guess that the strikes are fomented and financed rather by Chinese competitors than by the commonly blamed Russians. The Chinese employer straddles the class issue. He does not yet identify himself with the employing class of the world. In the last year he has openly encouraged the working class to fight for him the national battle against his foreign competitors. Last year the Shanghai strike was directed and subsidized by the Chinese Chamber of Com- merce; the Canton boycott of Hongkong has been largely financed by Chinese business men in other parts of China and by the prosperous Chinese community of Singapore in the Straits Settlements, Ami not unprofitably. In Sou China the native Nanyang Brothers now have a monopoly the vast cigarette bi and the British-American Tobacco Co., which outstrips them in the North, has lost hundred.- ot thousands of dollars' worth of trade. I shall not soon forget the enthusiasm with which a rich Chin- banker described the Naigaiwata strikes, and continued: "We have waked up. We see now how the foreigners have run China, and we are planning to change things. For in- stance, the British have a monopoly of Yangtze River ship- ping. Well, we may not be as efficient mariners as they, but I think we can find ways of making it very hard for them to do business at all." If the employer has no clear-cut sense of class interest, the worker too is confused. Class consciousness in the Western sense is only beginning to exist in the treaty ports ; but race consciousness takes its place. In foreign households even the domestic servants — the most isolated and individualistic of industrial groups — struck in Shang- hai and Canton in 1925; and if the strike was enforced in many instances by terroristic methods it is still significant that it could be enforced at all among the scattered in- dividuals of the group. I doubt if the domestic servants of Chinese families can be organized for decades to come, but any kind of strike can be enforced against foreigners. The labor-union movement in China is less than a decade old — inevitably it is younger than the factory move- ment, although precedents can be found in the history of the guilds. Shanghai organized feeble unions in 1916; not until 1919 were labor unions active in Canton; and the first notably successful industrial strike, that of the Hongkong mechanics, occurred in 1920. The epic peak of the move- ment is again in Hongkong, in the amazing seamen's strike of 1922. Twenty-three thousand Chinese seamen struck, and a few days later more than a hundred thousand other workers joined them. Hongkong was paralyzed; the lordly white men had to do their own coolie work. The police forbade meetings, closed the union headquarters, deported leaders. But the strike held. After forty days the seamen won the wage increase they demanded and recognition of their union — and the police had to restore the union signs which they had torn from the union building before the workers would return. That was a year of strikes — in the Pingshiang coal mines and the Hanyang steel mills, among the Peking school-teachers, the weavers of Changsha, the wheelbarrow-coolies of a northern city (they wanted their hours reduced from fourteen to twelve), the ricksha coolies China bears the burdens of the world — a poster from a Peking wall

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124 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 of Soochow, in the Canton silk filatures and matshed fac- tories— all over China. Six months saw thirty-one strikes in Shanghai alone, involving cotton mills, silk mills, the municipal electricity plant and water works, the telephone company, native and foreign tobacco companies, a hospital, the comb-makers, joss-paper workers, cargo coolies, sam- pan-men, laundrymen, cabinet-makers, and boat-builders. There was a trade boom that year and most of the strikes were quickly won. Enthusiasts saw Chinese labor taking its place with the great organized movements of the West. But none of these unions had permanent organizations which would withstand a period of depression. When in- dustries are booming in China new workers flock in from the villages; in bad times they return to their cabbage- fields. Except in Shanghai and perhaps in some of the -fields there is hardly anywhere a permanent working class. In 1923 Wu Pei-fu smashed the union on the Peking- Hankow Railway, and beheaded the leaders, for which act he was heartily praised by the foreign press. A silk work- ers' strike in Shanghai was vigorously repressed. In Can- ton a radical government encouraged the unions; else- where the local militarists, more or less allied with foreign as well as native business men, smashed the unions with a ruthlessness hardly known even in America. Unrealized, a strange thing was happening. The unions became the instruments of the new national consciousness. They were vaguely allied with the radical Kuomintang Party of the South. Sun Yat-sen had more and more leaned on them as his most trustworthy supporters. Of course the Russians, wherever they saw an opening, helped swell the rising protest. Naturally, too, the militarists of the old regime and the foreigners opposed them. The great outburst of anti-foreign feeling in 1925, that amazing up- rising of a nation, significantly began with a strike in the Japanese mills of Tsingtao and the shots which sparked the fiame were fired by British police on strike sympathizers in Shanghai. Chang Tso-lin, who has always been supported by the Japanese, closed the offices of the Shanghai General Labor Union that summer, and a few months later, when the foreign courts of the International Settlement handed over the chairman of the union, Liu Hwa, to agents of Sun Chuan-fong, who is more or less supported by the Anglo-American group in Shanghai, Liu Hwa disappeared and was believed to have been slain at night. The militarists naturally and unconsciously align themselves with foreign capital, and the old compradore type of Chinese merchant works with them. But the young alert business men, pre- cisely those who have had their training under foreign con- ditions, are likely to join the workers, so intense is their nationalism. None of China's militarists is likely to be strong enough to oust the foreigners by force, even if he wanted to; but in the unions is a power which can destroy the economic roots of the foreigner's position. [This is the fifth of Lewis Ganneit's articles on China. The sixth, Bolshevism in China?, wiU appear in The Nation for August 25.] Communism in Marriage Human Relationships at the Oneida Community By C. C. CHURCH SHOULD any of our young intelligentsia, sated with satires on domesticity and marriage, seek an order of ty in which these plagues were unknown, they would probably not turn to old-fashioned New England. Yet. such a social order, the Oneida Community, was established and carried on for thirty years by a group of early Ver- monters claiming no less a virtue than perfection itself. The men and women who undertook this experiment were members of a heretical religious sect who styled them- selves Perfectionists. Their heresy consisted in a denial cf the Calvinist doctrine that man is by nature depraved, and the assertion that, if given opportunity by his environ- ment he can be not only good but perfect. Had these aspir- ing dissenters not been, as Bernard Shaw says, "mightily shepherded" by one of their number, John Humphrey Noyes, they would probably have gone the markless way of small sects, amid a clamor of hair-splitting. Noyes gathered from Vermont and central New York a compad group of about three hundred Perfectionists. His purpose was a "raid or sortie from the Kingdom of Heaven into the unregenerate world," in order to show that world how perfection can be attained. It may have startled heaven a trifle when, early in its career, this celestial party es tablished, near Oneida, New York, a modern factory for the manufacture of steel traps. Another practical step was the construction of a well-equipped "Mansion," suf- ficient for the comfortable housing of the entire group. In substantial setting the society wove for itself a web of laws and institutions whose three cardinal elements were economic communism, complex marriage, and mutual criticism. The economic basis of this society was planned as im- posingly as were the phalanxes of the Utopian Fourier. It embodied most of the features of classic speculative com- munism— cooperative housing, a simple but agreeable standard of living, a short work-day, attractive occupations, common participation in the output of pooled industry, and a large measure of personal liberty within the orderly scheme. Most conspicuous among its results were, perhaps, the freedom from worry that it conferred on the society's members and the abolition of that spirit of pecuniary emula- tion which in competitive modern societies drives rich and poor alike into neurasthenia and the sanitarium. To de- scribe the success of these communists would probably bring forth charges against me as an agent of the Russian Gov- ernment. But in a day — the day of Robert Owen — when scores of communisms were flitting to destruction, this one, the most radical of them all, flourished. There were doubt- less several factors involved in this Oneida prosperity. Noyes believed that the socialization of the sexes through complex marriage, making impossible, as it did, family ambition and aggressiveness and stimulating group solidar- ity, was important among these factors. It is, incidentally, noteworthy that when the Oneida Community was forced to withdraw from complex marriage communism in goods soon ended.

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Aug. 11, 1926] The L L25 Complex marriage was the term applied by the mem- bers of the Oneida Community to their sexual order. No suitable one-sentence definition of this order can be given. After denying the orthodox-church doctrine which so cl identifies sex with sin, the Perfectionists urged that sex may be an enhancing and ennobling factoi in human ex- perience. In this belief they had considerable support among the liberals of their own clay. But they went farther than these, and among themselves neither required nor encouraged monogamous exclusiveness. For instead of be- ing an assemblage of families, the Oneida Community of the Perfectionists was a unified fraternity, demanding the loyalty and cooperation that in the outer world properly go to the family. Within this fraternity human relationships could rightly be more spontaneous than in an individualistic so- ciety. It is claimed that the phrase free lore was here first used as applying to the attitudes between the sexes in the community. (When outsiders appropriated this term for irresponsible and promiscuous behavior, the Oneida Com- munity felt consti-ained to repudiate it.) Sexual unions when not for parenthood were subject only to the require- ments that they be mutually desired, without embarrassing circumstances, hygienic and temperate, and in accord with the group's ideals of considerate fellowship. Such rela- tionships were not surreptitious and might, in meetings for mutual criticism, be tested for true conformity to re- quirements. In the Oneida atmosphere, sympathies be- tween the sexes tended to be broad and social, rather than romantically fixed on individuals. Noyes had a maxim, "The normal man loves the normal woman," which mean; that in a cosexual fraternity the attitudes of the sexes toward each other partake of a generic quality — the two groups feel married to each other. This sexual order required or promoted certain other innovations. The Oneida Community was the first organ- ized society intentionally to incorporate in its customs, and in its sex education, methods for controlling the results of sexual communion. It was the first society to distinguish sexual unions as propagative and social, and to show that. by applying eugenic regulations only to unions for parent- hood, a community may endeavor to advance its racial welfare without greatly thwarting the instincts and desires of any of its members. Noyes and several associates worked out a pioneer system of eugenics called stirpicul- ture. A committee versed in this passed on the eligibility of persons wishing to become parents. A woman of doubt- ful qualifications might be allowed one child, but be refused a further contribution to the next generation. A compre- hensive program for positive race improvement was finally devised and instituted. This stands alone* in history as an elaborate eugenic experiment. It is instructive to note some of the more important implications of complex marriage. Women were fully emancipated economically. None had to depend for well- being on one man's uncertain fortunes or love. The mother need not worry lest her children, in the event of her death, be beaten by a merciless stepmother, for in the community nursery she saw these children already receiving solicitous care and knew that this was not contingent on her exist- ence. The young woman did not have to make an irrev- ocable choice between admirers. Accepting a dysgenic lover did not imply that a woman had chosen dysgenic fatherhood for her children. Scandal, divorce, prostitution, and illeg dd mar the life of no one. In the Per- fectionist order lal" evils had no place. The more pontaneous relationships within the Oneida fraternity did not had : es, as the vulgar might imagine, but, on the contrary, promoted freedom from mor- bid sex interest, violent passion, and extl tltimen tality. Finally, an item worth unusual notice is the im- petus given by complex marriage to merely cordial, social contacts between the sexes. In society at large trilling amenities between men and women are inhibited by a thousand conventional considerations. Over the slightest friendliness grins the bogy of scandal. In the Oneida Com- munity the sexes met casually and freely without fear or danger. Jealousy blighted but little the cheerful, comradelj life of the Oneida Mansion. Noyes was one of the first American thinkers to point out that jealousy is fundamen- tally an owner's — or aspiring owner's — attitude, rather than the altitude of a lover. Marriage is proprietary. It arose when the caveman, swayed by a strong taste for own- ership, beat woman, hampered by recurrent pregnancies, into chattelship. When progress improved woman's lot, she, as proud wife or fiancee, caught the idea of making her owner a chattel. In this cultural situation, one of very long standing, jealousy and love have become intricately entangled. Because proprietary monogamy has shaped our laws, love in which jealousy is absent occurs generally in outlaw relationships. For better or worse the Oneida Com- munity turned the tables and outlawed jealousy as un- natural and non-fraternal. The spirit in this society was, of course, akin to the one which develops in groups at times of crisis — in re- ligious revivals or revolutions, when social impulses become vigorous and conventional restrictions are under suspicion. But the Oneida Community was a persistent, self-conscious system, delicately constituted and thoroughly institution- alized. It no more fostered careless license than did the laws of Draco. Yet it did allow a large measure of per- sonal spontaneity and sex mutuality. The final expression of complex marriage was the com- munity nursery, which demonstrated that a properly con- stituted small society can be a good parent to its children. The zeal of the Oneida Community for its children was intense and intelligent. To the community nursery came children voluntarily and eugenically born, in numbers ade- quate to replenish the passing generation. In it women pos- sessed of unusual aptitudes for the rearing of the young were given responsible work, thereby releasing for other functions such of their sisters as would have found onerous or baffling the details of motherhood. From this communal counterpart to the domestic hearthside went forth young people of exceptionally sound character and good capacity. Complex marriage and economic communism were by no means the only props to kindliness and unselfishness in the Perfectionist world. Humans may be endowed with a propensity to perfection, as the founders of the Oneida Community contended, but the environment that induces this propensity to flower must be an uncommonly favorable one. The third essential of the Perfectionist order, mutual criticism, was especially devised to stimulate good behavior through the open discussion, in small groups, of personal motives and conduct with ce to the society's stand- ards. The peace and solidarity of ordinary fraternal and face-to-face groups are e\ itened by backbiting

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126 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 enmity. In the Oneida Community impulses to such be- havior were nipped in the bud by being talked out in the meetings for mutual criticism. There was a special tech- nique for procedure in these meetings. Outsiders, it is true, thought the criticisms offset some of the attractive features of the society; but the communists themselves were con- vinced of the merits and, indeed, the agreeable experiences afforded by this mode of collective psychoanalysis. For many years the communists believed their social pattern would be widely copied. Noyes was sanguine enough to recommend to the churches that their congrega- tions organize into cooperating Perfectionist units. Younger disciples, such as Allan Estlake, observed that the Oneida munity was a miniature of unflinching socialism, and forecast the evolution of society toward this model. In the meantime, the model won both friends and foes. The immediate neighbors of the community were, almost with- out exception, friendly — won doubtless by the honesty and civility of its members. Liberals often regarded it with a hopeful curiosity. But there were others, especially church is, who pictured this Utopian laboratory in terms of a tomahawk hurled at the taproot of civilization. The assailants were aided by the very fact of the com- munity's worldly triumphs. The Perfectionists had started as a group of artisans and farmers, had prospered abun- dantly, and were becoming a staff of production engineers and salesmen. To act thus as an efficient unit in the world of industry and business was the price of economic sur- vival— witness the tragedies of those many less radical communisms that withdrew into agrarian seclusion. But the bright Oneida career meant much mingling with outer society and consequent temptations to worldliness. Then, after forty years of service, old leaders began to pass. At this critical moment, the New York State Legislature pro- nounced the sortie from heaven illegal. So the unregenerate world won, and without the aid of Klan, tarpot, or bayonet. It was in August, 1879, that the Oneida Community was forced to abandon complex marriage. An attempt to sustain the society in its other aspects soon failed. The dissolution was taken more resignedly than might be ex- pected. Many of the younger communists had become con- vinced that the community was epochs ahead of its time, and must eventually be overwhelmed by respectability. In 1881 the members of the dissolved community formed the Oneida Community Limited, a business corporation since widely known for its silverware. This enterprise has even eclipsed the prosperity of the Perfectionists' venture. Not- ably, it has shown that if parents can prove the merits of socialism, their children can as effectively prove the merits of capitalism. The communists' "Mansion" (now a social club), an active benevolent association, and respectful at- titudes toward the old community are sustained by the pres- ent-day Oneida group, and constitute the tangible survivals of America's most brilliant social experiment. America's Crop of Hate By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD Lon do n, July 2 ', LET no one be deceived by the reported demonstrations against American tourists in Paris. They are spo- radic and local, and not yet serious -probably provoked in rm.ny cases by over-stimulated and bad-mannered Ameri- cans. But no observer can truthfully report that the situation, either in England or France, is satisfactory for those Americans who ardently desire that their country shall not only live in amity with the leading European nations but shall have their good-will and regard as well. Here in England there is an increased dislike of u - particularly among the privileged Tory classes, but also among many plain people who come in contact with the rowdy American tourists who appear whenever one of the great liners discharges its cargo at Southampton or Ply- mouth. That this feeling against America is growing is admitted by people who are working earnestly for the maintenance of friendly relations between the two coun- tries. They hope that it is a passing phase. They speak of its being part of a summer "stunt" of some of the sensational newspapers. Americans who live here say that there is a recrudescence of this debt propaganda every summer when the American tourist season is at its height. It is idle, of course, to say that the whole thing is due to the debt settlement, but, on the other hand, it can- not be denied that the recent English settlement with France, and Mr. Mellon's most unfortunate letter on the subject, with its unsupportable statements, has fanned the flames, leading not only to Churchill's and Snowden's speeches in Parliament bul to (he effective Foreign OfRce answer published yesterday morning. That the British Govern- ment should feel it necessary thus to reply to a statement by an American official, not officially addressed to it, is in itself an indication of the gravity of the issue. The debt settlement bulks large. Ill-mannered tourists, rich Americans who buy up precious old English pictures and show places, and even take down houses to move them bodily to America; the old critical attitude of the two nations toward each other — these all contribute to the ill-will; but the simple truth is that America is reaping the whirlwind which she sowed when she entered the war, and not only in England but all through Europe. A shrewd observer remarked the other day that the best friends America had in Europe today were the Germans, which, he added, "is not saying much." It was of course idle to expect that all those noble sentiments uttered during the war about eternal chains of friendship binding us to our Allies, and the imperishable memory of the blood of our youth poured out on the same battlefields, should last. They were often founded on absolute misconceptions and on war lies. In an emotional state bordering on insanity we endowed our Allies with nobilities which they did not possess. The coming of peace made inevitable a let-down. We all got bark to earth, and discovered that we were human and frail and still had our own faults instead of being so many archangels going to the rescue of liberty. The bad ppace, the frightful economic sufferings, the new jealousies, and the crushing weight of the debt have all added to the disillusionment. Each nation declares that it won the war; but nothing infuriates all the others so much

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Aug. 11, 1926] The Nation 127 as to have the United States, through its leading men, insist that we did so. Every time a Senator or a Congress- man or a Cabinet official or a general says that, he rubs salt in the wounds. No military alliance for war purposes ever br< eds a lasting friendship. The Crimean War was heralded as meaning union of France and England, in brotherly will for ever, but as soon as it was over England and France began to arm against each other just as they had in all the previous centuries. The French alliance with us in the Revolution did not prevent our coming to blows with them in a little war before the end of the century. That fact the orators forgot to mention in 1917-1918. The more the Great War recedes into the past the more will all our sins in it return to plague us, and by us I mean every participant, on whichever side. The more the Ameri- can people study the war, the more they will find it was not what they thought it was, either in purpose or execu- tion. The more the squabble over debts continues, the darker will be the glasses through which Americans will view their former Allies, and the more the European nations will call Uncle Sam Uncle Shylock. All this is bad enough for the future peace of the world, but it becomes worse if we realize that our debt policy plus our tariff policy and our position as money- lenders to the world are gradually forming a European alliance against America. The European nations are frightened by our tremendous financial power; they cannot borrow money elsewhere, but they are trying to find means to defend themselves against our pressure to make them pay their debts, and our refusal, by means of our high tariff, to let them pay with goods. Take a country like Belgium. It is placing itself in the hands of the American money-lenders because it must, not because it wants to. And Wall Street finds itself compelled to lend money to Belgium or refuse aid to a stricken nation which it alone can save from bankruptcy. I am told that M. Caillaux, when he came on his flying visit to London, said that France and England were both controlled by great groups. of financiers, the only distinction being that the indus- trialists ruled one country and the big financiers the other. But above and behind the industrial-financial groups in both countries stands the American money-power which, by force of circumstances, is beginning to dominate the world— within a year it may be writing that Dawes Plan for France which Mr. Snowden, the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, has just declared inevitable. I acquit the American money-power of deliberately planning to achieve a dominating position in Europe. It too is, I believe, merely reaping its share of the whirlwind. Unfortunately I can- not credit its members with enough brains to see that this was just another of the inevitable results of America's entrance into the war. It would be amazing, perhaps, if we should live to see a European Customs Union against America, but it is not impossible. Well, what can America do under the circumstances? Indubitably, The Nation's policy of urging the cancelation of the debts that we shall never be able to collect and accepting funding arrangements based on capacity to pay is the correct one. I am not, of course, optimistic enough to believe that we should receive many, if any, thanks from those whom we released from indebtedness. We have so bungled the whole matter, especially in our manner of mak- ing the settlements, that almost irreparable harm has been done, hut there is time yet for a beau geste, especially if means the removal ning sore. Why not, I heat r the League? It is not necessary to r all the arguments against that move, hut it is worth while recording one's belief again that the entry of America into the League of Nations would not mean a revival of the comradeships of the war, or anything approaching them. From the very beginning, we should have to deride whether we would be pro-British or pro-French in the League, for the rivalry between those two Powers is the story of the League. We should then have io decide further whether we would be pro-Pole or pro-German or pro-Italian or pro-Spanish or pro-Rumanian and Slovakian. Europe is a continent seething with hatreds and jealousy. It is impossible to be here and believe that the situation is not just as bad as it was two and a half years ago. Many think it worse, if only because of the rise of Mussolini. Why, in Heaven's name, should any Ameri- can wish to tie us up intimately to such a situation? The monstrous conceit which makes some people think that we could, by joining the League, compose these differences by our influence and example is only equaled by the gulli- bility of those who still think that the war accomplished something for the safeguarding of democracy and liberty and the ending of war. In the Driftway THE Drifter cannot resist a book which promises to tell the "inside story" or the "secret history" of anything. Quite recently he came upon a volume, "The Inside Secrets of Photoplay Writing," which has provided him with heart- warming refreshment. The book "was not written by a tyro, whose knowledge of photodramaturgy has been gained from the outside." It was done by "a successful moving- picture author" with the purpose of enabling "the em- bryonic photodramatist to find the road that leads to suc- cess." The author boasts of a schooling that ended with the eighth grade, and adds: Personally, I use an Underwood portable, as I am out of town at least half the year. I have also found the Corona worth while. In fact, at the time my photoplay "Empty Arms" was released, it was nationally broadcast that I had written it on a Corona. A bright advertising man conceived the idea of placing a life-size cut-out of me in that firm's popular window on Forty-second Street, and the chances are that it and the exploitation matter accom- panying it were viewed by over two hundred thousand persons during the month it was on display. * * * * * UNQUESTIONABLY we are face to face with an im- mortal. What are the "inside secrets" which he reveals? The Drifter will cite some examples. The average fan — and I have studied him carefully at close range — craves action or, in his own unmatchable ex- pression, pep. He doesn't give a hoot in Hades for poetry or symbolism — on the screen, though in the privacy of his own domicile he may glory in the possession of exquisitely bound volumes of Keats, Shelley, or Chaucer. He has ordered corned-beef and cabbage and he doesn't want quail and mushrooms. If he dees, he knows where he can find them. . . . Don't attempt to "uplift" the poor, downtrodden screen to a higher nlane of culture and refinement. You are not

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128 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 in the game, I take it, for your health. If you are seeking gold like the rest of us, you won't get it by digging in the wrong hill. Sound advice for such as are heavy with "motographic brain-children"! But the real secret of success is this: For the sake of attractiveness I suggest that you have your story bound instead of folding it twice as one does with material intended for magazine publication. Per- sonally, I have each script bound in vellum of Italian red, with the title and my name lettered in gold on the cover. This enhances the attractiveness of my manuscripts and costs me but a dollar and twenty-five cents. At last it is clear to the Drifter why he has failed so miser- ably in occasional photodramaturgic efforts of his own. Italian red vellum binding and name in gold — that is clearly the open sesame. If this be insufficient heartening, heed the final counsel of wisdom: God made brains and typewriters to be used. Use them properly — and the winning of success will cease being a vague, nebulous hope and become a vibrant, gold-attended reality. The Drifter Correspondence The Ayes Have It To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: How often have we heard our Socialist friends triumphantly exclaim: "Haven't we got the post office? ' Judg- ing from the experience of the New Masses, the answer appears to be in the affirmative. Canton, Pennsylvania, July 20 John Basil Barnhill. A Hard Dilemma To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Let me pose to you a problem in civic conduct. It. rose ou' of a diligent reading of your admirably lively articles on campaign contributions. I am a citizen, let us say, of the State of Coma. I believe fervently in a high tariff. I am a conscientious and determined Wet. I am vigorously opposed to the League of Nations. By a vast expenditure of money a fellow-citizen of mine gets nomi- nated for the United States Senate on a platform which pre- cisely fits my views. Without the expenditure of any money at all another fellow-citizen of mine gets nominated for United States Senator on a platform in favor of a low tariff, in favor of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Law, and in favor of the League of Nations. What am I to do? Shall I vote for the rich wretch who will vote my way in the Senate or shall I vote for the impecunious hero who, from my standpoint, when he gets into the Senate, will do his best to ruin the country? I promise not to vote till I hear from you. Washington, D. C, July '.' William Hard Arizona's River To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I notice in your issue of July 14 an article, For Sale — 48,000,000 Horses, referring to hydroelectrical development of some of our streams. You state that Senate Bill 3331, if carried by the Senate, will appropriate $125,000, 000 for the dam, an ail-American canal, and a power house which would yield 3.6 billion kilowatt hours at only 3 mills per kilowatt, paying for the whole project in twenty-five years. This is Boulder Canyon. From Glen Canyon dam site to Bridge Canyon there are seventeen dam sites in Arizona capable of producing some 6,000,000 horse-power. Boulder Canyon dam, being advocated by certain vested interests, is one of the lowest dam sites on the river, being five hundred feet lower than the Salt River Valley. A dam at that site will be of no value to the great commonwealth of Arizona. We view with deep concern the development of low-head, large-flow power projects on the lower regions of the Colorado River. If allowed to proceed such plans will establish rights to stream flow which will greatly hamper the fullest economical development of the Colorado River. The reason I am calling your attention to this is that The Kalian has always been a liberal and far-seeing paper. For three years the State of Arizona has been fighting the most desperate battle in her history to protect and preserve to our people our heritage in the Colorado River. Phoenix, Arizona, July U George W. P. Hunt, Governor of Arizona Oregon — Staunchly Conservative To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: You allow your joy at Coolidge's discomfiture to become a little over-buoyant, in the matter of the recent Oregon elec- tion. It is true that Stanfield, a staunch administration man, lost; but another one won. Steiwer was supported through- out, and long prior to, his campaign by the influential Port- land Orcgonian, as true a friend of Republican conservatism as exists in the country. I believe it was rather the fear that Stanfield had antagonized the bone-drys of the State by his recent escapade, and could not be elected in November, that induced the Oregonian to lend its aggressive support to another man. In short, the election could not in any sense be termed a reversal for Republicanism. There was not even a candidate running whose victory could have suggested an even mild rebuke to the Administration — save possibly that of the in- evitable "wet." Emblazon the names of seven Str. tes on your banner of triumph, but the name of Oregon must be buried firmly in mud — the pride of the Associated Press. Portland, Oregon, July 16 D. P. A. Petlura To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: The assassination of Petlura by Sholem Schwartz- bard in a Paris cafe not long ago adds another to the number of pogromists of the war and after-war period who have been brought to justice since the armistice in 1918. Talaat, Enver, Djemal, who jointly ordered the wholesale Armenian massacres and deportations, have all disappeared from the scene, Talaat by the hand of an avenging Armenian, Djemal and Enver in the confused civil wars and insurrections of Turkestan and Afghanistan. Among the pogromists i f Jews whose names have become infamous since the Russian Revolution Petlura's and Denikin's top the list. At least a quarter of a million Jews lost their lives in the Ukraine during the years 1918-19-20-21. Exactly how many victims must be attributed to these two leaders would be difficult to determine; but the number is large. Officially, Petlura nearly always preserved a Jewish-friendly attitude; he had several Jews in his cabinet and at one time even a Com- for Jewish Affairs. Denikin, on the other hand, and more particularly his officers were onenly anti-Semitic. In practice, the results for the Jews of Petlura's policies were not

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Aug. 11, 1926] The Nation 129 much different from those of the Denikinists. Many thou of Jews fell victim to the fury of Petlura's fanatic, ignorant, half-starved, and ragamuffin peasant-bands. kurov and Jitomir alone more than a thousand are said to have boon mas- Bacred. Yet Petlura's downfall can by no moans be attributed to the excesses perpetrated by his armies. He was most popular when the pogroms were at their height And only his alliance with the Polos in 1920 ended his popularity. Till that time, even though he had flirted on occasion with all factions, and had even made an alliance with the Germans during their oc- cupation of the Ukraine, he had figured as a sort of hero of romance, a new Stenka Razin. His identification with the tradi- tional enemy, the Pole, brought about his final ruin. It would have been far preferable for justice to be accom- plished by some regular and legal agency of government, but, unfortunately, that does not seem to exist for such cases as this. The Entente, as part of the preliminary Versailles Treaty, demanded punishment of the "war criminals," prominent among whom were Talaat. Enver, and Djemal. Nevertheless, for several years these three paraded about Europe and Asia, intriguing and plotting, unscathed, until private vendetta and civil war accomplished a job the Entente quite plainly did not want to tackle. Petlura did not figure on the famous Entente list; the Entente in those days was raising pogromists of its own — Denikin enjoyed the open support, in all his infamies, of the British Government, and implied American su through the presence of the American Red Cross. Denikin will probably find that premiums on his life policies at Lloyd's have doubled and trebled since Petlura's accident. New York, July 15 Henry G. Alsberg Profits — Service ? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Owen D. Young in a recent speech suggested the government, instead of investigating corporations showing large profits, should direct its attention to those which are unprofitable. He said: "I know of no way concerns can make profits unless they render service, and, conversely, if they do not make profits they cannot render service. Why is it that a concern which does not render service enough to make profits is per- mitted to use our labor, of which we have none too great a supply, or our capital, which is always difficult to get, for an unprofitable use to society?" Denver, Colorado, July 2Jt Clara Ainswortii Where American Marines Hold Power To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The Haitian situation has become unbearable and public indignation is running high. No one can understand why "President" Borno was allowed to draw from the public treasury thousands of dollars for a trip of pleasure or secret diplomacy. When he went aboard the Panama on June 6 a crowd of about 7,000 men, women, and children shouted at him, insulting and stoning him. The old policy of brute force continues. M. Alcius Char- mant, a lawyer of Jacmel, 71 years old, was illegally arrested and sent to prison, under the false charge that he was foster- ing an uprising along the Haitian and Dominican border. The truth is that he is a personal enemy of M. Borno and an energetic president of the Regional Committee of the Union Patriotique of Jacmel. M. Charmant is the owner of a hundred and fifty carreaux of land along the south side of the border, near the Anses-a- Pitre. The Government claimed this land and took possession of it. But M. Charmant brought action against the state and a decree of the Supreme Court ordered the Government to give back to M. Charmant his land. But M. Borno and General execution of the dec... \ f t ■ I" two loss requests, M. Charmant decided to sell these hundred and fifty carreaux to an American company, He went to Santo Domingo a month ago, to nerican buyers. From Santo Domingo he proceeded with the buying party to his land. In crossing the border, two days later, ho was arrested and sent to Jacmel, under the false charge of fostering a i Yesterday Charles Moravia, former Haitian Minister to Washington, a poet and a writer, editor of the Temps, was arrested, and senl to jail, for an article criticizing the policy of M. Borno and President Coolidge toward Haiti. ..' Jolibois, editor of the Courrier Haitien, has refused to sur- render to the police and taken to the wi i I do not think that the people will bear ten years more of despotism and I fear terrible events. Port au Prince, June is Perceval Thoby The Old Concord Tradition To the Editor ok The Nation: Sir: Your paragraph on Concord, Massachusetts, was all to the good. Nothing written here must detract in the least from the praise and honor due Mr. Dexter. It is well to know, however, that the Unitarian minister, the Rev. Mr. Auer, was openly in favor of the meetings of the Fellowship of Youth for Peace being held in Concord and in his church, but his parish committee refused permission. Notwithstanding this rebuff Mr. Auer presided in the Episcopal Parish House at one of the meetings of the fellowship, greeted the conference, and introduced his friend Professor Skinner of Tufts College. Mr. Auer and Mrs. Auer were egged, even stoned, for that. Believers in a fair hearing for all shades of opinion, lovers f Emerson and Thoreau, of prace and concord, rejoice at the leadership of these two ministers. If all ministers of good-will, whether in or outside the churches, had always taken similar stand for fair play and open-mindedness, the present deplorable condition of the churches would be different and we should all be facing a very different world from that which now confronts us. Lincoln, Mass., July .10 CHARLES L. DE NORMANDIE Contributors to This Issue Hendrik W. van Loon's latest book is "Tolerance." Henry W. Nevinson is an English journalist, the author of "Changes and Chances" and "More Changes, More Chances." Lewis S. Gannett, associate editor of The Nation, recently returned from six months in the Orient, spent chiefly in China. C. C. Church is a sociologist who has made an extended investigation of the Oneida Community. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of The Nation, is at present in Europe. William MacDonald, formerly associate editor of The Nation, is the author of "Three Centuries of American Democracy" and other historical studies. Joseph Wood Krutch is dramatic critic of The Nation and the author of "Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius." Harry Elmer Barnes is the author of "History and Social Intelligence." Ernest Sutherland Bates was formerly professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon. Lorine Pruette is the author of "Women and Leisure." Melville J. Herskovits is an anthropologist engaged in an extended study of variability under racial crossing. Nazmie H. Anabtawy is an instructor at Yale.

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Books Poems By LAURA RIDING GOTTSCHALK For One Who Will Believe It is! And all is all you see. You must never turn the leaf over, You must never hew the tree. Faith is the modesty of self-approval. It was. The preference of certainty is past. But the assured season will lake confidence, Return a rose as lovely as the last, Find in the new retinue A faint pride reminiscent of you. For All Our Sakes For all our sakes we seem Ear'] of another place. For all our sakes we have Each his unnatural face And behind eyes pretend Never to understand Behind eyes. And seeming each ano And of another place, to spare All from all, makes each more same, Makes each one no one, nowhere, Makes separate blindness To see estrangement, for kindness. For all our sakes. A Dose of Democracy A History of the United States Since the Civil War. By Elli: Paxson Oberholtzer. Volume III: 1872-1878. The Mac- millan Company. $4. A NYONE who can read Mr. Obcrholtzer's third volume and -1 *■ still retain a love for American democracy in action must be either intellectually and morally astigmatic or else posi of the faith that can move mountains. The five or six years with which the volume deals, ancient history to tic present generation but vividly remembered by many men now living, were a period of political and social deg n racj unrelieved save by one or two pale efforts at reform an ! there a strong voice calling in the wilderness. ; ■ !, i(f course, wa a natural consequence of what had The m streams of political partisanship and lawlessness, private public corruption, and social and vulgarity to which the Civil War and 1. tion had rise mingled, before the war its;- 1' , behind, in one grand current of national debauchery < years ran mi unchecked. To profess that, at any time during those years, the people were governing themselv s would be to assert the veriest nonsense, but there was little in the attitude of the electorate to suggest that the people were fit to govern even if they had had a chance. For a time, at least, the kind of g vemment that Lincoln had hoped might not perish from the earth broke down in the United States, and in its place were enthroned the gang and the ring, the boss and the henchman,, the gambling sharps of Wall Street and the petty pilferers of navy yards, distilleries, and Indian agencies, with a President who never should have been chosen riding serenely at the head of the grand parade. Mr. Oberholtzer, equipping his pages with citations of chap- ter and verse for every crucial statement, and marshaling his facts without pity for place or name, begins the dismal story with the Liberal Republican movement, and follows it remorse- lessly to the enthronement of Hayes and the "rout of the car- pet-baggers." The Liberal Republican revolt, pathetic enough as an attempt to stay a tide that could not be turned, appears almost farcical when one recalls the grotesque and impossible Greeley, and makes one wonder, not that it failed but rather that the fetish of "reform within the party" should ever after- ward have had a devotee. The regular Republicans, as it turned out, judged the movement correctly and went on with their scandals. Garfield's adjustable ethics enabled him to de- fend the salary grab because his colleagues in Congress wanted it, and then to decline his own increased emolument as a step toward grasping the main chance. The panic of 1873, with its startling revelations of financial and political crookedness, did nothing to purge the party of its evil mind; there was no repentance at the White House or on Capitol Hill when the whiskey ring and the Credit Mobilier were exposed; the looting of the Indian service went on unchecked; naval administration was a stench, and the shallow and pretentious Blaine and the sparingly gifted John Sherman succeeded to the statesmanship once honored by Seward, Chase, and Fish. The election of Hayes was, in a measure, a return to political decency, although it is hard to see that, under the cir- cumstances, either Hayes or Tilden was legally entitled to the office of President. What really happened was that the Re- publicans had their way with the presidency, and thereby ! what many undoubtedly regarded as a danger that an Administration friendly to an unreconstructed South would be installed at Washington, but the most that can be said for them is that they behaved in the matter with a greater out- ward show of decency than they had exhibited in the days of Andrew Johnson. The overthrow of the carpet-bag govern- ments in the South, commendable as it. was in Hayes, worked ential chi i in the Republican Party, aid years woe yet to pass before the waving of the bloody shirt ceased to do honorable duty as. political argument. The fact, of course, was that the Republican Party was unintelligent as well as corrupt, and that the Democrats, burdened with the hang- overs of war and reconstruction, had little that was better to offer. The Granger movement among the farmers, for example, pointed to deep-seated evils in the economic system as well as incapacity in fedc ral legislation, but the effect of the movement in remedying the one or bettering the other was slight, while the Indian wars in the West, inevitable as they were in view of all the conditions, revealed a perverse failure on the part lent to deal with one of the fundamental problems el' civilization. the best of the few bright spots in a period whose political excesses one would gladly forc;et. It in its crudity and boastfulness, its ip of money and -power, its satisfaction and delight in extravagani vice, grandiose architecture, and gaudy hotels and "palace" railway coaches. The slow turning of the tide, howev< r, was to be perceived in the establishment of the elective system at Harvard, the founding of Johns Hop- kins and Cornell, and the gradual recognition of worthier work in art. The Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, tawdry beyond compare in its "unsightly warehouses with decorations from the flag makers and the planing mills," stirred the artistic feeling of the nation through its exhibition of foreign products,

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Aug. 11, 1926] The Nation ]:;i manufactures, and art objects. The daily newspaper puss, too, of which Mr. Oberholtzer gives a particularly full account, was developing into a powerful though uncertain force, and the great editorial work of Godkin was making itself felt whi there was an open mind. Mr. Oberholtzer on the whole is sparing of comment, save when on occasion he allows himself a detached, ami usually an unawed, personal characterization. To readers who have hitherto relied upon Rhodes for their knowledge of the period, the present volume will open many new lines of information and suggestion. The only doubt that arises is whether, with the third of his five volumes extending only to 1S7S. Mr. Ober- holtzer will succeed in producing the same kind of history of the United States since the Civil War that lie apparently had in mind when he began. William MacDonald A Master of the Accessible Conversations with Anatole France. By Nicolas Segur. Au- thorized Translation with an Introduction by .1. Lewis May. Dodd, Mead and Company. $2 Anatole France at Home. By Marcel Le Goff. Translal d by Laura Riding Gottschalk. The Adelphi Company. (~\F these two books the first is written extremely well and ^^ the second rather badly, but both contain a number of anecdotes sufficiently characteristic of their subject. Yet neither can be said to add very much to our knowledge of the man, and the reason is less any fault in the reporters than the fact that Anatole France himself defined his mind with almost p completeness. His ideas were neither very complicated in themselves nor given to any modifying growth; his garden was eai'ly ripe and he himself had paced over every foot of it again and again, leaving no corners unexplored. Unlike those whose multiplicity compels them to leave many things half said and whose conversation is full of unexpected things, he had rounded out every one of the relatively few topics which concerned him and every circle was complete. He talked, if one may judge from published reports, with the same ease with which his writ- ings flow, and he was inexhaustibly fertile in developing his chosen topics; but he never strayed far from familiar themes and his familiar conclusions. No one was ever more delightful, no one ever less varied. To read him is to be sure of coming upon many true things incomparably said, but it is never, as with some writers it is, to embark upon a spiritual adventure. His world was finished and settled. In this fact is to be found the source of both France's great- ness and his limitations. No writer whose mind is in a constant state of becoming can produce works as perfect is his, but on the other hand no works so perfect can be other than, in a sense, closed and done, no sooner written than already a part of that past which the present values as a treasure but from which it gets but little impetus toward the work which it must do. It is in this sense as truly as in any other that France is a classic. If he gave to the best of his works a perfection of form it was in part because he rigidly excluded from them all those aspects of contemporary thought which are rebellious to such form. While others struggled to take some account of the complexities of modern science or the voluminous data of contemporary economics and were led, perforce, into a style as lacking in grace and simplicity as the materials with which they were compelled to deal, he was content to concern himself with nothing which could not be shaped into swelling sent His art he learned from the eighteenth-century masters, and he seldom disturbed their pattern by the introduction of any- thing which they had not used. Since the time of Petronius, since the time of Voltaire even, science has rev; aled many things which may at least be interpreted to supoort and amplify the nihilistic philosophy which he held, but his arguments and his illustrations are drawn almost invariably from sources which have been the common property of skeptics for centuries. Biology and psychology in their modern developmei . book to him. Unlike the "moderi nany of v have turned against him, he never followed tin of the age by leaving even in imaginat e labora- tory. The "Satyricon" and the "Phil I Dictionary" contain the full arsenal of his weapons, ai i which he wields is uncontaniinatod by any of the grotesqueries which biology and psychoanalysis have introduced. Voltaire, who would be as bewildered by .lean Cocteau as by Einstein, could read France without being aware that a century and a half had passed, for the world in which France lived is a world still essentially as simple as the world of his eighteenth-cen- tury masters — a world dominated by "reason" rather than by accumulated statistics or the results of innumerable experi- ments. And if one turns from his sources to his implications it is equally true that he was, in a similar way, detached from his age. Not only his skepticism but his humanitarianism and his democracy were of an old-fashioned type. If he believed in "the people" his belief was, like that of Voltaire, based upon abstract considerations instead of being, like the belief of Bernard Shaw, somehow related to the voluminous compila- tions of Beatrice Webb — not one pag" of which France could ever have brought himself to read. And if he thought that he sympathized with the communists it was not because he, with his classic disdain of all enthusiasm, had the slightest com- prehension of the ultra-modern religion of Moscow. The epicu- rean calm of his sumptuous study was remote by the distance of centuries from all the hurly-burly of economic doctrine which he left as severely alone as he left the intricacies of science. All that he felt the need to know had been written down in an age less concerned with details than the one in which he found himself, and he deliberately preferred the broad outlines of a simpler generation. Hence it is that while he has all the b of a classic he nevertheless seems to many of his more eager contemporaries in France as irritatingly remote from their age as Lucretius himself. Joseph Wood Krutch The Crown Prince as Archivist Ich Suche die Wahrheit. Von Wilhelm, Kronprinz. Stuttgart: Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger. 8 marks. F^URING the World War we became so habituated to repro- -*Lj' ductions of the German Crown Prince as a rabbit-faced imbecile with an IQ of 20 that few Americans were capable of imagining him as possessed of the slightest cerebration or lite- racy. He was deemed competent only for guinea-pig amorosi- ties with opera stars safely behind the lines, after having ruth- lessly ordered the flower of the German youth to engage in mass-suicide before the fortresses of Verdun. It was with great astonishment, then, that we were forced to discover in his memoirs perhaps the most attractive and plausible apology which emerged from the German official class after the war. The present work is an effort to clear Germany of the in- dictment in Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, alleging her to have been solely responsible for the World War and the damages caused by it. Incidentally, it is directed against the official French apology contained in Bourgeois and Pages's work on war guilt. Once more it may be safely maintained that the Crown Prince has produced the best book of its kind executed by any member of the royal family or the official force of pre-war Germany. It is fully as objective and dispassionate as the works of Grey or Poincare and infinitely more calm than those of Asquith or Viviani. No other official apology can in any way compare with it for evidence of scholarship and a mastery of a vast mass of relevant documents. While we cannot know how much of the work is that of the Crown Prince himself and how much was done for him by the willing hands of trained historical experts, the book is truly astonishing with respect to

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132 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 its obvious mastery of the literature of war guilt. Not even the books of such technical scholars as Montgelas or Renouvin are able to demonstrate greater acquaintance with the latest col- lections of documents and the most indispensable monographs. The facts available in these indisputable documents make it easy for Wilhelm to pulverize the conventional indictment of Germany contained in Bourgeois and Pages. He prove preposterous nature of the allegation that Germany willed war from the beginning of the 1914 crisis and pushed an unwilling- Austria into the conflict. He also makes out a fairly convinc- ing case for his thesis that Germany, far from desiring a European war in 1914, actually feared its outbreak. Thus far we can follow the Crown Prince with but few reservations. When, however, he attempts to prove that from 1870 to 1914 Germany was invariably desirous of peace and struggled vainly against envious neighbors, his arguments become less plausible and his documentation less irrefragable. Yet his contention is closer to the facts than the conviction, still all but universally entertained in Entente countries, that Germany was the unique wolf in a fold otherwise inhabited by the most meek and charm- ing ewe lambs. HARRY ELMER BARNES Oil Under the Water Oil Imperialism. By Louis Fischer. International Publishers. $2. THIS is the how the big, bad oil companies, in great :, thundering voices, said "Boo!" to the poor little Soviet Republic, expecting it to wither at the blast, and how the poor little Soviet Republic answered in its thin, piping way: "We will, sirs, if you'll pay us enough." And of how in the end the bold, bad oil companies paid plenty. It is a true story, too, and a continuing story, current instalments of which can be read almost any week in the Petroleum Times and the Oil News. Contemporary history need not have all the drama removed in the writing. I have on my shelves a great, dull book on the Genoa Conference of 1922 by a Mr. Saxon Mills, with a glow- ing introduction by the Ri^-lit Honorable David Lloyd (1 In all its four hundred pages it does not mention oil, and ac- cordingly it tells less of the meaning of Genoa than Louis Fischer compresses into thirty colorful pages. For Genoa, like St. Remo, was an oil conference, though the officialized cor- respondents who reported it did not seem to know what oil smeiled like; and one can almost say that most recent history evolved about petroleum. Mr. Fischer's title is a bit broad for his subject, which is Russian and Persian oil, but, after all, they probably form more than half of the known oil resources of the world. And his story of Russian oil includes the explanation of that strange, wild expedition of British troops across the Caspian Sea in 1918; of the failure of Genoa; of the American-Japanese rivalry in the North Pacific, in which the United States, i-<'f using officially to recognize the existence of Soviet Russia, nevertheless defended Soviet Russia's interest in the hope of keeping Japan from Sakhalin's oil; of that ludicrous drama in which the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (51 per cent owned by His Britannic Majesty's Government), the Stand- ard Oil (adored by the Washington State Department), and Harry Sinclair played cards Cor Persia's favors — and all lo t: and of many other minor dramas. And the end of Hi- story is that the oil companies, hoping (except Sinclair) some day to revaluate the prerevolutionary titles that they had bought up cheap, all overreached themselves, and got exactly nowhere. The great wise supermen of this super-business do not al- ways know as much as they think they do. At Genoa the Soviet Government was willing and -ager to persuade one of the oil giants to work its wells for it — but they, hoping to get everything for nothing, balked. They formed a beautiful In- ternational Committee of Oil Companies in Russia to defend together the sacred rights of private property, as understood in Russia before the revolution, but one by one they yielded to temptation and dickered with the naughty Soviets for their several individual advantages. As usual, the high priests of private property set their own private profits above other peo- ple's private property. Meanwhile Russia, forced by their greed, set out to develop her oil wells herself, and discovered, to her and their surprise, that she could do very well indeed at it. Last year she bought $3,000,000 worth of oil machinery from the United States, spent $40,000,000 on restoration, and paid for it out of the profits on her socialist experiment. Al- ready she sells a quarter as much oil in England as the Amer- ican companies do; she has her own selling agencies in Ger- many, Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia; and recently the Vacuum Oil, a subsidiary of the lordly Standard Oil, con- descended to buy 70,000 tons of her oil — at her price. The attempt to boycott Russian oil, like the attempt to boycott Russia, has failed. If you wish to understand the oleaginous subchannels of modern diplomacy — British, French, Russian, Japanese, and American — read "Oil Imperialism." Mr. Fischer has traced the course of diplomatic streams that were never intended to be mapped for the public. If too often, pleased by his dis- coveries, lie notes with superabundant detail events which in- evitably lose their significance in the time-consuming process of book publication — well, that is a lesser fault than the blind- ness of the official contemporary historians. Lewis S. Gannett Toward a Synthesis Psychology and Education. By Robert Morris Ogden. Har- court, Brace and Company. $2.75. rTMIIS is a markedly important book from several points of 1 view. It offers the first clearly intelligible exposition in English of the new Gestalt psychology, it is pregnant with philosophical suggestion, and it fulfils the author's ambition to give "to the study of education a psychological background which commends itself as an orderly and systematic develop- ment of scientific principles derived from factual observations." The Gestalt psychology of Koffka, Koehler, and Ogden car- ries us a lone,- step beyond the crude behaviorism of Watson and his followers. It is a study of human behavior as an active realization of patterns instead of as a passive accre- tion of chained reflexes. It finds that reflexes themselves are highly specialized partial responses which have been differen- tiated within an earlier total response. Furthermore, re- flexes are not mechanical but dynamic and variable. "It is difficult," writes Professor Ogden, "to find a single instance of reflexive activity which is not in some measure self-regula- tory." A fortiori, this is still more true of behavior as a whole. "The inherent features of behavior regulate and per- fect their own pattern." Professor Ogden summons among other witnesses the wasp, the earth-worm, the amoeba, and, of course, Koehler's famous apes and chickens. Throughout his study he is guided by the idea of the self-realizing rhythmic pattern, form, or gestalt. With its assistance he is able to explain the perplexing phenomena of memory more adequately than was possible on the current association theory. In pre- rational stages, aesthetic feeling — the sense of rhythm, bal- ance, proportion — is the internal criterion of successful or ob- structed behavior. With the attainment of the power of ab- straction new and artificial patterns are constructed, and be- havior becomes largely a matter of the use of tools, of which words and numbers are the most important. The educational implications of the new psychology are nothing short of revolutionary. If the child's evaluation of his own behavior is in terms of aesthetic feeling, then it is obvious that early education should be primarily aesthetic. What this would mean will be suggested by one of Professor Ogden's remarks: "Instead of struggling to teach oral and

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Aug. 11, 1926] The Nation ■ written composition by the arid means of grammar, syntax, and rhetoric, we might, if we but knew how, cultivate the >:ns of speech as they appear spontaneously in child- hood." Apply this all along the line and elementary and ondary education would be remade, subjects that arc now re- garded as "frills" would become basic, and new methods would be introduced everywhere. And with an adequate elementary education, higher education would inevitably be transformed to meet it. The philosophical implications of Professor Ogden's book are almost equally important. The Gegtalt psychology reaches out to what one might call the Gestalt physics of Professor Whitehead, and both are not distantly related to the revived Aristotelianism of the recent neo-scholastic movement in philosophy. With a rational psychology ami a rational physics a rational philosophy would naturally follow. Professor Ogden's book is a notable contribution toward the now phil- osophic synthesis which is every day being more clearly foreshadowed. Ernest Sutherland Bates What Not to Do with Criminals The Repression of Crime. By Harry Elmer Barnes. George II. Doran Company. $2.50. IN. this volume Mr. Barnes draws upon his past experiences as historian to the Prison Inquiry Commission of New Jer- sey and to the Pennsylvania Commission to Investigate Penal Systems. He believes that the history of criminal procedure and penal practice constitutes one of the few phases of the study of the past which may be directly useful to the reformer, for the historian should be able, by indicating those practices which have signally failed in the past, to guard society against repeating its mistakes. He cites the present demand for in- creased severity in dealing with criminals as an indication of the lack of historical knowledge on the part of those making such demands. The author, definitely committed to the psychiatric ap- proach to problems of criminal behavior, strongly advocates the development of psychological examinations and the applica- tion of psychological technic to the retraining of the felon. However, he holds no brief for the prison; he traces its com- paratively recent development from colonial times to the present and shows how its worst evils have grown out of tendencies of human nature which are as often pitiable as reprehensible. This is particularly effective in the case of the prison officials, who, as Mr. Barnes shows, are themselves victims of the sys- tem and prisoners in a very real sense, wielding over the other prisoners a power which it is very natural they should abuse. He points out that as we have given up the notion of man as a free moral agent and have come to accept human nature as the resultant of a vast number of influences, both hereditary and cultural, the old prison as an institution designed to furnish punishment to the criminal and the satisfaction of revenge to society has lost its place in modern criminal science. In its stead he anticipates the development of an institution for the examination, differentiation, treatment, segregation, or extermi- nation of the socially sick or criminal class. The new system would insist upon the permanent segregation of those types whose reformation is obviously impossible; it would provide the most scientific treatment for those whose reformation ap- pears possible, but would grant them permanent freedom only when parole had demonstrated the thoroughness of the cure; it would insist upon a vast improvement of detective systems, so that arrest and treatment would become much more swift and certain; and it would probably insist upon the desirability of a general inquisition and investigation of the whole popula- tion in order to discover those feeble-minded, psychoneurotic, or other types likely to be guilty of criminal conduct. Historical chapters study the criminal codes and penal in- stitutions of colonial times, the origin of the prison system in America, the place of the Pennsylvania Reform Society in American prison reform, leading phases of the evolution of , in penology, the evolution of American criminal jurispru- dence as illustrated by the criminal code and penal legislation Pennsylvania, and the development of prison industry. The folly of keeping prisoners in enforced idleness or of engaging them upon work the sole end of which is punitive, as in the infamous "crank labor," is pointed out. It is to be regretted that this chapter was not followed by a more specific considera- tion of the psychology of retraining and reformation through a genuine, rather than a spurious, occupational therapy. The chapter on How Prisons Punish the Human Mind, while by no means exhaustive, offers an excellent introduction to the subject and might well be used in classes in penology. The chapter on Recent Literature presents in summary form the most authoritative findings in recent years, while in the er on Trial by Jury Mr. Barnes resigns his scientific detachment and presents his view with the gusto of The American Mercury. The conclusion is roundly stated: A body of individuals of average or less than aver- age ability who could not tell the truth if they wanted to, who usually have little of the truth to tell, who are not allowed to tell oven all of that, and who are fre- quently instructed to fabricate voluminously and unblush- ingly. Present this largely worthless, wholly worthless, or worse than worthless information to twelve men who are for the most part unconscious of what is being di- vulged to them and would bo incapable of an intelligent interpretation of the information if they heard it. The program advocated at the end of the book involves provision for a thorough and accurate collection of criminal statistics, without which no intelligent attack upon the crime problem can be made; eugenic provisions to insure that future generations shall be as far as possible well born; adequate education, including instruction in the ideals of American citi- zenship, vocational education sufficient to provide every able- bodied citizen with the means of earning a living, and the train- ing of backward children; provision for personal hygiene, ade- quate housing, and recreation; curbing of the exhibition of crimes in motion pictures; the development of adequate meas- ures of apprehension and conviction of criminals; and the development of an ideal of reformation in the place of punishment. Lorine Pruette The Canary Islanders The Ancient Inhabitants of the Canary Islands. By Earnest A. Hooton. The Harvard African Studies, Volume VII. Peabody Museum of Harvard University. $15. /^vUT in the Atlantic, off the coast of Africa and stretching ^-^ across five degrees of longitude, lie the Canary Islands, which until the time of the early Spanish and Portuguese navi- gators constituted the end of the world. In these islands are several fairly distinct types of people. There are undecipher- able writings on the rocks of some of the islands, there are several types of culture, there are linguistic differences. Where did these people come from? When, and in what succession? Were they Carthaginians, cruising for mercantile purposes? Or do the populations of these islands constitute a clue to the early history of Africa, the respective types representing the remnants of different migratory waves, the remnants of which in turn were forced by desperation off the mainland? The im- portance of the problems involved has attracted the attention cf numerous scientists, and many hypotheses have been ad- vanced. We have even been told that the islands represent the last remnants of the lost continent, Atlantis, and that here we have remains of the people who inhabited it — an assumption which, we are assured in the work under review, is untenable even from a geographical point of view.

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134 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 318a Dr. Hooton's study is an exhaustive contribution to the prehistory of the islands achieved through analysis of a large collection of skulls located in the Municipal Museum of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which he had the opportunity of examining and measuring on a field trip in 1915. Fortunately, Dr. Hooton is quite aware of the tentativeness of any conclusions arrived at and cautions us concerning the approximate nature of the culture-groups, morphological skull-types, and linguistic classes he differentiates. He finds that there were four in- vasions of the islands, the first occurring during the Neolithic Period with the appearance of a Mediterranean people with some Negroid admixture. They brought domesticated sheep and goats, and chipped stone and bone technic. Then came a second invasion, when pottery was common to North Africa and barley the only cultivated cereal. These people were bru- nette whites with Mongoloid features, and came from North Africa. About the same time the third group came, a tall, blond, long-headed people, warlike and athletic, with a caste system of warrior nobles and agricultural and pastoral re- tainers but with no new cultural features. These he terms "Nordic"; they came from the Atlas ranges of Algeria and Morocco. Finally, a fourth invasion was effected by a people of the Mediterranean type at the time of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean. And Arabs and Berbers have completed the melange which is found today. While Dr. Hooton has used mainly the cranial material which was a. hand, he has not neglected the cultural and lin- guistic features which might shed some light toward the solution of his problem. His attempt to correlate physical with linguis- tic and cultural data is interesting, although I feel that the fortuitous way in which cultural and physical phenomena may be associated always makes this procedure dangerous. How- ever, Dr. Hooton is well aware of the danger, and warn;, his readers repeatedly of it. His method, too, of tabulating the cultural traits and neatly referring to the percentages of the total number observed on each island gives a mechanical aspect to his conclusions and introduces a method more properly applicable to the measurement of exclusively physical traits. The opening chapters are devoted to a resume of what is known of the cultures of the islands and to a summing up of the traits in the table mentioned. From this table it, ap- pears that the sparsest culture (in terms of the traits re- corded) is found in the islands lying farthest from the main- land, while those nearer have richer cultures. An attempt is made at a similar tabulation of the linguistic remnants of the early stocks which have survived, percentages being given of words affiliated with dialects and languages of the mainland. Here, I fear, the number of words is too small to make for any conclusive result, a point which is not denied by Dr. Hooton. He then goes into the material culture and the customs of each of the islands in some detail, and finally comes to a presentation of the cranial data which he analyzed, this comprising the main portion of the work. The treatment of the crania measured is very thor and great pains have been taken so that every possible element should be included in the analysis. We first have a compre- hensive description of the series in terms of the measurements taken, followed by a discussion of the inter-island differences. Then there is a summary of numerous observations — physical traits which are not measurable — and a similar comparison between islands. There follows a comparison between the Ca- nary crania and recent European and North African series, with further statistical analyses at length and in detail, the resulting- distinguishable types jeing called the "Guanche," "Nordic," and "Mediterranean." While these names are differ- ent from those given by other investigators, there is general agreement between Dr. Hooton's findings, if viewed broadly, and these made by others who have studied the material at length. An interesting section is devoted to a discussion of tin author's results compared with those which were arrived at foi the same material by his colleague, Dr. Dixon, whose arbitrary method of classification as presented in his recent work on tha racial history of man raised a storm of objections from hia fellow-anthropologists. It is significant that this is the firsj work to check Dr. Dixon, but in spite of the willingness of Dr. Hooton to allow every point that would show favorably for his] colleague's method the results of the two investigators do nolj seem to coincide. We have here, then, a fascinating dissection of material which is well worth going through as an example of careful) method and scientific procedure. Dr. Hooton displays a proper] caution in drawing his sweeping generalizations. He does not! hesitate to draw them, but when he does so he calls them gen-) eralizations; and always back of them are masses of datai Finally, one cannot but comment on the joy with which one han^, dies this huge volume, with its excellent typography, its largej margins, and its numerous drawings and plates. One may! merely remark that the material is worthy of its setting. Melville J. Herskovits Books in Brief Fix Bayonets! By John W. Thomason, Jr. Illustrated by the Author. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.50. Those who like war will like Thomason's book — both its sardonic text and its hard, cruel sketches. Those who do not] like war will merely admire the cool skill with which the Marines arc here conducted through four terrible battles in France. In either case what the reader will find is the truth! so far as battles are concerned. All the talk is about killing and being killed — Captain Thomason has no other subject. And surely no other is important, though many jolly war books have been published. It is to be hoped that this, probably the best of all American war books to date, will survive until the time when another war is being considered. For it proves that the number of ways in which the institution makes brutes of men is literally infinite. The Life of Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, fourth Earl of Carnarvon. By the Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur Hardinge. Oxford University Press. Three volumes. $21. Eton and Oxford, Eastern travels, a country home with sports, books, and "country work," entrance into wide public life in the House of Lords when 23, Under Secretary for the Colonies at 27, thirty full years of office, travel, literature, and dignified domesticity in the great Victorian age — such a life has nowhere else been possible, and now is hardly any longer possible in England. Thirty-five years after his death Lord Carnarvon has left scarce a mark in the memory of his coun- trymen. A fine independent conservative statesman of the second rank under Lords Derby, Beaconsfield, and Salisbury, Colonial Secretary and Viceroy of Ireland, he stands as one of the first promoters of federation within the British Empire. The present work will occupy a place on the shelf of reputable libraries, and will seldom leave it. Karin Smirnoff: Strindbergs Fdrsta Hustrn. Stockholm: Albert Bonnier. "I never was unfaithful to your father" — thus spoke Siri von Essen to her older daughter; she was sitting in her home in Helsingfors. Siri von Essen was August Strindberg's first wife, the woman whom he maligned in his autobiographical novel "Le Plaidoyer d'un Fou," recently published in English under the title "The Confessions of a Fool." The book which August and Siri Strindberg's daughter, Karin Smirnoff, now has published thirteen years after the death of her parents is not in form a vindication of her mother's good name, but it is in fact a complete vindication. She speaks kindly of her father,

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Aug. 11, 1926] The Nation 135 emphasizing his good nature and his interest in the welfare oi his children when he was of sound mind. But it is very clear that his mind was not always sound. The first year of hia wedded life coincided with Strindberp;'s democratic and istic period. His wife fully sympathized with those views, but she could not follow him when he became imbued with Nietz- schean ideas. The latter period followed closely upon his trial for blasphemy, instituted after the publication of "Giftas, 1." hock produced by this was profound; and his whole men- tal and emotional life was changed so that he became insanely jealous and suspicious of his wife. Karin Smirnoff's book sup- plements the picture of Strindberg which he has given to the world in his various autobiographical novels. A German-English Dictionary. By Herman C. G. Brandt. G. E. Stechert and Company. $5. Professor Brandt's dictionary was ready for publication in 1915, but the war interrupted the typesetting, and the author continued to revise his manuscript till within a few weeks of his death, in December, 1920. The book, now at last published, is no mere compilation, but the lifework of an admirable scholar. The vocabulary includes about 70,000 words; the English renderings are precise; technical apparatus is reduced to the minimum; the pages are not cluttered with superfluous matter. Most of the articles are very brief, but the longer ones present an abundance of information with great skill. The printing and mechanical arrangement of the dictionary are perfect History of Economic Progress in the United States. By W. W. Jennings. T. Y. Crowell Company. $4.50. A story of the background against which American politi- cal development has taken place is well worth writing. It has never yet been adequately done, save for certain areas and short spaces of time, and then the results have usually been hidden away in formidable monographs. It may be that re- search has not yet gone far enough, for book after book comes from the presses, each repeating the other and each failing to furnish the whole picture we should like to have. Nor is it to be found in Mr. Jennings's book, which is singularly inadequate in illumination. If what is wanted is all the information con- cerning American commerce, population, and industry that can be got into a single volume, there is probably no better book than this; but to expect college students — and it is professedly a text — to take to its data with avidity is to expect the impossible. New Values in Child Welfare. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. September, 1925. $1. The authors of the articles appearing in this issue of the Annals are persons trained in various ways and with much experience. Authorities in the fields of health, delinquency, accident prevention, family case work, settlement work, and child placing have all brought their thinking to b r to Squier'a not being able to find • i in Lake Titicaca . a depth of one hundred fathoms. Squier's rope should have been '-".''i feet longer. Excavations. By Carl Van Vechten. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. The decadent temper with its flair for details, with its upation with the minor and the eccentric, is, in this vol- ume of essays on Ouida, Machen, Saltus, Firhank, and others, held in clear solution for the inspection of the curious in such matters. Mr. Van Vechten's nonchalant and bookish survivors of the saffron decade will, it is to be presumed, have about them perennially a dim charm — that slightly ridiculous allure which resides in every anachronism. One study, that of Oscar Hammerstein, beautifully because simply written, is valuable as biography and moving as characterization. The R. P. A. Annual and Ethical Review. London: The Ration- alist Press Association. The Rationalist Press Annual is devoted to the cause of intellectual progress. The contributors are men of interna- tional fame. They discuss authoritatively and urbanely such topics as The Triumph, Evolution, The Rationalism of Anatole France, and the Causes of Evolution. The last is from the facile pen of J. B. S. Haldane, whose treatment of a highly controversial subject is a model of cogency and succinctness. Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs. Collected in Aberdeenshire by the late Gavin Greig and edited by Alexander Keith. Aberdeen: The Buchan Club. A worthy appendix to the five great volumes of Child. Aberdeenshire has always been particularly rich in ballad- versions, and in this volume she takes her final stand. The editor in his introduction makes an interesting and convincing defense of Peter Buchan's much-maligned collection of 1828. Vdtaire. By Richard Aldington. Gogol. By Janko Lavrin. Pushkin. By Prince D. S. Mirsky. (The Republic of Letters.) E. P. Dutton and Company. $2.50 each. Three volumes in a new and promising series of critical biographies. Mr. Aldington's, much the best of the three, tells the amazing story of Voltaire's life with remarkable economy yet with vivid plenitude of detail; and concludes with a sensible estimate of Voltaire's importance in the various fields of his activity. The volumes on Gogol and Pushkin survey the two pillars — of different construction but of equal importance — be- neath modern Russian literature. Neither study is quite satisfactory, though both as pioneers are to be welcomed. Not Poppy. By Virginia Moore. Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany. $1.75. "Such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights," and wielded in an idiom at once ac- curately personal and deft, is nevertheless insufficient to sus- tain the reader's attention; Miss Moore's poetry, interesting enough in a first few poems, is in bulk invention carried to convention; it becomes the exposure of its own device. The subject matter is erotic disturbance. Any subject matter persisting in art with intrinsic value is vulgarity. Systems of Public Welfare. By Howard W. Odum and D. W. Willard. The University of North Carolina Press. $2. A straightforward account of the legislative attempts that have been made in the United States to preserve the healing human touch in all charitable undertakings without sacrificing efficiency. Que Francia explique. Buenos Aires: Editora Internacional. This is a Spanish translation of Frederick Bausman's "Let France Explain," supplemented by recent data intended to bring the work down to date.

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International Relations Section The French Activities in Syria By NAZMIE H. ANABTAWY SUBSEQUENT to the bombardment of Damascus in October, 1925, the appointment of M. Henry de Jouvenel, the first civil head of the French administration in Syria, implied an acknowledgment of the faults of his predecessors. At once the Syrian Nationalists began to build castles in the air, founded on the hope that the new High Commissioner would bring peace to Syria. M. de Jouvenel faced the problem that the presence of France in Syria as the mandatory was against the wishes of the people and was therefore the primary rea- son for Syrian dissatisfaction. In theory the mandate sys- tem was evolved for the benefit of peoples who have readied such a degree of civilization that their independence may be provisionally recognized, but who, because of lack of ex- perience in self-government, need the aid of a powerful nation to set them on their feet. But in fact the mandate carried out secret treaties previously negotiated between France and England. M. Poincare admitted in the Cham- ber of Deputies in 1923 that "since 1912 we have had an understanding with the British regarding Syria/' In 1916 this understanding was put into definite terms in an agreement called the Sykes-Picot Treaty, which awarded Syria to France. This treaty violates earlier promises made to the Arabs by Great Britain, pledging the recognition, at the end of the war, of the independence of the Arabian territories within the Turkish Empire, in consideration of their assistance to the Allies. In 1918 France and En- land confirmed these promises in a joint proclamation, al- though the policy proclaimed was inconsistent with the Sykes-Picot Treaty of two years before. The idea of mandates innocently introduced by Presi- dent Wilson gave France and Great Britain an opportunity to legalize their agreement. At that time it was decided by the Powers that each should send a commission to in- vestigate the wishes of the people. France and England abstained, and the United States was the only Power to comply with the decision. The King-Crane Commission sub- mitted an exhaustive report to the Department of State in Washington, holding in effect that the unanimous wish of the people was in favor of complete independence In case the Powers were not ready to recognize such inde- pendence and the imposition of a mandate was inevitable the commission warned against giving the Syrian mandate to France, since the Syrians explicitly refused the French Yet, despite the terms of Article XXII of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which provides that the wishes of he people be taken into account, despite the promises given to the Syrians, and despite the warnings of the American Commission, the mandate was allocated to Franc- in April, 1920. No sooner had France undertaken the Syrian mandate than the affairs of the country became seriously involved Ine introduction of paper money, subject to the barometric fluctuation of the franc, and the policy of exporting gold paralyzed finance and depressed commerce. Average earn- ing-power became inadequate to meet average expenses The government departments, especially that of ju were soon nests of corruption. Ordinances issued daily by French officers violated individual rights which are rec- ognized in all civilized countries. Villages, towns, ami cities were completely destroyed by gun and airplane' bom- bardment. Thousands of acres of agricultural lands were laid waste by military operations. The country suffered f losses which can never be recouped in one generation. This was the situation which M. de Jouvenel had to face. In Paris, after the bombardment of Damascus, M. de Jouvenel endeavored to vindicate the French intentions. His statements in the press encouraged Syrian nationalists m Europe, Egypt, and Syria to meet him and present their demands. Emir Shekib Arslan, the representative of the 1 Syrian Nationalists in Europe, made the following proposals : 1. Syria should enjoy complete independence, with the rights and privileges of a de jure government and with ' membership in the League of Nations. 2. Lebanon should have an administration of its own ' provided a plebiscite be held among the inhabitants of the ! territories ceded to it in 1920, to determine whether they retain their present status or revert to Syria. The terri- tories referred to are Tyre, Sidon, Marhouyoun, Rasheiya, Hasbeiya, Tripoli, and Balaback Elbakaa. 3. Syria should be recognized as a single state. (It is now divided into many provinces with local legislative bodies.) 4. As a corollary to her independence, Syria should enjoy the right to political representation by diplomatic agents. 5. In recognition of the French interests in Syria, and to replace the present mandate, Syria would agree to a thirty -year treaty granting France certain economic privi- leges in preference to other countries. Negotiations with Syrian Nationalists in Egypt added to these demands two precautions: that the treaty to be entered into must define the relations of the parties to it expressly abolishing the mandate, and would not be bind- ing until ratified by the Syrian Parliament; and that the army of occupation must withdraw as soon as a provisional government, pending the formation of a de jure govern- ment, could be established. As a practical plan to end the war, nationalist organ- izations were in agreement on the following suggestions- Negotiations should be entered into with the leaders of the revolut.on, defining conclusively the international relations of Syria on the basis of national sovereignty. A treaty should state the conditions for the withdrawal of the army of occupation, the time limit of the mandate, and the rela- tion of the mandatory power to the state of Syria It was suggested also that a convention be summoned to draw up a constitution for Syria. France would submit the agreement to the League, expressing her willingness to concede all the terms, and ratification by the League would be final. Presented with these propositions, M. de Jouvenel re- peatedly evaded any conclusive answer. But when he reached Damascus he announced that all Nationalists should surrender arms unconditionally within a specified period and proceed with elections. This counter-proposal failed to satisfy the Nationalists, chiefly because it offered no definition of the limits of mandatory power. The Syrians turned to Geneva, with a request that the League of Na-

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Aug. 11, 1926] The Nation 137 Real Estate Ads -If you have a house or property to sell or lease, try The Nation classified advertising section. -If the experience of other advertisers of real estate is a guide, your advertisement in The A ation will pa v. -Write for rates to Dept. R., The Nation. Ample argument the old Chinese proverb says, "One picture is worth ten thousand words." By much the same reasoning... and it is sound reasoning, too . . . the best argument for Fatima is Fatima. Taste one ... for just one taste is worth a bookful of description F A it a whale of a different just a fe<w cents make." Licget r & Myf.rs Tobacco Co. A MOSCOW DIARY A graphic human-interest story of the life of the people in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth, $1.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. CHARLES H. KERR & CO. 347 East Ohio Street. Chicatro accept / .&* ;Mon Depre»3a:. non Habit Forminy In Convenient Aluminum Boxer At every drug stor- 'j Tablett ISa in TuMrti 40v for HEADACHE GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New YorV Want someone for a position? Want a position? The responsive employer and the intellige nt applicant for employment read Tht Nation. Write for rates. Dept. W. The 'Hation. CORKING DETECTIVE MYSTERIES THE WRONG LETTER By W. S. Masterman G. K. Chesterton, who is seldom able to finish a detective- story, praises this one with enthusiasm. THE SILVER FOREST By Ben Ames Williams As cooling on a hot day as an iced drink— and it lasts longer — is this story of Maine woods in winter. THE RED HOUSE MYSTERY ByA. A. Milne The author of "When We Were Very Young" wrote this for his father, who likes detective stories and hecause he thought of quite a new way to commit a murder. Anybody would be hard to please if he did not like these. Each $2.00 at any bookstore, or from E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY, 681 5th Ave.. N. Y. When vtritinp to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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138 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3188 tions send an impartial commission to study the situation. The request was disregarded. In the meantime M. de Jouvenel was not idle. First, he authorized the election (except in Damascus, which is in the Jebel Druse territory) of provincial legislative bodies. Each legislature was empowered to decide its own political relations with its neighbors. Thus any state could declare independence of the others. This is easily arranged by a slight interference with the elections, and it naturally puts an end to the national aspirations of a centralized govern- ment. But the measure was unsuccessful. M. de Jouvenel next made an agreement with Turkey, relinquishing the Syrian district of Alexandretta as a buffer zone on the north. His predecessor, General Gouraud, had already surrendered Cilicia to Turkey without consulting the League. The effect of these arrangements is to isolate Syria. Following the agreement with Turkey, by which the northern boundaries were protected against possible interference, M. de Jouvenel turned his attention to the British in Palestine, and to King Ibn Saud of the Nejd and Hejaz. It is not yet known what terms he arrived at with Great Britain. The negotiations with Ibn Saud were unsuccessful. Finally, M. de Jouvenel resorted to public sentiment to smash the Nationalists. He appointed Ahmed Nami Bey, a Circassian, as "President of Syria," with a Ministry com- posed partly of recognized personalities and partly of rene- gades. The program of the Ministry, though vague, was drawn up for its effect on public psychology, and on his ar- rival in Damascus de Jouvenel was actually greeted by a small crowd demonstrating its delight over this apparent concession to national aspirations. It did not take long for the truth to become known. Three members of the Ministry were sent to exile because of their refusal to accept the dictation of the French authorities. The Ministry was then dissolved on the ground of "lack of harmony." It is clear that M. de Jouvenel did not go to Syria with the intention either of ending the war or of consider- ing the Syrian demands. Rather did he intend, with the us.' of both political and military skill, to smash Syrian na- tionalism. Fighting to the bitter end does not solve prob- lems. As a result of the French mandate over Syria a great part of the land is reduced to ashes, it is time for France to concede the justice of the Syrian claim for freedom. The Propaganda War in China IN a recent letter addressed to the Chinese Acting Foreign Minister, the Soviet Ambassador to China, Mr. L. M. Karakhan, denied a report that Soviet troops were being dispatched to Kalgan. I am in receipt of your letter of June 11th, in which you draw my attention to the report in the newspapers to the effect that 8,000 troops of the Soviet Union have been dispatched to Kalgan apparently to assist the Kuominchun. I wish most emphatically to deny this report; it is false and slanderous. There are no Soviet roops on the territory of China— not 8,000, not 1,000, nor even five. The newspaper report to which you refer is a pure invention circulated, first, for the purpose of rousing hostility against the U.S.S.R., and, secondly, to provide the imperialists with a pretext to increase their forces in China. Recently, the foreign press in China and that section of the Chinese press, happily a small one, which champions the inter- ests of the foreigners rather than the interests of China, have been engaged in the extensive fabrication of lying information concerning the U.S.S.R. It would be a hopeless task to attempt to refute all the ridiculous inventions that are circulated through these channels; as, for example, that we have dispatched troops to Kalgan, that we have concluded an alliance with Feng Yu- hsiang, that we have provided the latter with millions of money, that we have bribed students, etc. . . . It is now clear to all the world that the campaign of lies directed against the U.S.S.R. — but now subsiding — was con- ducted by the imperialists as a means of saving their position in China. The method appeared to be a very simple one: all that seemed necessary was to show that the U.S.S.R. was con- ducting an imperialist policy. This would lead to the opinion that the U.S.S.R. and the other imperialists were all birds of the same feather. Consequently, it would logically follow that no other policy could be adopted toward China than an im- perialist policy; that these were the natural relations between China and the rest of the world. This kind of logic is easily refuted, however, by comparing the Sino-Soviet Treaty with China's treaties with all the other countries. The lies and slanders let loose by the section of the press hostile to the U.S.S.R. are but transient; the treaty and policy of the U.S.S.R. are permanent, unchangeable things; con- sequently, the ruse of the imperialists must fail. With regard to the fear you express that, if it is true that 8,000 Soviet troops are proceeding to Kalgan, it will induce other Powers to dispatch troops to China, permit me to assure you that there are no Soviet troops, either at Kalgan or at Urga, or anywhere on Chinese territory; and permit me to assure you also that we will never provide anyone with a pretext for giving justification to your fears. Peking, June 17 l. M. Karakhan SUMMER ^£K& JEWISH COURSES Llipflf) SOCIAL IN ^KB? WORK The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers summer institutes for Social Workers in addi- tion to its regular course of fifteen months' graduate study in preparation for Jewish social work. The following courses will be given during the second term of the Summer Session which will begin August 16, 1926: Social and Religious Institutions of the Jews..M. M. Kaplan Modern Jewish History I. B. Berkson The Field of Jewish Social Service in the U. S...M. J. Karpf Adiminstration of Jewish Family Case Work Agencies M. J. Karpf Administration of Jewish Federations M. B. Hexter Post War Problems of the Jews I. B. Berkson The Fall Quarter Will Begin October 5, 1926 For a description of the Course of Study write for the General Announcement The Training School for Jewish Social Work (Initiated by the National Conference of Jewish Social Service) 210 West 91st Street, New York City When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation POI N D E D 18 8 Vol. CXXI1I NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, A I GUST is. 1926 No. 3189 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS ISO EDITOR! MS : The " 0 nality. . Lese Majeste Ho\v Evolution in Iyppral Education C MiTiK'N Bj '• in Loon .111 THE MEXIC VN CHI S ON STRIKE 1 in GARVEY: A MARS i By E. Franklin Frazier.. II HA \NH SHADOW. By Donald Davidson . 14S V.RTHUR GLEASON By Helen Hay* 110 IN TH WAY. By the Drifter 150 CORRESPONDENCE 1R1 BOOKS: Retreat. By Laurence Jordan. The Getting of T«l.-:i Soldier pnd Peasant. By Dor Geo By Clara M An Examination. By Woodbi A Part of tho History of Russia. By .1. D. Clarkson Rut the Answer? By Mice Beal Parsons Books in Brief INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Women's Peace Conprross at Dul OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN CoNTnnn'TrNO Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN II. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID ROEHM. ADVERTISING MANAGER SUBSCRIPTION Ratfs: Five dollars per annum postpaid in tho United Slates and Mexico: to Canada, $5.50: and to foreign countries of the Postal Union. ?0.00. THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation. New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Ai Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross. 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1. England. GERTRUDE HAS WON HER ROADSTER. Incident- ally she has, of course, performed an amazing feat and beaten all records set by men for swimming the Chan- nel; she has demonstrated the virtue of a feminine genera- tion brought up without corsets, high heels, or long skirts; she has brought a coveted record home to America and the shores of the Shrewsbury River; she has proved a credit to her father and to "Mum" who hardened Gertrude's muscles and built her endurance on sweeping and floor scrubbing. She has, moreover, brought smiles of guileless satisfaction to the lips of the retail meat dealers of New York who issued the following resolution on Gertrude's! success : The public will perhaps pardon the retail meat dea if they rise to remark that Miss Ederle's triumph attributed in some measure to the daughter of a butcher; that meats ha\ been as article of food in her diet; that a thick, juicy favorite dish; and that several times during her swim renewed her strength with beef extract. But chiefly, Gertrude has won her roadster. The white shores of England may have seemed dismally remote to the girl as she fought the shifting tide; the honor of her sex may have looked a little abstract when her left leg grew cramped and "wouldn't kick properly"; but Gertrude kept her eyes on the roadster dangled right in front of them by her father. As a New York Times reporter described it: Pop continually roared over the side of the boat: "Trudie, don't forget you won't have that roadster unless you get over." tini rude always responded: "Pop, I will have that roadster." Which proves that Gertrude, although perhaps the greatest long-distance swimmer of all time, is primarily an amus- ing and normal American kid. OTHER SWIMMERS, with the heart rather taken out of their performance, are almost daily setting out across the Channel. The chances are of course that none of them will get across. As we write, two men have already given up after hours of heart-breaking struggle in the icy currents. Experts admit that small hope exists of better- ing Gertrude Ederle's record; only an amazing combina- tion of speed and luck could do it. The cash value of all future efforts must be noticeably depressed. Many of the swimmers, however, are under contract to make the at- tempt, and if they fail to break Gertrude's record of speed they may at least produce new marvels of distance and endurance. Another American woman, Clara Barrett, three days before Gertrude's triumphant crossing, failed by two miles to make the English shore, covering forty miles of water and sticking to it for twenty-one hours — some ten miles and seven hours more than Gertrude. If a thick fog had not blanketed and bewildered her for twelve hours she could undoubtedly have made her goal; her mileage and endurance were sufficient under any decent conditions. Clara Barrett deserves more honor for her failure than she is likely ever to receive. CLEMENCEAU'S LETTER to President Coolidge, urg- ing a more generous attitude by the United States toward the French debt, sounds like an echo of war rhetoric — not the Tiger's own war rhetoric, to be sure, but, say, some of the idealistic utterances of Mr. Wilson for which the French Premier at that time had such complete scorn. Likewise it recalls Clemenceau's younger years, when he too was a burning idealist, rather than his cynical hardness at Versailles, where the foundation for French as well as German post-war troubles was securely laid. Can Clemen- ceau blame us Americans if we have dropped the high idealism with which we entered the World War and bor- rowed the cynical indifference toward world welfare which we learned in bitterness from him? There is wisdom as well as a plea for generosity in Clemenceau's letter, yet we fear it will not make even a ripple on American public opinion. If Mr. Coolidge were another sort of man it might move him. But if Mr. Coolidge were another sort of man he would not have accepted our war-debt policy. As it is, he finds it easiest and most natural to say that the matter has passed out of his hands and, anyway, he will deal only with the accredited diplomatic representatives. Clemenccau would do more for his country if instead of addressing passionate words to the wooden Mr. Coolidge he urged Frenchmen not to accept the debt agreement and to seek financial salvation elsewhere than in Wall Street.

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140 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3189 JUST AS A PLEA for international generosity and vision sounds odd as coming from Clemenceau, so it seems strange to find Raymond Poincare working to re- store the finances for whose disastrous condition he more than any other man is responsible. It was Poincare's jin- lism and hate that led to France's policy of ruining Ger- many industrially after the war and plunging into a sea of extravagant imperialism. When the Dawes Commis- sion finally made it plain even to Frenchmen that France had killed the goose that laid the golden egg and could not possibly pay the internal debt — much less any foreign obli- ns — out of German reparations, the decline in the value of the franc became catastrophic. Soon after the resignation of Premier Briand in July it went below two cents in our currency. The very desperateness of the situa- tion has aided Poincare, ihe Chamber of Deputies having given him a support and cooperation which it had rei to his pn irs. What the result of his financial pro- gram will be remains it has had a favorable psychological effect upon the franc, the stabilization of which is not impi t about two cents. As a circular of the National City Bank points out, France's pre-war debt was about 33, 000, 000,000 francs. The present internal debt of some 290,000,000,000 francs is nine times that sum. But with the franc at an eighth of its pre-war value the ratio is almost the same. France has repudiated 90 per cent of its debt through inflation of the currency. SPEAKING OF EUROPE'S WAR DEBT t America, some trenchant observations have been made by Vis- count Rothermere, brother of Lord Northcliffe and propri- if the Daily Mail and other former Harmsworth publi- cations. Lord Rothermere repudiates some rather strong criticism of America by the editor of his own Daily Mail and blames England as much as the United States for what he rightly considers a mistaken policy. The Nation lias re- dly pointed out that our funding arrangements with Bel; ium, Italy, France, and other European nations call for repayment of only a fraction of the debts, evi carried out, and are not in fact likely to continue more than a few years. Lord Rothermere well says that all the debts should have been considered as a whole, and he blames Premier Baldwin for binding England to hard terms instead of standing out for a general settlement. A it is, Lord Rothermere thinks America and England will be the first nations to cry "Hold, enough!" This result he foresees because the low-currency countries of Euro]) erecting tariff barriers which are going to ruin the foreign trade of high-currency countries like the United States and Great Britain. The economic health of America, like of England, he thinks, depends upon overseas markets with great powers of absorption. TORN TO SHREDS politically, with ten thousand miles of boundary lines, Europe is pulling herself together economically. Long negotiations have resulted in a work- ing agreement among the French, German, Belgian, and Luxemburg steel interests. The Polish, Czecho-Slovak, and Austrian steel groups are on the verge of joining their western neighbors. Thus a huge international steel trust has come into being on the European continent. The trust will fix prices, allot quotas of production, and distribute markets; its executive committee will be the international dictator of steel. Thus industry comes to its senses, and renounces the costly pre-war methods of dumping, price- slashing, and cutthroat competition with their waste and friction. Of course, the sacred doctrine of free competition again becomes utter moonshine, but under high-power pro- duction and distribution it was doomed. So powerful a combination virtually eliminates the small manufacturer, and it may be an international menace to labor, yet on the existence of such combinations depends European peace in the days when economics override politics. Such inevitable international industrial despotisms are a more serious problem than Europe's sprouting political dictatorships. HUNGARY'S BLIND GODDESS is a versatile drama- tist. Having concluded the farce of the franc-forgers, she donned the tragic mask and brought Matthias Rakosi and fifty-four other political prisoners to trial. Rakosi was a People's Commissar in the Soviet government of Bela Kun. Sentenced to death after the overthrow of Bela Kun, Rakosi nevertheless returned to Hungary to reestablish the Communist Party. He and his fellow-Communists were arrested under the Emergency Act of 1921, which in effect makes an avowal of communistic belief illegal for a Hun- garian citizen. Among the prisoners was a group of left- wing Socialists who had been members of the Social Demo- cratic Party until its leaders gave their support to the reactionary Bethlen. The left wing, led by Stefan Vagi, then broke away and formed the Socialist Labor Party, in the kind of split which takes its place, in parliaments all over Europe, between the Socialists and the Communists. The Hungarian Government, however, has its own method of dealing with the opposition. All but twenty of the prison- ers were condemned to sentences of from ten months to eight-and-a-half years of hard labor, Rakosi receiving the maximum penalty and Weinberger, another Communist leader, eight. THE SENTENCES were read to an accompaniment of cheers for communism led by Rakosi. And well might these men cheer. For though they face years in the prisons of Hungary, where torture and starvation are accepted facts, their trial has probably done more to advance their cause than could any effort of theirs had they remained free. In Hungary today there are no rights of free speech, press, or assembly. But in the trial party programs were relevant matter. "With a little cleverness in answering the judge's questions," as the Manchester Guardian correspond- ent puts it, the prisoners turned the court into a platform from which they denounced the government and appealed to the workers of the country. The press carried full re- ports of the trial, though in constant danger of suppression; and the Hungarian proletariat, which has been kept on a diet of thin Socialistic gruel — only the thinnest could trickle through the government censorship — has tasted a tonic of beef, iron, and wine. The "dead men on leave," as Wein- berger called himself and his companions, must be grateful to the government which in spite of itself gave their cause a hearing. AUGUST 3'S BATCH of primaries ran off without sur- prises. Wets, supported by the regular party organ- izations, won both party primaries in Missouri; Drys came in from the Montana countrysides with large enough pluralities to overcome the Wet majorities in the cities.

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Aug. 18, 1926] The Nation 141 The Klan candidate won the gubernatorial primary in Okla- homa, but Kansas gave decisive pluralities to the three Supreme Court judges who had ordered the hooded order out of that State. Curtis in Kansas and Harreld in Okla- homa easily won their Senatorial renominations. No wild flames of revolt are leaping through the Corn Belt, though the Coolidge myth is fading and the regular Republicans have sagely made peace with Brookhart. Immediate politi- cal interest centers about the skirmish of the McAdoo and Al Smith forces, looking forward to 1928. Every Wet victory in either party is hailed by the Smith fore proof of his potential strength; but the effort of . In. Ige Talley and some of the Catholic societies to involve the United States in Mexico's struggle with the Catholic Church increases fear that a Catholic in the Presidency might be dangerously subject to outside influen THE SUPREME COUNCIL of the Knights of Colum- bus calls upon President Coolidge to "put an end to this ignominious contempt that has been shown by President Calles for American appeals," and assesses its membership one million dollars for a "campaign of education" about conditions in Mexico. If by "education" the Knights mean the kind of emotional phrase-slinging about "Russification" which makes up a large part of their appeal we hope the members will go on strike. We would urge Roman ( lies in this country earnestly to consider the possible effects of their campaign. When a Methodist bishop wins p^lause at a "Citizenship Conference" for declaring that n. "can kiss the Papal ring and even get within gunshot ot the White House" sectarian self-consciousness is running high enough. Any attempt to use the United states Gov- ernment to fight the battles of the Catholic church in Mexico will only accentuate religious lines and play into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. AMERICAN METHODIST MISSIONARIES in Japan have adopted resolutions urging that our naturaliza- tion laws be amended to permit all Asiatic peoples to become American citizens. Politicians are likely to give scant heed to their advice, but time will prove them right. America with her dollars dominates the world today, but a time will come when we shall meet and resent discriminations against us in Asia which will be explained as repetitions of measures previously adopted by us. It is natural that missionaries should feel the absurdity of their position, going from a land which practices every form of racial dis- crimination to preach brotherhood and good-will to the people against whom we discriminate. Common sense might indicate a simple way to retain a measure of the friendly sentiment which we are losing in the East. Our immigration laws already hold Asiatic immigration to a bare minimum. Why add insult to injury by refusing naturalization to the infinitesimal number of Asiatics who cross that barrier and still want to stay? MRS. HALL, wealthy widow of the New Brunswick, N. J., rector whose unsolved murder mystery solves the problem of hot-weather copy for the newspapers, was held in $15,000 bail — $7,500 on each of two indictments for murder. When Norman Thomas was arrested merely for trying to speak to the Passaic strikers he was held in $10,000 bail — and has not been indicted yet. That's "Jersey justice" — what the Russians call "class justice." The Matter of Originality VERY few criMcs of literature know what they are talking about when they praise an author for his originality or blame him for his lack of it. Perhaps no one could define this most precious of qualities; certainly no one has, though many of us believe we are able to recognize it as soon as we meet it. We can tell, we say, when an artist is standing on his own legs and seeing with his own eyes. But can we? What does it mean to say that one whose function is to reveal the way in which the world walks and talks employs only his own feet and mouth in order to accomplish this end? It once was supposed that his business was to copy nature — in which case, pre- sumably, the more he kept himself out of the picture the better for his art. Those who talk about originality might accept the doctrine of nature, saying that of course the artist reproduces something for our recognition and our pleasure. They rarely are willing to admit, however, that the good artist follows in the path of his predecessors. He may copy nature; he may never copy art. William Blake showed himself better acquainted with the problem when he wrote on the margin of Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Discourses" "The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does copy a great deal." If anything is the whole truth, this is probably it. There :<= no case on record of a first-rate novelist, playwright, or contamination with those before him who had done wen the thing he attempted to do. The Greek tragic and lyric poets are famous examples of workers in a medium which they valued all the more because many had used it. Among modern writers the best, it is almost safe to say, have been the best educated in the traditions of their craft. Students in college writing classes are proverbially advised to study life, not books. But the great writers have been great readers too. Shakespeare was not, as the romantic lover of his plays usually insists, inexperienced in books; rather he devoured them, and did not hesitate to pilfer whole passages from Ovid, Plutarch, and Holinshed. Field- ing was one of the best-read men of his day. Wordsworth, who made so much of the inspiration of mountains, went as often to travel books and to the older poets for the matter and even the manner of his lines. Dickens, an "original" if any novelist ever was, grew up on a diet of Smollett and Sterne. Walt Whitman turned his back on European poetry, but he had read it first; and he did not begin to write his "original" things until he had read Emerson. Before long, no doubt, we shall have dissertations on the sources of so wild a wanderer as James Joyce. What Blake knew, and what most of us do not, is that the artist is dealing both with a world to be apprehended and with a medium through which to apprehend it. The second thing is almost as old as the first, and the artist will respect it as something which existed before he came into being. It is an accumulation from the presence of count- less workmen in the shop through countless ages, and if he is a proper man himself he will not mind rubbing his naked elbows against those of other proper men. We expect a cabinet-maker or an architect to take up his task where oth3rs left off. We are superstitious about the writer. Of him we ask the impossible — something brand new under the sun of nature and art.

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142 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3189 Lese Majeste FOR several years The Nation has been calling the atten- tion of its readers to the increasing use by the courts of punishment for contempt and the danger involved. We are glad, therefore, that the persecution of George R. Dale, editor of the Muncie (Indiana) Post-Democrat, seems to be rousing a considerable number of newspapers to concern themselves with a tyranny which every year is growing more audacious. Mr. Dale, whose story we touehed on briefly in our issue of July 28 (page G8) , had been fighting political cor- ruption and the Ku Klux Klan in his weekly, and was finally arrested and indicted on some probably trumped-up charges. He declared in his newspaper that the prosecution was a frame-up. and was thereupon sentenced to three months in jail and a fine of $500, on the ground that he was guilty of contempt of court. When he submitted an answer to the court, in which he offered to prove the truth of his charges, he was fined another $500 and given three months more in jail. The Supreme Court of Indiana reversed the second sentence, but let the first one stand, making this astounding reply to Mr. Dale's plea of truth in justification for what he had written : Appellant says in his answer that the statements made alleged contemptuous article are true. ... It is not a justification for contempt . . . even though it be shown that 1 ublished were true, if it in an;, wa; dered the orderly process of the court and brought it into no excuse for one charged with criminal contempt I upon an article published in a news1 the article in all respects was true. . . . The truth of an article is not a matter of defense, neither is it a defense to 'hat there was no intent to commit contempt. may or may not be law, but we make no qualifica- in calling it outrageous nonsense, and a contemplation of its possibilities has jarred some of our most compl; newspapers. Mr. Dale has obtained an appeal to the I me Court on constitutional grounds, and York World is trying to raise by subscription the $5,000 which it is estimated will be necessary to present the The Editor and Pubi king for contribu- tions and gives first place \\\ July 31 to a dis- the evil of • lure and sug- gestions of remedies from various quarters. The article in the Editor and Publisher recalls that the abuse of punish- ment for contempt has been on the increase since an i tunate decision rendered by the United States Sup Court in 1918 in respect to N. D. Cochran of the T (Ohio) Neirs-Bcc. Up to then it had been the rule in the federal courts, accepted also in the tribunals of most of the States, that the power to punish for contempt was limited to "misbehavior of any person in their [the ju< pres- ence, or so near thereto as to obstruct the ends of jus In the arbitrary war atmosphere of 1918 the Supreme Court stretched the meaning of the phrase "so near thereto as to obstruct" to apply to any utterance anywhere having a "tendency" to obstruct. This opened wide the road to what has come to be known as "constructive contempt," under which tyrannical judges are more and more denying the constitutional right of free criticism to the press whenever it affects judicial decisions or procedure. The Editor and Publisher goes on to say: That this usurpation of power in journalistic contempt cases has become unbearable and that means must be found for relief from its increasing menace is everywhere evident today in newspaper circles. . . . Can courts do no wrong? Newspapermen know that they can do wrong and that their wrongs may be gross and strike at the heart of sacred institutions. . . . Direct contempt, meaning contempt in the presence of the court, was followed by the dictum "indirect contempt," meaning an act just outside the presence of the court, and finally "constructive contempt," which may mean anything that an offended judge desires it to mean. And now, be- hold! the proposition that even in "constructive contempt" cases truth is no defense. Thus has a limitation of freedom of speech come to be asserted by the courts without warrant from the people. The Editor and Publisher proposes a campaign for fed- eral and State laws to enable a person accused of contempt of court to obtain a hearing before a judge of the same rank as the accusing magistrate but in another jurisdiction. This would be an improvement, but to our mind does not go nearly far enough. We believe that the entire contempt-of- court procedure is needless, probably unconstitutional, and chiefly usurped by the courts themselves without legitimate itive warrant. It is a survival of lese majeste, which has no place in a democratic system of government. "Con- structive contempt" is an inexcusable invasion of the right of free speech and should be legislated out of existence. Libel and slander laws afford judges all the protection from criti- cism that they need or deserve. Direct contempt should be legislated against as a criminal offense, with the right of trial by jury if demanded. There is no "majesty of the law" except in so far as its common sense and justice appeal to an effective majority of any community (as witness the much-abused Volstead act), while the pomp and verbiage and claptrap of our courts lead to nothing but ridicule and distrust in the minds of most people. But nobody should delude himself with the idea that mere laws will be sufficient to end this medieval tyranny of the courts. The history of such legislation in this country shows that it has time and again been perverted or over- thrown by petty judges jealous of their absolutism. The only sure method of overthrowing the abuse, so far as the State courts go, at least, is through constitutional amend- ments. Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma have all incorporated provisions in their constitutions looking to that end, but except in the case of the latter State the word- ing is so vague and indeterminate that it has either not been effectively taken advantage of by the legislatures or has been twisted into inconsequence by the courts. In Georgia, for instance, the constitution says: "The power of the courts to punish for contempts shall be limited by legislative acts." But when the legislature passed a law limiting contempt to misconduct committed in court the worthy judges of the State ruled that the constitution gave authority merely to fix the punishment for contempt, not to define or classify it!

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Aug. 18, 1926] Tin* Nation How to Vote MR. SAMUEL [NSULL'S skilful donations to the various campaign funds in Illinois should furnish food for reflection to those who still cling to a pathetic faith in the possibility of reforming from within either of the two great political parties. Mr. Insull, central figure in a bination of electric-power interests which dominate eral hundred communities throughout the Middle West, handed out cash in ten and twenty-thousand-dollar lots to the man who was sure to win the Democratic Senatorial primary, the man who was likely to lose the Republican primary, and — most of all — to the man who would probably win the Republican primary. This last gentleman, Frank L. Smith, was also indorsed by the Illinois State Federation of Labor, followin.tr the Gompers tradition of supporting "labor's friends" within the old parties. Mr. Smith's managers used about $159,000 of Mr. In- sult's yellow-back bills; do Illinois labor leaders think that he and his managers will be as grateful to them for their sympathy as to Mr. Insull for his cash? Do labor leaders think that when a Muscle Shoals or Boulder Dam problem comes before Congress their view of power development for public service will have as much weight as the cogent arguments of Mr. Insull and his friends for private control of the nation's water-power? The facts seem to us to reinforce the logic behind the La Follette campaign of 1924. It takes time to build a new political party, solidly grounded in the producing classes of the country, and it is worth it. Mr. William Hard, in a recent issue of The Nation, poked his lean finger into some of the weak points in Sena- tor Norris's suggestion that liberals in Pennsylvania, whether Democrats or Republicans, should this year show their disgust with the Pepper-Mellon-Vare vote-buying methods by casting their ballots for William B. Wilson, the Democratic nominee for United States Senator from that State. Mr. Hard, although he dislikes millionaire vote- buying, is an earnest Wet and a disillusioned hater of Wil- sonism in general and of the League of Nations in par- ticular; and he inquires whether, had he been born in Penn- sylvania, he ought not to vote for the Wet and anti-League Mr. Vare, rather than for Mr. Wilson, who is personally honest but stands on the wrong principles. The lesson of Pennsylvania seems to us the same as the lesson of Illinois: there is scant hope in either of the old parties. Farmer-Labor parties are, to be sure, not infallible. England's labor leaders did not show omniscience in office. Nonpartisan League Senators in this country have not always showed the courage we might hope to find in them. Labor and farm organizations are not exempt from the corruptions which befall other groups. Especially in Illi- nois is the record of American labor leaders dispiriting. But we persist in believing that in these organizations of the men and women who do the harsh productive labor of the country lies the most effective safeguard of political democracy. More and more the life of the country is falling into the hands of those who have thousands of dollars in bills in their safes ready to hand out to those who can help them make more. There is nothing in the organization of the old parties able to resist such temptations. In the eco- nomic organizations of the farm and city workers there is at least a method of checking the worst abuses. For the present the official organizations of labor may be disillu- sioned by the fad thai they did not win to victory in a single year; but in the end the old system of trustin I men" in the old parties is likely to bring more serious and more lasting disappointments. Evolution in Legal Education ONLY in recent years have a few jurists realized that the law is an intimate part of the social sciences and that little progress could he expected from teaching the law as a set of rules, immutable or otherwise. Nor is the func- tion of the law school exhausted by an analysis and syste- matization of court decisions. The law grows out of social conditions; to bo understood it must be studied as a pro in constant evolution. Today the law-school journals are for the first time subjecting the courts, which in this coun- try are raised to a position of extraordinary importance as builders of the law, to regular scientific criticism. With the improvement in the technique of analysis has come a demand for greater service from the law schools correlating law as a social process with the economic and social phenomena out of which it grows. That requires closer coordination with psychology, economics, and political science, and with the practical agencies for the administra- tion of justice and of government. Hence the demand for research into the practical operation of the rules declared by the legislatures, the courts, and administrative commis- sions, to determine whether they serve the purpose intended, and what they actually accomplish in the community. In the field of criminal law a bare beginning has been made in this country; and, for the most part, the experiences of foreign countries have been a closed book to the American student of law. In former days judges and practicing lawyers attempted to write and instruct, in addition to their active professional duties. That day has passed. Life is now so complicated and specialized that legal research and instruc- tion in the law have become the function of a separate craft — the law-school professors. In the process of teach- ing these have become aware of the sterility of much of what had been taught, of the inadequacy of the available data as to the origin, purpose, and effect of the voluminous work of the legislatures and the courts. On the legislative side progress has slowly been made in the improvement of drafting; on the judicial and administrative side little has been done. The stronger law schools are working toward more effective legal education and toward organized research in the laboratory of practical life. Columbia announces semi- nars in legal economics and the intensive study of criminal law in operation ; Harvard announces a program of research in legislation, criminology, and legal history; Yale announces the introduction of honor courses for selected high-grade students and research courses and laboratory work; Johns Hopkins is to enter on a program of research in jurispru- dence. The American Law Institute, largely aided by law- school professors, is undertaking an extensive task of sim- plifying some of the more confused and complex depart- ments of the law, such as contracts, agency, torts, conflict of laws, and corporations. It is not too much to expect that in a decade the whole course of legal education may be changed and that the effect of this more realistic jurispru- dence will begin to appear in the decisions of the courts.

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144 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3189 "I see that West Point and Annapolis are graduating a large number of young men this year." "Of course they are. We need officers to sit on boards of inquiry." I^IUj; >g^

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Aug. 18, 1926] The Nation 145 The Mexican Church Goes on Strike By CARLETON BEALS Mexico City, July 29 THE faithful in Mexico are crowding a lifetime of emotions into the span of a week. Fanaticism has reached the acme of its brutality and glory. On August 1 the priests go on strike against the laws of the land in accordance with the pastoral letter of July 24 signed by Archbishop Mora and the thirty-four bishops and approved by the Pope. The poor and the superstitious are paying the piper; great mobs of them are clawing their way through the holy portals. Never since the days of the Juarez Reformation have collection-boxes clinked so merrily; never have so many rosaries, scapulars, and candles been sold; never in such short space of time have so many masses been said, so many processionals taken place, so many sacred relics been dusted and paraded. Baptisms, confirmations, confessions, weddings follow one another in kaleidoscopic haste. Babes are torn from the womb to the baptismal font, recklessly exposed to the suffocating, germ- laden air of the crowded interiors; long lines wait inter- minable hours to buy their confirmation tickets; quarreling sweethearts suddenly bury their troubles and battle through the aisles among the tatterdemalion throngs to be married; well-dressed women walk barefoot, tdpalos tight about their tear-stained cheeks, through the early morning streets to mass; penitents kneel, arms outstretched, before the chapel altars; the confessional booths are besieged by woe-stricken throngs of sinners; weary priests pass endlessly up and down the abject, close-packed rows with the pyx, giving sacrament: the acolyte holds up the red shield under lifted chins; the Host is dropped on waiting tongues. The charged center of this furore is the great cathe- dral, the largest on this Continent, which rises on the main plaza of the Mexican capital — the Zocalo. Here the mass at the gates, buffeted by the soldiery, struggles into the atrium in the shadow of the lofty gray and white facade and jams on through the high Portal of Pardon into the packed nave. The Indians — the poor and the disinherited — are the ones fighting for this last-minute salvation. The middle and upper classes have not been forced to this extremity. Their children have been baptized, christened, confirmed, married at leisure. But the masses streaming into the church have had to postpone these liturgical acts from week to week, hoping against hope that next month or the month after a few more pennies could be laid aside for the confirmation veil, the necessary candles, the fees. But now in this last-minute scramble they have cheated their stomachs and mortgaged their health to beg, borrow, or steal the sums required for every holy act, every ad- ministration of holy water, every declaration of bans. This tearful precipitancy has given the cathedral an aspect festive and catastrophic. Red Cross emergency tents and ambulances stand at the gates. Armed soldiers batter back the throngs. Yet in and out whirl the venders of candies, kewpie-dolls, rattles, newspapers, rosaries, and pet dogs — all calling raucously. Ice-cream and lemonade venders dart from person to person. Women faint from the heat; mothers lose their babies; peregrinators picnic in the less- crowded corners of the atrium; they have hung scrapes tent-fashion from the iron fence-spikes to ward off the sun and have spread out their meager lunches of tortillas, beans, and frothing pulque. This morning 1 struggled against the human ebb and How into a side portal beyond the Sagrario. The interior was a blast in my face; stench of unwashed bodies, sharp sting of low-hanging clouds of incense. The far singing of the choir was almost drowned out by the wails of the assemblage and the bawl of ten thousand babies. People hung like monkeys from every column and grill; they eddied about altar, choir, and chapel. Colors clashed: blue and brown rebozos, lace mantillas, embroidered blouses, scarlet sashes. Inch by inch, almost suffocated, I wormed my way toward the barandalcs of the Crujia. Tier after tier of men and women pressed up coughing, crying, shouting, each carrying a baby to be baptized. Down the long run- way paced the soldiers of the state; among them neophytes dashing to and fro for holy water, ever more holy water, and Red Cross aides with ice, cotton, and bandages. Hour after hour the baptismal process continued. First came a soldier, objective and fierce, then a Red Cross aide, an acolyte with a candle, a priest in white and gold robes — swipe of his thumb from holy water to the forehead of each squalling infant, a swab of cotton by another acolyte — finally, the collectors, bringing up the rear, reaching out hands for the fifty-centavo pieces. Hour after hour. Waiting row gave way to waiting row, and still from the back of the cathedral came the press of babies, ever more babies. One woman has but twenty centavos. The coin is snatched by the collector with a snarl, "Baptism's no good." On to the next and the next; more snarls for those who do not have their change ready. Here a peso is offered, the fifty centavos change is tossed back into the throng. The barefoot loser sprawls on his hands and knees, hugging his child in one arm, sticking his hand under the feet of the trampling multitude. A baby falls into the runway. A Red Cross attendant snatches it up. The mother is swept from sight. Crowded back against a pillar, she bawls for her lost infant, holding her arms out helplessly toward the Virgin. Overhead the newspaper kodaks click, the flash- lights boom, and white smoke eddies up into the fumes of incense. One foot on a bench, the other pressed against the fluting of a column, I look down on the multitude. The whole cathedral seems to sway in the wavering light of thousands of candles, in the quiver of incense from the clanking censers. I have seen religious happenings at Lourdes; I witnessed the epochal procession of the new Virgin of Loreto from the patriarchal church of the Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome; I have followed a great procession up the slashed crooked streets of Toledo in Spain, and these occasions had an aspect of almost sublime solemnity or festivity. But this vast pawing scramble of the excited disinherited of Mexico, this flaunting of idolatry, supersti- tion, rags, dirt, is a profanation of the human spirit. Such is the weapon of the Mexican-Spanish-Aztec church in its battle with the Mexican state.

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146 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3189 ii It is easy to be misled by all this fanatic unleashed emotion, easy to overestimate its political significance. In this city of nearly a million inhabitants, in the center of a region harboring a million more, the number of persons caught up on the present wave of hysteria is not propor- tionately large. Nor does the fact that a mother fights to have her baby baptized necessarily carry with it any threat ilitical and military control. In a country where demo- cratic government has only begun to emerge and the army il the basic instrument of power, a popular demonstra- tion which would cause an American politician apoplexy means little in terms of immediate political change. Furthermore, it is the church that is on the defensive, though still with sufficient power, at an opportune moment, to plunge the country into chaos. The greatest spiritual .night of the Mexican Catholic church was reached during the earlier period of colonial control when such tireless as Bartolome de las Casas, Gante, Maga Catala, Motolinia worked fervently and honestly to protect and stimulate the indigenous peoples. The greatest mate- rial might of the church was achieved toward the close of the colonial period. The Declaration of Independence (Chilpancingo, November 6, 1813) stated: "Congress solem presence of Cod. our Lord . . . that : s or recognize any other religion than the ( and that it shall not permit or tolerate public practice of any other," sentiments renewed in the Treaty of Cordoba which established the new Govern- ment. Yet they precipitated the long struggle that culmi- nated in the Reformation movement of Benito Juarez in and the definitive separation of church and state. church, since independence days, has been on the de- ■ short periods. Today, more so than ever. of cruti iligious edifices the length and breadth of Mexico remind one that the church is not at the f its power. Indian ceremonies in towns where hurches are cracked sed-riven; and the activities of autonomous indigenous congregations in more . far removed from conventional ecclesiastical control, indicate that the church in Mexico is being crushed between the Indian renascence on the one hand and the machine-age skepticism on the other. Many of I gainst which the church objects in Mexico have been accepted by the Catholics of countries: (1) Freedom of worship for other (2) S( n of church and uly of the state in civil, political, and material affairs; (4) limitation of the worldly goods which may belong to or be inherited by the church. The Queretaro constitution of 1917 rein- fore <1 these principles and established other restrictions growing out of the monopoly character of the Catholic Spanish-Aztec church in Mexico, such as prohibiting reli- gious primary schools, public religious processions, political activity by the priests, the presence of foreign-born priests, and the limiting of the number of priests and churches. The church has never accepted any civil or religious readjustment with good grace. Even in the colonial days the viceroys and the ecclesiastics were constantly at each other's throats, battling for jurisdiction and economic con1 trol. The Catholics overthrew President Comonfort and precipitated a bloody six-years' religious war, which cul- minated in the imposition of a foreign emperor, Maximilian, favorable to their cause. In more recent times they opposed the democratic program of Madero, supported the assassin- President Huerta, and rallied behind the De la Huerta movement to plunge Mexico back into an era of chaos. The federal authorities during that trouble caught priests with rifles in their hands, and the Archbishop of Guadalajara toured Jalisco in behalf of the rebels. Recent short-lived cuartelazos in the church centers, Guadalajara and Aguas- calientes, were traced, in part, to ecclesiastical machinations. The church in Mexico has in the past been such a great property-holder as to cause stagnation in the economic life of the country. Even in colonial times the government had to limit mortmain holding and in 1767 confiscated the prop- erties of the Jesuits. Shortly after the war of indepen- dence it was estimated that no less than half the real estate in the country belonged to the clergy and every large hacienda carried a church mortgage. In 185G some twenty million pesos of church property were sold, the money being turned over to the church. Since then the church has had no legal right to own realty and the government has felt itself justified in confiscating all lands improperly held. Ill The present conflict grew out of the church's renewed anti-government activities, fomented by the bitter apostolic letter of the Holy See of February 2, 1026, and the rein- dorsement of a manifesto signed by the Mexican episcopacy in 1917 attacking the religious provisions of the constitu- tion. This reaffirmation coincided with the anniversary of the adoption of the 1857 constitution and was coupled with widespread propaganda in the Catholic; press at a time when the Government was facing international difficulties over the new petroleum and foreign-property laws. Many of the constitutional provisions affecting the church had remained dead letters, others had fallen into desuetude. But now Archbishop Mora y del Rio was cited to appear before the Attorney General for special hearings; church officials violating the law were arrested; foreign-born priests were seized and deported overnight; additional church proper- ties, clandestinely held, were confiscated; many Catholic institutions — primary schools, hospitals and orphanages — not allowed by the constitution, were closed. The Papal Delegate Caruana, who had entered the country under false pretenses, was ordered to leave. The more immediate disturbances were caused by a recent law requiring church officials to register with the municipal authorities. Orders were sent out to disobey this law. The National League of Religious Defense called momic buyers' boycott for the purpose of "paralyzing the economic and social life of the country." A general pastoral letter, sanctioned by the Pope and issued on July 24, attacked the la.w and constitution, threatened the govern- ment officials with excommunication, and called for the cessation of religious services and rites from August 1 on. The church is likely to gain little through stirring up fanaticism and fear; and it lacks weapons for a military uprising. Its stand is obstructionist, negative. It could afford to disregard the Government had it in the past car- ried out a constructive program for the distressed country of which it is a part. But the church has opposed every necessary reform of the past fifteen years. Its priests have alienated the rural population by excommunicating peasants accepting ex-church lands, and by hobnobbing with the large landowners. Yet if the church has to bear the burden of the black stigma of such leaders as Iturbide, Santa Ana,

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Aug. 18, 1926] The Nation 117 Feliz Zuloaga, Maximilian, Huerta, it also haa the more glorious tradition of Las Casas, Vasco dc Quiroga, Hidalgo, and Morelos, who understood the Indian and knew the people and their problems. These men had social programs which would seem advanced even today; and Vasco de Quiroga, with his Cajas de Comunidades, his reforms, his emphasis upon education created early in the history of the Mexican church a tradition of popular liberty which, had it been preserved, would have saved the institution from the tragic misstep of today when it is placed in the sorry position of denying its own members spiritual ministration. And so, here in the Zocalo, where the riveting machines, enlarging the national palace of Cortes, shatter the har- mony of the great tolling bells of this Church of the Asun- cion ile Maria Santisima; here where once rose the old teocalli of the Aztec god of war. Huitzilopochtli, this one- time capital of the native empire here the old conflict between church and state has drawn to a new poisonous dead. August 1 Hut before the cathedral, this first day of August, before its new barred entrance and silent atrium, fifty thousand anti-church paraders are passing. Not with fanaticism but with the enlightenment that characterized the thought of its greater leaders will the Mexican Catholic church reconquer its dignity and power of service. Garvey: A Mass Leader By E. FRANKLIN FRAZIER THE Garvey movement is a crowd movement essentially different from any other social phenomenon among Negroes. For the most part American Negroes have : self-magnification in fraternal orders and the church. But these organizations have failed to give that support to the Negro's ego-consciousness which the white masses find in membership in a political community, or on a smaller scale in Kiwanis clubs and the Ku Klux Klan. In a certain Garvey's followers form the black Klan of America. The reason for Garvey's success in welding the N< into a crowd movement becomes apparent when we compare his methods and aims with those of other leaders. Take, for example, the leadership of Booker Washington. Wash- ington could not be considered a leader of the mas Negroes, for his program commended itself chiefly to white people and those Negroes who prided themselves on their opportunism. There was nothing popularly heroic or in- spiring in his program to captivate the imagination of the average Negro. In fact the Negro was admonished to play an inglorious role. Certain other outstanding efforts among Negroes have failed to attract the masses because they have lacked the characteristics which have distinguished the vey movement. It is only necessary to mention such an organization as the National Urban League and its leader- ship to realize that so reasoned a program of social adjust- ment is lacking in everything that appeals to the crowd. The leadership of Dr. DuBois has been too intellectual to satisfy the mob. Even his glorification of the Negro has been in terms which escape the blac!: masses. The Pan- African Congress which he has promoted, while supporting to some extent the boasted aims of Garvey, has failed to stir any considerable number of American Negroes. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peo- ple, which has fought uncompromisingly for equality for the Negro, has never secured, except locally and occasion- ally, the support of the masses. It has lacked the dramatic element. The status of Negroes in American life makes it easy for a crowd movement to be initiated among them. In America the Negro is repressed and an outcast. Some peo- ple are inclined to feel that this repression is only felt by cultured Negroes. As a matter of fact many of them can find satisfaction in the intellectual and spiritual things of life and do not need the support to their personalities that the average man requires. The average Negro, like other mediocre people, must be fed upon empty and silly fictions in order that life may be bearable. In the South the most insignificant white man is made of supreme worth simply by the fact of his color, not to mention the added support he receives from the Kiwanis or the Klan. Garvey came to America at a time when all groups were asserting themselves. Many American Negroes have belittled his influence on the ground that he is a West Indian. It has been said that Garvey was only able to attract the support of his fellow-countrymen. The truth is that Garvey aroused the Negroes of Georgia as much as those of New York, except where the black preacher dis- couraged anything that threatened his income, or where white domination smothered every earthly hope. More- over, this prejudice against the West Indian Negro loses sight of the contribution of the West Indian to the Ameri- can Negro. The West Indian who has been ruled by a small minority instead of being oppressed by the majority, is more worldly in his outlook. He has been successful in business. He does not need the lodge, with its prom, an imposing funeral, or the church, with its hope of a heavenly abode as an escape from a sense of inferiority. By his example he has given the American Negro an earthly goal. Garvey went even further. He not only promised the despised Negro a paradise on earth, but he made the Negro an important person in his immediate environment. He invented honors and social distinctions and converted every social invention to his use in his effort to make his follow- ers feel important. While everyone was not a "Knight" or "Sir" all his followers were "Fellow-men of the Negro Race." Even more concrete distinctions were open to all. The women were organized into Black Cross Nurses, and the men became uniformed members of the vanguard of the Great African Army. A uniformed member of a Negro lodge paled in significance beside a soldier of the Army of Africa. A Negro might be a porter during the day, taking his orders from white men but he was an officer in the black army when it assembled at night in Liberty Hall. Many a Negro went about his work singing in his heart that he was a member of the great army marching to "heights of achieve- ments." And even in basing his program upon fantastic claims of empire, Garvey always impressed his followers

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148 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3189 that his promise was more realistic than that of those who were constantly arguing for the theoretical rights of the Negro. In the Negro World for October 18, 1924, he warned his followers that Those who try to ridicule the idea that America is a white man's country are going to find themselves sadly dis- appointed one of these days, homeless, shelterless, and un- provided for. Some of us do harp on our constitutional rights, which sounds reasonable in the righteous interpre- tation thereof, but we are forgetting that righteousness is alien to the world and that sin and materialism now tri- umph, and for material glory and honor and selfishness man will slay his brother. And in the knowledge of this, is the Negro still so foolish as to believe that the majority of other races are going to be so unfair and unjust to themselves as to yield to weaker peoples that which they themselves desire? And after all this is essentially what most Negroes believe in spite of the celebrated faith of the Negro in America. A closer examination of the ideals and symbols which Garvey always held up before his followers shows his mas- tery of the technique of creating and holding crowds. The Negro group becomes idealized. Therefore he declares he is as strongly against race-intermixture as a Ku Kluxer. He believes in a "pure black race just as all self-respecting whites believe in a pure white race." According to Garvey, civilization is about to fall and the Negro is called upm "to evolve a national ideal, based upon freedom, human liberty. and true democracy." The "redemption of Africa" Is the regaining of a l"<t paradise. It is always almost at hand. This belief has served the same purpose as do myth of the general strike in the syndicalist movement,. Garvey, who is dealing with people imbued with reli feeling, endows the- redemption of Africa with the mystery of the regeneration of mankind. He said on one occ.i "No one knows when the hour of Africa's redemption cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming one day like a storm. It will be here. When that day comes, all A will stand together." Garvey gave the crowd that followed him victims to vent their hatred upon, just as the evangelist turns the hatred of his followers upon the Devil. Every rabble must find someone to blame for its woes. The Negro who is poor, ignorant, and weak naturally wants to place the blame on anything except his own incapacity. Therefore Garvey was always attributing the misfortunes of the Negro to traitors and enemies. Although the identity of "traitors" and "enemies" was often obscure, as a rub turned out to be Negro intellectuals. The cause for such animosity against this class of Negroes is apparent when we remember that Garvey himself lacks formal education. Garvey who was well acquainted with the tremendous influence of religion in the life of the Negro, proved him- self matchless in assimilating his own program to the religious experience of the Negro. Christmas, with its association of the lowly birth of Jesus, became symbolic of the Negro's birth among the nations of the world. Easter became the symbol of the resurrection of an oppressed and crucified race. Such naive symbolism easily kindled enthu- siasm among his followers. At other times Garvey made his own situation appear similar to that of Jesus. Just as the JewTs incited the Roman authorities against Jesus, other Negro leaders were making the United States authorities persecute him. Most discussions of the Garvey movement have been concerned with the feasibility of his schemes and the legal aspects of the charge which brought him finally to the Atlanta Federal Prison. It is idle to attempt to apply to the schemes that attract crowds the test of reasonableness. Even experience fails to teach a crowd anything, for the crowd satisfies its vanity and longing in the beliefs it holds. Nor is it surprising to find Garvey's followers regarding his imprisonment at present as martyrdom for the cause he represents, although the technical charge on which he was convicted is only indirectly related to his program. But Garvey has not failed to exploit his imprisonment. He knows that the average man is impressed if anyone suffers. Upon his arrest he gave out the following statement: "There has never been a movement where the Leader has not suffered for the Cause, and not received the ingratitude of the people. I, like the rest, am prepared for the conse- quence." As he entered the prison in Atlanta he sent a message to his followers which appeared in his paper, the Negro World, for February 14, 1925. He paints himself as a sufferer for his group and blames his lot on a group of plotters. In commending his wife to the care of his fol- lowers he says: "All I have, I have given to you. I have sacrificed my home and my loving wife for you. I intrust her to your charge, to protect and defend in my absence. She is the bravest little woman I know." Such pathos he knew the mob could not resist, and the final word he sent to his supporters under the caption, "If I Die in Atlanta," with its apocalyptic message, raises him above mortals. He bade them "Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come and bring with me the countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for liberty, freedom, and life." Since his imprisonment Garvey has continued to send his weekly message on the front of his paper to his fol- lowers warning them against their enemies and exhorting them to remain faithful to him in his suffering. It is un- critical to regard Garvey as a common swindler who has sought simply to enrich himself, when the evidence seems to place him among those so-called cranks who refuse to deal realistically with life. He has the distinction of initiating the first real mass movement among American Negroes. Martha and Shadow By DONALD DAVIDSON Martha said, Shadow is little, Shadow is not Able as I when world is gold in the sun. She walked in the dew of the clover, and Martha forgot That the day had only begun. Martha said, Shadow is weak, Shadow will fly Wherever I come in the dew and clover of morning. Shadow was smaller at noon but would not die. Shadow, not Martha, had a long time for growing. Shadow said, Martha is little, Martha is not Able as I in evening, and evening is last. Martha said, Shadow is all. I know thee, 0 Shadow 1 I will come into Shadow and rest.

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Aug. 18, 1926] Tho Nation 149 Glimpses of Arthur Gleason By HELEN HAYES GLEASON II THE larger part of our wardrobes consisted ol suits, all sorts and conditions of bathing suits. assortment grew with his habit of swimming in each new place, as he tramped and traveled about, buying a suit for the time. On a visit to a friend — he used to t< 11 me this chuckling and beaming with the humor of it— he was put into quite a splendid room. His luggage contained two articles, pajamas and a bathing suit. The man-servan courteously unpacked the bag and spread the two garments across the bed as he was wont to do for more formal y My husband was delighted over it. In Maine, where we often went, a bathing suit was the only thing he ever wore, unless walking, and then the under garment. In time a suit became fad for the discard, but it was nearly impossible to get his per- mission to dispose of the old friend. The first camp we visited permitted us to come to meals in dry suits — a line camp, he thought. But on returning, after an in abroad, we found the old haunts had become civilized. Peo- ple "dressed" for outdoor sports, sat about looking unhappy with lack of conveniences, or herded together under l not caring for the hush of evening broken by chirp and rustle of night creatures. We had happy times in Maine. Three weeks of sunshine, and only one gray day [he wrote a friend from there]. For many hours each day we drink in the energy of the sun. Later it will come out as laughter and health and good cheer. Sunlight is the cure of all maladies of body and spirit. It ends introspection and the modern diseases of ingrowing morbid fancies, for the sun's ray travels faster than the poison weeds and burns them up at their secret root. Under the sun man takes his proper place in the natural world as a wholesome little creature, instead of a bundle of fevers and nerves and swollen egoisms. The greatest word of the nineteenth century was Emerson's "Why so hot, little man?" meaning man, the sickly and civilized, taking himself so seriously as lord of life and master of things, when he is really one more among a million, million living things that swim and fly and creep and take their moment of being. One is never hot in the sun. One is hot in a closed room. All social gain of hours and wages will only be good as it frees human beings for the sun and the air, the soil and the water. The social movement can have no other goal than into the outdoors. I have never known man or woman, loving the outdoors, who did not have a something of distinction. Nature is the beginning and end of religion, for all beauty is here, and it is man's chief end to adore the crea- tion. Worship and wonder are one. Man is the spectator and the participant in a carnival. Fortunately for him, his five senses are of narrow range and admit only a thou- sandth part of the color and sounds and motion. If he could hear and see more of the riot, he would go drunk with exuberance; and by nightfall under the moon, he would go mad. That year we shipped our luggage to Boston, starting south at Old Orchard Beach on foot, each carrying extra slicker, and night clothes. We followed literally at the water's edge. That brought us to estuaries which meant detours unless some boatman gave a lift. But there is no time element for tramps, no schedule. It delighted him to wander carelessly, to tarry at every whim. A passing trolley bore the sign "York County Fair"; so to the county fair we went for half a day. Perched on a fence we saw the ball game and the team-dragging contest. He entered into all these simple entertainments with the freshness of a child. We ate country-cooked chicken and home-made cake. A "boarding house for workingmen" was recommended for the night's lodging. It was clean and very reasonable, but not a room was left except a small one on the top floor, in which Madam stored her fruit. It contained a camp cot. Perhaps another could be squeezed in, if we would like to stay. So in we turned to dream among the countless jars of gleaming jellies and vegetables lining the walls. The spot which offered no chance of a swim was really a bit second-class in his mind. "If I had the range of reading," he said, "I should make myself an anthology of swimming." This he wanted to do very much and had been collecting notes toward it for several years. All places found him swimming. The shore-line was inevitably the goal, no matter what the mission. The Belgian Coast, the Lido, Bermuda, a New Jersey canal, New Orleans, California. He swam half way round the world and planned to complete the circle. Every stretch of water-front from Portland, Maine, to Atlantic City had been explored by him; every quiet nook around New York he knew. When the crowds gradually seeped through he retired to a more remote spot. A bare rock jutting up off shore, thirty feet of water round about, was a glorious place to swim the day. His system was to take two suits, always lying about in a dry one, for the winds were keen, though the rock was warm under the sun. ***** I have been turning over quite idly leaves of books frequently in his hands. It was his habit to read with a lead pencil, marking everything that moved him, heavily underlining between the typed lines, if it were special, as well as inclosing the passage in a long curved line at the margin. The old pencil had a way of traveling up and down the page, tapping with the rubber end, as he read. In the preface of Cardinal Newman's "Apologia" is the following paragraph which in large part could be said of him who has marked it: Whose natural impulse it has ever been to speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too little; who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise enough to hold his tongue; who has ever been fair to the doctrines and arguments of his opponents; who has never slurred over facts and reasonings which told against himself; who has never given his name or authority to proofs which he thought unsound, or to testimony which he did not think ai least plausible; who has never shrunk from confessing e fault when he felt that he had committed one; who has ever consulted for others more than for himself;

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150 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3189 who has given up much that he loved and prized and could have retained, but that he loved honesty better than name, and truth better than dear friends. He was devoted to Newman. During one of our many moves the "Apologia" disappeared, remaining a mystery for months. Not a week passed without a turning out of some corner for the "Apologia"; friends had searching inquiries directed at them and innocent babes were suspected until at last the truant book turned up. The volume is old and fingered. The following sentences seem to have part of him: "Living inert mods do not come of com nor are great ideas worked out through the p though it had been the penny post." "I can thinking it teas allowable in extrt me cases for nu to lit never to :■ * * * A GOOD many of those who have discussed Lenglen's action have questioned if it were possible for her to make a satisfactory professional tour in this country. That is the concern not of Lenglen but of her manager, and he probably knows what he is about from his previous ex- perience with "Red" Grange in professional football. What Drifter takes exception to is the assumption running through most comment that professional sport is less reputable than amateur and that Lenglen has lowered her- self by going into it. It is high time that the absurdity of

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Aug. 18, 1926] ion this attitude be generally challenged, especially in a sup- posedly democratic country like the United States. Modern sport, of course, is a creation of the aristocratic class in Great Britain and was originally intended as the exclusive province of "gentlemen." The whole theory of amateurism is essentially snobbish, although it is only fair to saj its most zealous champions in this country have usually not realized it and have been inspired by other motives. The common argument has been that it* sport is to he a pastime it is necessary to make it profitless in order that all the prizes and honors shall not he carried oil' by per- sona who adopt it as a business. But neatly every sport of consequence has now reached a stage of developmenl and specialization where in order to be a star it is nece to make a business of it. A champion cannot have a serious and absorbing vocation outside. He must ha' independent income, he supported by devotees o( the sport, or earn his livelihood by some occupation indirectly de- pendent upon his reputation as a player. There is no more amateurism in the upper realms of amateur sport than in the most definitive professionalism. # * * * # AND if there were it would be nothing to brag about. We do not honor amateur actors or physicians above professional ones. In some fields of sport, indeed, the pro- fessional seems decidedly superior to the amateur. The Drifter respects the maligned "pot hunter" who captures game or fish as a livelihood, though he may believe in re- stricting his actions in the general interest. For the so- called sportsman who kills only for the fun of killing the Drifter has no sympathy at all. And as to professional lawn tennis, the Drifter will sign a contract to engage in it tomorrow for anybody's $100,000. Indeed for that sum he will become a professional almost anything except a drifter. He insists upon his amateur status there for fear that otherwise drifting would become too much like a job — ■ and so a bore. The Drifter Correspondence Who Killed the Nonpartisan League/ To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In your article on The Exploited Farmer in Nation the rash statement is made that "When the of North Dakota a few years ago set afoot a genuine program of self-help under the Nonpartisan League, it was smashed by the business and banking interests of the great cities." From seven years' experience with the Nonpartisan League I would state rather that the league was helped I tion and killed by its friends. To blame the demise in all States except North Dakota on Big Business is to deprive farmers of a valuable lesson in organization. The foremost cause was the reluctance of farmers to pay dues. Most of them want to carry on war without a commissary department of their own financing. Big Business had no power to keep the average farmer from paying his moderate dues or honoring his signature on the post-dated check. As early as 1918 agitation was started in several States for "more democracy" by men who wanted power and were woefully lacking in the ability to organize and agitate as com- pared with the Townley staff. As a matter of fact, there was too much democracy in the league for a fighting farmer organi- zation rather than too little; farmers can't fight successfully unless they trust leaders who have proved themselves. important aff mistake, forced largely by popular clamor, of attempting too much — too many costly daily newspapers ami and too much legislation at one time. The fanners quit f helping their organization to work out o( tins mistake. Next I would mention the ! ful elections. Outside of North Dakota none of the people elected to promi- nent, office were worth a thin dime in help to the farmer organization. Cromwell's Ironsides furnish a better example for farmers who want to fi^ht for their rights than "mass parties," "one organization for farmers and v and other stuff preached by the Farmer-Labor "improvers" on the Non- partisan League. "Big Business" wept with the farmers over the clues they paid to the league. But is that a manly excuse for $2,000,000 in unpaid post-dated checl If we do not blame the devil beyond his due, the good le may pay more regard to their own shortcomings. Maiiixl, Minnesota, A. B. ('■■< Formerly editor of the Nonpartisan Lender Catullus Again To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: \ is the defect in William Hard's transla- tion of Catullus in Tlie Nation of July 7. For the sake of hendecasyllabic lines words are introduced not necessary either for the sense or emotional effect. In the Latin there is no extra word. Is a faithful translation desired, equally un- labored, try this: Lot us live and love, my T. Mutterings of the austere aged. Let us count them all as nothing. Suns that set return with morning! For ns. when oneo the day h.as ended, Only sleep, with no awakening. Whitman, Max*., -Lily 9 Margaret A. Gaffney American Art or Negro Art? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: For Mr. Schuyler to say that "the Negro masses . . . are no different from the white masses" in America seems to me obviously absurd. Fundamentally, perhaps, all peoples are the same. But as long as the Negro remains a segregated group in this country he must reflect certain racial and environmental differences which are his own. The very fact that Negroes do straighten their hair and try to forget their racial back- ground makes them different from white people. If they were exactly like the dominant class they would not have to try so hard to imitate them. Again it seems quite as absurd to say that spirituals and blues are not Negro as it is to say that cow- boy songs are not cowboy v that tl Scotland do not belong to Scotland. The spirituals and blues are American, certainly, but they are also very much American Negro. And if one can say that some of my poems have no racial distinctiveness about them or that "Cane" is not Negro one can say with equal truth that "Nize Baby" is purely American. From an economic and so< iwpoint it may be entirely desirable that the Negro become as much like his white American brother as possible. Surely colored people want all the opportunities and advantages that anyone else possesses here in our country. But until America has completely absorbed the Negro and until segregation and racial self-consciousness have entirely disappeared, the true work of art from the Negro artist is bound, if it have any color and distinctiveness at all, to reflect his racial background and his racial environment. New York, June 1U Langston Hughes

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Books Retreat By LAURENCE JORDAN Now against winter let us bring together Food for our pantry, coal, and woolen sheets, Thatch of tough straw to roof us safe from weather And stones to wall us from the noise of streets. Let us put kitchen-ware upon the shelves Of cutlery and crockery and plate; And build a bed for us to rest ourselves And lay some logs and kindling on the grate. In hoarded foodstuffs and hard masonries Must lie security of some small kind. Out of such perishable goods as these We build the little hope that we may find Ourselves in thirty years, face pressed to face, Talking together, sitting in this place. The Getting of Ideas The Art of Thought. By Graham Wallas. Ilarcourt, Brace and Company. £2.75. A BOOK on the art of thought in general suffers from the initial disadvantage of an extremely abstract content. Like those college courses in elocution or pedagogy which teach the youthful orator who has nothing to say how to say it elo- quently or which instruct the prospective teacher who knows nothing how to impart his ignorance effectively, a discu of thinking without reference to its concrete objective might seem condemned in advance to barrenness. Mr. Wallas even adds to these difficulties by the peculiar psychological position which he maintains. In his opposition to the unsatisfactory mechanistic view which regards reflective thought as a passive result of instinctive activity, he goes so far to the other ex- treme as to say: "the cortex of the upper brain may, for in- stanc •, of its own initiative, to satisfy its own need of activity . . . start the process of thought." Surely it is not necessary in order to vindicate the significance and the active character of thought thus to assume a vitalistic magic, acting without stimulus, in the cortex. Reaction is still action, and if in- stincts are satisfied through reason so much the better for both. Not by its separation from instincts but by its coordination of them is reason honored. No treatment of rational activity which cuts it off from its natural antecedents and consequents can ever be profound. Nevertheless, despite all this, a study of thought processes in themselves if the student be a good introspectionist or a careful collector of data may still be prac- tically useful. Mr. Wallas's "Art of Thought" purports to b dressed to the "young adult"; actually it is even more addn to the teacher, and there are few teachers, young or old, who cannot derive profitable suggestions from its pages. For Mr. Wallas, as for most modern psychologists, there is no such fundamental difference in method between reason and imagination as was supposed by nineteenth-century writers like Shelley and Carlyle — although, be it noted in passing, Mr. Wallas gives unwonted recognition to the intellectual value of Shelley's "Defense of Poetry," which "ought to be read and reread by every student of the psychology of thought." Both reason and imagination pass through similar stages: Prepara- tion, the gathering of material; Incubation, the unconscious mulling over it; Illumination, the sudden appearance of new ideas; supplemented in the case of reason by a fourth stage, Verification, in which the new ideas are tested by facts. It is in his emphasis upon the necessity of the second stage, whose very existence is not guessed by many teachers and is certainly not allowed for anywhere in our educational scheme, that the greatest value of Mr. Wallas's work lies. But the chapters that follow on the dangers of too much and too little habit, too much and too little energy, too much and too little mysti- cism, too much — and here no too little — faith in uniform com- pulsory education are equally reasonable and convincing. Mr. Wallas writes with the practical wisdom born of long ex- perience. He gives no hint, to be sure, as to how to use our new ideas when we get them — and here his art of thought is an incomplete art — but he does, what for most of us is perhaps more needful, suggest methods by which we may at least get some new ideas to use. Ernest Sutherland Bates Soldier and Peasant From Double Eagle to Red Flag. By General P. N. Krassnoff. Duffield and Company. Two volumes. $6.50. Broken Earth. By Maurice Hindus. International Publishers. $2. GENERAL KRASSNOFF, commander of Cossack cavalry during the Great War and ataman of the Don in 1918 in opposition to the Bolshevik rule, presents under a slight fictional disguise his reminiscences of the period from the accession of Nicholas II to the victory of Bolshevism. The English trans- lation has been considerably cut; but even at that, the two vol- umes contain a sample of almost everything one has ever read in newspapers and novels about twentieth-century Russia. Imagine it all seen through the eyes of an observer whose atti- tude is clearly that of his hero, Lieutenant — later General — Sablin. "Everything is simple in your mind," says young Sablin's mistress. "Partitions are put up, shelves are made and labels attached: God, the church, candles, ikons, devotions; the Czar, fidelity, parades, the regiment, the uniform, the honor of the uniform, the regimental family in general, things per- mitted, things not permitted." At the end of his career, just before he is tortured and killed by the Bolsheviks, he is the same. Life has lost all meaning for him because it has been deprived of the beauty which is brought into it by the family, the fatherland, one's regiment, the army, victory, and the Czar as the symbol of all that is elevated. A minor hero is the young and romantic Karpoff, whose example had a "beneficent influence" on his officers and men, devoted to their regiment, their emperor, and their mother country, "ignorant of political events, fulfilling their duty to man and God." General Krass- noff explains the Sablins and Karpoffs in terms of their tra- ditions, training, and ideals; and because he shares their view- point he makes them comprehensible and even appealing — to any imagination that has ever been nourished on Scott and Dumas. The war scenes at the front he pictures as one who knows his business. We see the growing disorganization of the army through his dismayed eyes. Here he had been living the "life of a Christian with other C s at the front." And then comes chaos in the rear, and a spreading contagion. But the book, too, becomes chaotic as the revolution advances. The raw deeds of men, when their motives are not understood or even plausibly guessed at, make horrible reading. The details of the organized sadism and eroticism, which spell Bolshevism to the general, may be partly the product of the imagination that in war and revolution spawns atrocity tales out of its own perverse cravings. But that men should imagine such things is almost as bad as that they should sometimes execute them. Some can take their vicarious sadism straight; others have to have it disguised with varying degrees of subtlety. One has to take it straight from the general. Of course, he does at- tempt to motivate Bolshevism — as a Jewish conspiracy: "The seventy sages whom nobody knows, and the Russian revolution

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Aug. 18, 1926] The Nation 153 led from the depths of Zion. A mystery? But it is fur bettor not to think." He chooses the better part. He calls I enin — whose "puffed-out cheeks are distorted by the senseless smile of an idiot" — "a monster in the full sense of the word, a product of degeneration brought on by an intellectual life surpassing his mental capacity, as well as by the calm, inactive life of a philosopher." Not, certainly, a charge to be brought against the intellectual life of General Krassnoff. But the Taras Bulbaa are more picturesque than the philosophers. At the end of the second volume one comes across a baroness who executes a batch of local Bolshevik commissars. She sits on her steed, all her gestures full of supple feminine grace, and shoots them one by one. Then she folds her revolver, hangs it on her belt, takes up the bridle, and with a soft si^h of gratified passion, and looking with tired eyes once more on the Bolsheviks she has killed, rides away. Like her, one looks with tired eyes on the carnage and turns to such a book as "Broken Earth" to recover one's bal- ance and find a credible Russia. Mr. Hindus knew the pre-war peasant and was a part of the village life. After nineteen years in the United States he returned two or three years ago to see what had happened to the Russia that "toils, produces, fights, and dies." He went from village to village, stayed with peasants in their homes, worked with them, attended their churches, dances, festivals, weddings, funerals, mass meetings. He tells the story of the mujik in his own village in central Russia, because he believes it to be essentially the story of the mujik throughout Russia. Or rather, he lets the peasant tell his own story, for he found that he had become amazingly articulate. Mr. Hindus records it all with such simplicity, such freedom from bias, and such a sensitiveness to human values that one is reminded again and again of Turgenev. He rode to pasture with the boys and girls of his village, who were anxious to detach the American visitor from the old people, who hadn't learned anything in recent years. The young peo- ple, they assured him, were different; some had been in the Red Army; had read books and listened to lectures. None of them — not even the little ones — any longer believed in ghosts and spirits, water-nymphs and house-goblins. Such beliefs came from the priests who had served the Czar and kept the mujiks in ignorance, so that they could come and sprinkle water in the houses and drive out evil spirits and get some rye and a basket of eggs. Instead of the old talk that Mr. Hindus remembered from his boyhood, talk of girls and dances and horses and town fairs and gipsies, he hears words totally unknown to his boy- hood— science, technique, tractors, atheism, education, culture, electricity. The minds of these young folks were teeming with new concepts, new ideas, new beliefs. They were aware of the world outside their village. The older peasants — as one chapter shows only too clearly — are still servile, brutal, dis- honest in many ways. But the manager of the experimental farm, in spite of the endless discouragement of the struggle to enlighten the peasant, expresses at the end his belief in the mujik's gifts and possibilities. Come back thirty years from now and you will see! Mr. Hindus gives a moving sketch of one intellectual whom he calls "the last of the Russian Hamlets." Does he really believe that? Dorothy Brewster Georg Brandes in Greece Hellas. By Georg Brandes. The Adelphi Company. $2.50. IT is not often given to a man approaching his eightieth *■ birthday to fulfil a lifelong dream, especially a dream so deeply rooted as was Georg Brandes's desire to see Greece. In 1918 he said: "I have been these forty years the only Dane who was a Greek, not a Hebrew"; this though on both sides he was of Jewish origin. In 1922 he wrote: "He who has longed all his life for Attica, and who finally realizes his dream of standing on the Acropolis, is seized with a feeling of awe. . . . Tin- longer one has thirsted for this Bight, th< j is rapture." There is something profoundly moving in this book com- memorating the journey, not because it contains much that is new about either ancient or modern Greece but because it re- veals so clearly the tragic aspect of the author's genius. A flaming firebrand of advanced views in his youth, denied a BOrship in the University of Copenhagen because of his liberalism, in his maturity the most comprehensive interpreter of the whole range of European culture, he lived to see himself neglected as a reactionary because the rationalism he repre- sented no longer stirred men's minds. Greece, with all its shortcomings, was his homeland, because Greece to him repre- sented the nearest approach in history to the reign of reason. Therefore he could say: "Greece, not Palestine, is the Holy Land, and until humanity recognizes this fact, until humanity dis- cards its indifference to truth and its hatred of reason, which in our day is cankering all souls and permeating all of litera- ture and philosophy, we shall witness nothing more nor less than a continuous and progressive decay of our civilization." Brandes turned to Greece not only because of its ration- ality but also because of its respect for nature and the natural man. In addition, Greece had created and exalted the hero, and in his mature years Brandes saw hope for humanity only in the leadership of exceptional men. In the possibility of en- lightening the mob he had no faith. "The first decisive trait in the spiritual history of Hellas was its production of the hero." This, we may surmise, is the reason why Homer and Xenophon are the two authors chosen for extended discussion in this book; Xenophon, the eulogist of Cyrus the Great and his distinguished descendant for whom the ten thousand Greeks marched into Persia; Homer, the creator of Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, Ajax, and Diomed. This part of the discussion is vivid and informing, and will interest both laymen and scholars. The book has no unity save that indicated by its title. The last two chapters deal vigorously with post-war politics, particularly the Venizelos episode and the scandals of Allied diplomacy in the Near East. The translation is frequently awk- ward and sometimes inaccurate. We are told, for example, that in certain of his writings Xenophon "entered into con- troversy with Plato," when the meaning must have been "came into rivalry with Plato." Clara M. Smertenko An Incomplete Examination Christian Science. An Examination of the Religion of Health. By Sir William Barrett and Rosa M. Barrett. Henry Holt and Company. $1.75. A S coming from a former member of the Society of Psychical ■**■ Research who wrote on Spiritualism and Swedenborgian- ism, this book has a tendency toward the occult. The title is question-begging. Christian Science is not necessarily a re- ligion of health, considering the hundreds of cases of mal- practice for which its healers are responsible. The author cites but one instance, that of the death from diphtheria of some young girls in 1903. It is, of course, proper to say that Eddy- ism preaches optimism, but, as Sir William elsewhere acknowl- edges, it is a "bastard idealism," a misconception of the system of Bishop Berkeley — of whom, he adds, it is doubtful if Mrs. Eddy ever heard. The latter statement is typical of a book which does not go back to original sources. The first edition of "Science and Health" does mention the good Irish bishop and attempts to utilize his system of genuine spiritual realism to uphold the Eddyite illusionism. The author nevertheless ex- poses the logical error of Eddyism. Because matter, from the idealist standpoint, is dependent on mind, we do not conclude that matter has no existence. Mrs. Eddy's "sublime indifference to logic" is amusingly pointed out in the statement that Christian Scientists all find the

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154 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3189 delusions of clothing, food, shelter, and money necessary, while bicycles, motors, and trains may with advantage be used by them as by others. In fact, the only material thing to be given up is medicine. As a scientist Sir William is logical, but he has not all the evidence at hand. He deplores the lack of an index to Mrs. Eddy's writings, although a complete concordance has been out for a decade. He speaks of the excellences of the Christian Science Monitor, evidently unaware that those quali- ties were originally due to the English journalist Mr. Dixon, who was finally deposed from his editorship because of his independent spirit. Again, he accepts the statement of Mrs. Eddy herself that she had no physician "besides God," appar- ently not knowing that she had a private physician in constant attendance in her latter years of invalidism besides the Massa- chusetts doctor who gave the death certificate; all this in spite of Mrs. Eddy's statement that "the heart, blood, lungs, and brain have nothing to do with life," and that "man is incapable of death." Again the author is too modest in his statement that Mother Eddy left some $2,000,000. Despite these errors the book is valuable for its showing up of the true Mrs. Eddy, who is declared to be an egoistic megalomaniac like John Alexander Dowie. In the chapter on The Growth of Christian Science the author is misled by sta- tistics from headquarters. The church is not growing as it once did, as is evidenced by the refusal of its directors to fur- nish an account of their numbers to the Federal Census. How- ever, they may make up in quality what they lack in quantity, for, as Sir William asks: How can poor persons belong to a body which demands a per capita tax, the purchase of expensive textbooks and journals, and, in the case of a healer, extremely high prices for instruction — in Mrs. Eddy's day $.300 for seven lessons? Woodbridge Riley A Part of the History of Russia A History of Russia. By Sir Bernard Pares. Alfred A. Knopf. $6. THE author of this book, as director of the School of Slavonic Studies in the University of London and chief editor of the Slavonic Review, is a conspicuous figure among English- speaking students of Slavdom. In further evidence of its respectability the book has been included in the Borzoi Historical Serie , edited by our most energetic propagandist of "the new history." Such considerations may tempt the reader to hope for a discussion of the true nature of social evolution in Russia, and to expect a presentation of the subject in the light of the work of Russian scholars in the last half-century. But these 500 pages offer no improvement in this respect over Rambaud's "Histoire de la Russie," published in 1869. Rejecting the brilliant work of the late V. O. Kliuchevski, who "is lordly in his disregard of all that does not serve his purpose," Sir Bernard meanders pleasantly onward, recording names at the rate of a page to the dozen, and jotting down the day of the month — frequently without identifying the year — on which such heroes as Dmitri Donskoi crossed this or that river or performed other memorable feats. It would not, how- ever, be fair to imply that Sir Bernard does not essay the pro- duction of illuminating generalizations concerning human de- velopment; the following is a fair sample of his endeavors: "The Russian has a historical feeling for Christendom. But he has also a world-sense, living in his earliest songs, not to be flaunted, very deep-rooted but all the more real for that. ..." Another tenet of "the new history," the correlation of geography and history, finds place in Sir Bernard's creed; the result is the enunciation of a novel but obviousl, important sociological principle: "These lordly water-roads could not be of much use to anyone while they remained only scenes of warfare. Thus the river taught peace, and the river taught trade." One of the rare "problems of Russian history" is Paul's paternity; peasant revolts "it would be weary work to enumerate." More enlivening are the relations of Russia with other states; pos- sibly for this reason the diplomatic and military dealings of Russian rulers are recounted with a fulness out of all propor- tion to the space devoted to the domestic history of Russia. In the latter field are offered such profound conclusions as that, in declining Kiev, "the trouble was that there were too many" princes, or that Ivan IV of Moscow was one of Russia's "most enlightened statesmen," though his policy was "madness." This curious concentration on the periphery of Russian history, sparing only random observations for the history of Russia itself, is not to be explained by reference to the Rus- sian historians cited in the bibliography. Kliuchevski, whom Sir Bernard salutes as his "teacher and master," produced a splendid synthesis of Russia's social evolution, based on careful analysis of economic as well as political developments. Of the rich historical literature that rewards the student bold enough to overcome the language barrier the existing incomplete and faulty translations of Kliuchevski and Kornilov can convey only a dim conception. Between the history of Russia as interpreted by Kliuchevski, Platonov, or the Marxist Pokrovski and the history of Russia as retailed by a man who deems his subject "pathetic," no comparison is possible. As a consideration of relatively slight importance must be mentioned the infinity of technical defects in the present work. Sir Bernard, disdaining the standard American and British systems of transliteration, lays down new rules to which he does not adhere. Typographical errors abound, not always assignable to a compositor's dismay at some sibilant name. Eight diagrams function as maps. However, there is a complete and accurate table of English rulers from Egbert to George V. But a truce with technicalities. Ignore them all, the book remains a true borzoi, shaped in the interest of speed, beautiful in its whimsical ungainliness, with very little space for cerebration. J. D. Clarkson But the Answer? What Is Civilization? By Maeterlinck, Mukerji, and Others. With an Introduction by Hendrik van Loon. Duffield and Company. $2.50. "'1717' II AT is it all about? And is it possible for the human ^ * race to get beyond a certain point of civilization with- out writing its own sentence of doom?" The answers to these questions, no matter how partial or faulty, would, from the authors selected, make an intensely interesting book. But be- fore he brought on his authors Mr. van Loon's rapidly revolving mind threw out some more questions. "This is an era of rivalry," he says; "the war, that strange racial eruption which took place at the very eve of the supposed brotherhood of man, has made many ancient nations conscious of their almost for- gotten past. They now press forward with their claims. They prove to us that their ancestral contributions to the cause of civilization surpass those of any other people. . . . Who will get the prize?" And so he bows on his crowd of contestants, and the proofs of their ancestral contributions fill the book from which we had hoped to get. new light on the more engrossing query, "What is Civilization?" Mukerji states the case for India, W. E. B. DuBois for Africa, Chi Fung-liu for China, Maeterlinck, a critical, almost unsympathetic, and so possibly more interesting expositor, for Egypt, Herbert Spinden for Ancient America, Ralph Adams Cram for the Middle Ages, and Paul Shorey for the Age of Pericles. After them come two curiously inapposite contributions, about Women and America's Bad Manners, from Ramsay Traquair and Elizabeth Robins Pennell. Each essay offers much that is interesting. Herbert Spin- den keeps most closely to the original submerged question, and his brilliant summary of the little-known economic gifts of the

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Aug. 18, 1926] The Nation American Indian is particularly interesting to the pi reviewer. Mr. Traquair's contribution is extraordinary. Original he must be or perish. And so he takes the attributes popularly accredited to woman and presents them all to men. Are women generally supposed to be more imaginative and more artistic than men? We may not have realized this until he tells us, but in any case he will achieve greatness by asserting that men are more imaginative and more artistic than women. 'The arts, he says, are thought to be women's particular domain, and their cultivation is considered effeminate in men. Yet in vain do we attempt to force women to be artists, and in vain do we attempt to prevent men. Natural capacities triumph. Although "in art matters women have for fully a century and a half been better trained than men," "in the whole field of art women are inferior to men in imagination, intuition, ami the abstract qualities." Conversely, society lias done what it could to keep women out of practical affairs. But in these they excel. Witness a long list of great women executives, beginning with Queen Elizabeth. In his enthusiasm Mr. Traquair has forgotten that far from having to overcome antipathies to a woman as an executive, Elizabeth was horn to the purple. He has for- gotten that half the thrones in Europe were then occupied by women. The traditional differences between men and women wilt strangely under critical analysis, hut .Mr. Traquair's method simply substitutes for them a new list, quite as un- proved, quite as absurd, and quite as dangerous if it. should he accepted. Alice Beal Parsons Books in Brief Notorious Literary Attacks. Edited with an Introduction by Albert Mordell. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. After a learned and sensible introduction, in which he makes it clear that the joke was not always on the critics who damned for one good reason or another a great writer of their time, Mr. Mordell reprints from nineteenth-century periodicals attacks on Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Car- lyle, Charlotte Bronte, Hawthorne, Tennyson, Dickens, Swin- burne, Rossetti, Whitman, Hardy, and Steven ion. A curious and valuable work of reference. Swinburne. By Harold Nicolson. Herman Melville. By John Freeman. Walt Whitman. By John Bailey. G\ Meredith. By J. B. Priestley. English Men of Let1 The Macmillan Company. $1.25 each. These earliest members of the new English Men of Lei Series are done with uniform competence by men recently made names for themselves in England as biographers and ci'itics. The first is much the most interest in four, though its subject is perhaps the slightest. cal, and d. William Collins. Persian Eclogues. 17. ',-'. Oxford University Press. Respective prices: $2.25; $2; $1.50; $2. Four more items in the series of type-facsimiles so bril- liantly begun by the Oxford Press a year ago. First Wounds. A Stony in Fire Clio liters of Verse. By John Varney. Francesco Bianco. An autobiography dealing in not always lucid free verse with important states of the soul. If some of this very long poem is hard going, much of it reaches to beauty and truth; and for the idea of such an enterprise there can, of course, be nothing but praise. Blues: An Anthology. Edited by W. C. Handy. With an Intro- duction by Abbe Niles. Illustrations by Miguel Covar- rubias. Albert and Charles Boni. $3.50. markable lion to the growing knowledge of Negro poetry and music. The source in this case was obscure and difficult of access, being the living habits of the race; but the right persons have gone to it, and the result is both won- derful and amusing. The Selected Poems of Lizette Woodworth Pose. George H. Doran Company. $2. Presumably the best work of a poetess whose ranking by certain judges remains inexplicably high. Always lucid, intelligent, and sweet, this verse never achieves any important kind of power. Savonarola: A Dramatic Poem. By Charlotte Eliot. With an Introduction by T. S. Eliot. London: R. Cobden-Sander- son. 5/. Thirteen scenes in traditional rhymed pentameters from the life of Savonarola. The introduction by the author's son is careful and interesting- Sherwood Anderson's Notebook. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Few of the ideas contained in these scraps will be un- familiar to a reader of Mr. Anderson's novels and of "A Story- Teller's Story." As always, he protests against a dull, mcchani- After the Pall: Forty Years of Melody. By Charles K. Harris. Frank-Maurice, Inc. $4. Mr. Harris is the undisputed Ford of the "sweet simple love" lyric :■'. In one inspired hour he wrote the words and music of "After the Ball," and received about $100,000 for his pains. Scores upon scores (he lists over i rate titles) of "real, clean, home songs," amonu- which the best known are "Break the News to Mother" and "Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven," have poured from I imless reservoir of his senti- mentality. Yet there is a large and lusty fly in the humdrum ointment of his .'576-page volume: he admits that, from the be- ginning, he wisely eschewed "any vulgar stuff" from his bal- lads and constantly capitalized sentiment. "There'll Come a Time," perhaps, when "Baby's Eyes" and "My Mother's Kiss" will be "Better than Gold" " 'Mid the Green Fields of Virginia," but, unless you read this book, "You'll Never Know" how much Mr. Harris is concerned with the royalties that still pour in "In the Good Old-Fashioned Way."

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International Relations Section The Women's Peace Congress at Dublin By ANNE MARTIN London. Ji rHE congress of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom just closed in Dublin has made a notable impression on public opinion in this still-distracted island. The opening reception at the National University revealed Eamon De Valera and President Cosgrave under the same roof for the first time since the treaty was signed in 1921. Not to mention delegates from former belligerent, allied, and neutral countries, the congress brought Repub- ig both the Art O'Connor and De Valera factions, women from the Six Counties and v from the Free State, into peaceful and harmonious coopera- tion for the pacification of the world, if not of Ireland. Always acute politicians, Irish leaders of different fac- tions lost no time in arranging meetings at private houses to inform del rom different countries as to the status and aims of their respective groups. Opportunity was thus given to hear Miss Mary MacSwiney and Miss Albinia Brodrick (sister of Lord Midleton), representing the ex- treme Republicans under "President" Art O'Connor, who will have nothing to do with the Free State Government; De Valera, Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington, Countess Markiewicz, and Mrs. Despard, who believe the forty-eight Republicans elected to the Daii should take their seats if the trouble- some oath of allegiance to the King can be removed, thus creating an effective opposition; and Senator James Doug- las, Deputy Tom Johnson (Labor), and Mrs. Slopford Green (Senator in her own right and widow of the English his- torian), who discussed the international, political, nomic, and social aims of the Free State Government. The unemployed, too, under their leader, Larkin, were heard by the congress in plenary session. They entered bearing placards which read: "80,000 people and their dependents are without work or maintenance," "Children are dying of hunger in this land of plenty," "In the midst of 'peace' we perish of hunger," "The Irish workers enjoy the freedom to starve." A subscription was taken, and a referent appointed on the general subject of unemployment. During the session the aims of the league were re- stated, after long debate, to be "to unite the women in al! countries who are opposed to every kind of war, exploita- tion, and oppression, and who work for universal disarma- ment and for the solution of conflicts by the recognition of human solidarity, by conciliation and arbitration, by world cooperation, and by the establishment of social, politi- cal, and economic justice for all, without distinction of sex, race, class, or creed." It was a disappointment, in view of Great Britain's power in the League of Nations, to find that many of the British section, under the leadership of Miss Kathleen Courtney, manifested a more nationalistic spirit than any other section throughout the debate on this statement of aim. At the same time it is amazing that this woman's congress, composed of one hundred and fifty dele- gates and alternates from eighteen war-torn countries, nearly all of them extremely individual and determined women, reached practical working unanimity in spite of sharp differences of opinion. Probably no one in the world could have organized this Babel into concrete, creative inter- nationalism as successfully as Jane Addams. Nothing is more illuminating than to watch Miss Addams in the chair. Whatever her own views, she is supremely neutral. Her object is to give both sides as complete a hearing as possi- ble within the practical limits of time, and to reach con- clusions by general agreement rather than by arbitrary majority rule, whenever possible. She is, as she says her- self, a "middle-of-the-road" person. Nevertheless, her far- sighted and neutral leadership as chairman certainly made it possible for this to be more than a "middle-of-the-road" congress. Its program covered the subjects Women in Parlia- ment, Colonial and Economic Imperialism, Militarism, Arbitration, and Disarmament, and Relations Between Majorities and Minorities. The work of the league, apart from the executive, is carried on between congresses by three commissions dealing with the last three subjects. These commissions, after open session and debates, report their conclusions back to the plenary sessions of the con- gress in the form of resolutions. Those presented by the Commission on Colonial and Economic Imperialism and adopted by the congress strike at the roots of war and go as far in urging the establish- ment of a new international and economic order, without war, as the most ardent radical could wish. The resolutions on arbitration and disarmament call upon the national sec- tions (1) to press upon their governments the necessity of settling all disputes by negotiations for conciliation and arbitration through a third party, (2) to offer an all-in- arbitration treaty to any nation ready to sign it, and (3) to sign the optional clause of the statute setting up the Permanent Court of International Justice. The congress urged further that national sections everywhere should undertake a campaign of education for arbitration and for hastening the development of a system of international law. The importance of educating children under school age on constructive peace lines was emphasized and the national sections were instructed to oppose attempts to give mili- tary training in schools and colleges. A resolution oppos- ing as a form of military propaganda the use by the United States Government of postal cancelation stamps urging the attendance of its citizens at military training camps was carried in principle. Resolutions were adopted against the manufacture of poison gas, armaments, and munitions (the news of the terrible powder and munitions explosion in New Jersey came that day). The congress called upon the International Disarmament Conference of the League of Nations to prepare with all possible energy and good-will for complete and universal disarmament. The discussions and report of the Commission on Re- lations between Majorities and Minorities, in the skilful hands of Miss Catherine Marshall (Great Britain) as chair- man, assisted by Dr. Hilda Clark (a granddaughter of John Bright) as rapporteur, were perhaps the most expert work of the congress. Frau Yella Hertzka (Austria) stated that in Europe before the war there were minority popu- lations amounting to some 28,000,000, which increased to more than 35,000,000 after the war; that more than twenty different minority groups existed in Austria alone; and that the solution seemed to be some form of federated

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Aug. 18, 1926] The N it ion 157 state government. Miss Marshall spoke of Italy's delay in concluding a minority treaty to define the rights of the millions of Germans it rules in the Austrian Tyrol. Mrs. II. -M. Swanwick urged the league to work for the estab- lishment of a Minorities Commission by tlu> League of Nations, because "it is not the least use to have a body like the Council of the League of Nations into which to your griefs." The congress adopted the resolutions of the commis- sion, which in abridged form are as follows: 1. National sections in countries where minor compact geographical groups are urged to study federal ernment as a possible solution. 2. Declaring the belief that racial, religious. tural minorities form a valuable element in a si majorities are urged to allow special treatmenl as regards language, religion, and other cultural dil thus serving justice and the interests of the state. 3. The Council of the League of Nations is ; carry out its responsibility for the protection by appointing a commission through which petiti warded to it may be investigated. 4. The coming Assembly of the League of N asked to consider whether countries which have minMc human-interest story of th« IVlWOV^W VV LS1/VC\. I [jfe 0f ^e people in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth, $1.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. CHARLES H. KERR & CO. 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago Contributors to This Issue Carlton Beals has been in Mexico for several years ing a study of social and political institutioi He has been chosen to lecture on Mexican history to the committee of Americans now visiting Mexico vitation of President Calles. E. Franklin Frazier is director of the Atlanta Schoi Social Work. Helen Hayes Gleason is Mrs. Arthur Gleason. Ernest Sutherland Bates was formerly professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon. Dorothy Brewstkr is assistant professor of English in Columbia University and coauthor of "Dead Reckonings in Fiction." Clara M. Smertenko frequently reviews books on ( literature and philosophy for The Nation. Woodbridge Riley is professor of philosophy at Vassar College and coauthor of "The Faith, the Falsity, and the Failure of Christian Science." J. D. Clarkson is a member of the department of history at the College of the City of New York. Alice Beal Parsons is the author of "Woman's Dilemma." Anne Martin of Nevada was the first woman to run for the United States Senate. REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS Direct from the Makers at Manufacturer's P*-iee Suit Length* Cut to Oi er. Price $2.00 per Yard. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write far aarUras staiinf shades desi red Want someone for a position? Want a position? The responsive employer and the intelligent applicant for employment read The Afdtton. Write for rates. Dept. W, The Ration. ENTERTAINING SIGNIFICANT The Life of William Godwin By FORD K. BROWN An interesting biography, filling the need for an adequate account of Godwin's life and a criticism of his works. The romance, all too short, of his love for Mary Wollstonecraft; the tragic comedy of his later private life; his much-discussed" relations with his son-in-law Shelley; his contacts with famous men of his time; and his vital contributions to the political thought of both England and America, all receive their due and make it a book of unusual value. $6.00 E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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158 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3189 SUMMER COURSES IN JEWISH SOCIAL WORK The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers summer institutes for Social Workers in addi- tion to its regular course of fifteen months' graduate study in preparation for Jewish social work. llowing courses will be given during the second tern: of the Slimmer Session which will begin August 16, K)2b: Social and Religious Institutions of the Jews..M. M. Kaplan Modern Jewish History I. B. Berkson The Field of Jewish Social Service in the U. S...M. J. Karpf Adiminstration of Jewish Family Case Work Agencies M. J. Karpf Administration of Jewish Federations M. B. Hexter Post War Problems of the Jews I. B. Berkson The Fall Quarter Will Begin October 5, 1926 For a description of the Course of Study write for the General Announcement The Training School for Jewish Social Work ( Initiated by the National Conference of Jewish Social Service ) 210 West 91st Street, New York City FOREIGN AFFAIRS THE English monthly "Foreign Affairs" has recently printed articles on Disarmament by Professor Noel Baker, on Mussolini by Professor Salvemini, on India and South Africa by Lord Olivier, on Anglo-Soviet Relations by Arthur Pon- sonby, M.P. (late Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs), on Abyssinia by Commander Kenworthy, on the Balkans by Henri Barbusse, on Freedom of Speech by Harold Laski, on American Capitalism by J. A. Hobson. It is a live paper, fearlessly dealing with the most burning questions. Price yearly by post $1.22, from 34 Victoria Street, London, S. YY. 1. ac (ytifc / NonBe^ressant / norHabitFormin^ / InConvenient / AluminumBoxes | At every drugstore ^HEADACHE GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New York ADl XT CAMPS AMI VACATION Pi. AC Trout Lake Hotel and Camp Near Lake rge) Tit IS place of natural beauty and splendor n the heart of the Adirondack* is now the management of I. B. BAILIN, rlj editoi of the Friend and Educa- i of the Workmen's Circle. An abode for recreation and regeneration. All aquatic activities and sports; tennis- courts, music band, dancing, concerts, read- ings, camp fires, etc. Excellent meals — High class American- Jewish cooking. All modern conveniences. Moderate prices. Open until October 1st ifter Labor Day. or Booklet *>r reservation to I. B. BAILIN Director front Lake Hotel and Camp Phone: Bolton Landing 60 F 21 Diamond Point, N. Y. INDIAN HEAD CAMP ECHO $28.60 per week Daily rate $5.00 LAKE Adu]t» only J .and and Water - Soorte. Safe Bee** WATCH FOR THE INDIAN SiON WONDER CAMP OF THE ADIRONDACK^ P. i*. Box 114, W;trrei.!ihiirg, N. Y. N. Y. Central to Lak or n*y or Night Boat to Albany and train to Lake George. In- dian Head car wili await you. Send for booklet. City address: R. Helfant, 885 Brook Avenue, Rronx. N. Y Te! Melrote 1821 ecHo j T>W£Rr^ - 'tA'Ctuip/arUdiitn'.r. ADmbNpACKS^ THIRD SEASON Set among famous scenes ! of Adirondack beauty 5 miles above Lake George \ iped with every kno comfort and spoi ions strictly limited ;' ampers. jj I! week. i iti each log cabin. Round Trip, New York to Lake George, $12.28 TAY : rg, X. Y., 3 ;4-21Gl MOE N UDELL \ :ater UTOPIA Lackawaxen, Pa. Wm. .). t'KHLMAN. Director it. Assoc. Director The most beautiful camp in America, unrivalled in .vith shady shores, plenty of ci ib with free infrac- tion. alka a nd lovers' rel reats. Eight tennis-i ; I. nil-field : hand- urts etc uunt of it. in a magnificent log-cabin dining room. rature and philosophy in a cozy nook among the pines, led by Will Duiaiit, author of "The Story of Philosophy." Rates $35-$40 weekly. THE IXOVD. Rellport, L. I. '>:■ Grc:-.> South Raj Open June 2"d Charming, ■id week-end part.ie* ADl 1/1 CAMPS THE STUDENTS' CAMP V. VIA BIO INDIAN >\ N'TY, N. Y. grounds cover an entire mountain hollow in -J the Catskills, 2,000 feet elevation, of great nat- irivacy. Mere of a Nature Camp in an Adull ('amp, for those loving simplicity ■' congenial, intelligent companions. ports. $7 per we«'k for accom- i .: I meals. $20 per week for lodging lervations to KDCCATTONAL . Airy grijnol the country where boys k-arn and grew in a world noi oniy of text-booka. .1 1ZAHETH '. tOAKET H \TKIBLD ON. New York Select a suburb which has a progressive school SIron!;r.iiV S'rlinn! 224 GDraitgr 2Uia& ffluHtrlatr, £.*. 31. Nursery group to junior high school for boys and ' iperative organization. Hot luncheons. Taxi service. Write for booklet. Miss Anna J. Gannett, Director. STUDYMHJXME Directedby ^ W$z ^n&crsitp of Cfitcago • in English, History, Chemistrv, Business, , Education. Psychology, and 35 other ts command credit toward a Bachelor degree. any time. Address 57 Ellis Hall, University of } Cl it igo. Chicago. 111. When writing I" advertisers, phase mention The Nation

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The Nation P O U N D E D is Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25 No. 3190 Contents EDITORIAL "PARAGRAPHS 169 EDITORIALS: The Tropics as Factories Must Colleges Be Treadmills-' 163 The Size of the Sky The Buncombe of Bigness CARTOON. P.v Hondrik van Loon 166 HOW AMERICA FOOLS HERSELF. P.y Louis Fischer 166 BRITMNS MIDSUMMER MOOD By J. Ramsay MacDonald 168 THE NEW ENGLAND FARM COMES BACK. By Nelson Antrim Crawford ''"''' BOLSHEVISM IN CHINA" By lewis S. Gannett FATE AND THE OHIO GANG. By Edgar Mels IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 171 CORRESPONDENCE 175 BOOKS AND MUSIC Live Epitaphs. By \manda Benjamin 11 :' First Glance. By Mark Van Doren A Bible for Bibuli. By H. L. Mencken 177 The Madness of Nations. By Harry Elmer Barnos Roads to Illusion. By Clifton P. Fadiman 178 Jesus and Paul. B ' a Kingdom. By Babette Deutsch l"n Books in Brief • ls0 Music: The Emotional Trend in Performance By B. II. Hacgiri 180 I RNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Bolivnr Centennial. By Edward E. Curtis 182 Persia and Turkey Form an Alliance 183 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH M waging Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWKY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico: to Canada. $5.50; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street. New York City. Cable Address: Nation. New York. Chicago Office : No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising : Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square. London W. C. 1. England. GENERAL MOTORS AND GENERAL ANDREWS have both had a good deal of attention in the public prints lately. General Andrews, our prohibition director, declares his mission to England to obtain the aid of that country in enforcing the Volstead law was 125 per cent successful," but he refuses any details. General Motors, our foremost industrial corporation, declares a 50 per cent stock dividend, and there are enough details to convince anybody. The distribution is estimated as worth some $600,000,000, a greater melon than even the famous 400 per cent stock dividend of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey in 1922. In addition to its regular dividend of 7 per cent, General Motors has already paid extra cash dividends on its common shares of 5 and 4 per cent this year in addition to its stock distribution. The net earnings on the common stock for the first six months of this year were $17.33 per share. In accordance with the tenets of our industrial system these fabulous profits go to the men who have put their dollars into the enterprise, not to the workers who have put into it their labor, their skill, and their lives. As between the 50 per cent success of General Motors and the 125 per cent success of General Andrews, the former would seem to be the more negotiable. In fact, General Andrews reminds us of the old argument between the parson ami the judge as to who was mosl powerful. "I ran consign a man to hell," boasted the par-son, "whereas you can Bend him only to jail." "Yes," replied the judge, "but when I send a man to jail he goes." NEARLY TWO .MILLION CHILDREN of British coal miners are in actual want as the result of the fifteen weeks of strike and lockout. The poverty of the British miners is a tragic thing even when they are working for full-time wages, but when unemployment and strikes cut off normal pay it is difficult to see how their families live at all. Many of the miners' families are living on two dollars and a half of grocery tickets a week. The women's relief committee is spending $3,000 a week on work among nursing and expectant mothers. Even if negotiations in London should end the strike in the near future, the need of the miners' families will be very great. The Women's Com- mittee for the Relief of British Miners' Wives and Children has an office at Room 904, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. Checks may be sent to Miss Ellen Wilkinson, chairman, or Miss Evelyn Preston, treasurer. ATLEE POMERENE won the Democratic Senatorial pri- mary in Ohio from Judge Florence Allen, and is ac- cordingly being groomed for the Presidency. There is, so far as we can discover, little to recommend Mr. Pomerene for the post except the fact that he is colorless; and we doubt if colorlessness is enough. Warren Harding won the Republican nomination in 1920 because he seemed an ade- quately pallid compromise candidate after Wood and Low- den had torn each other's chances to bits. But in the elec- tion he was faced by the even more colorless James N. Cox — doubtless many readers of The Nation would be unable to remember today where they had heard that name before — and overwhelmed him. In 1924 McAdoo and Smith fought each other to the death in Madison Square Garden, and John W. Davis was named on the theory that a good candidate was a man who had made few enemies. The guess was wrong; either McAdoo or Smith, despite the bitter enmities of Madison Square, would have made a better campaign. If the Democrats should be foolish enough to nominate for the Presidency a vapid Pomerene we predict another overwhelm- ing defeat. We will venture another prophecy: They will not nominate Pomerene, because he will be defeated at the polls by the handsome, florid, oratorical Senator Willis who at least knows an issue when he sees it, and does not at- tempt like Pomerene to go through a campaign without men- tioning prohibition. VIC" DONAHEY, the ardent Dry who won his third Democratic nomination for Governor of Ohio, also nurses Presidential ambitions, and has no love for Mr. Pomerene. His Republican opponent, like Senator Willis, is also a Dry. So Ohio's primaries gave as little comfort to the Wet friends of "Al" Smith as did Alabama's, where Klan-sponsored candidates rode to victory, after charging their opponents with the infamous — in Alabama — crime of being sympathetic to a Catholic's presidential aspirations.

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160 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 In Arkansas a Wet, J. E. Martineau, captured the Demo- cratic nomination for governor, but Senator Caraway, bone- dry, won his renomination without even bothering to make a campaign. It was Senator Caraway who recently made the shrewd prophecy that if "Al" Smith could get the nomi- nation he would carry the South and the country for the Presidency; but that he could not get a Southern vote at the convention for the nomination. He also thought that if the unit rule, which binds State delegations to vote solidly, and the two-thirds rule, which defeated Champ Clark in 1912 and McAdoo in 1924, were abolished "Al" would get the nomination. Maybe. Meanwhile "Brother Charley" Bryan has come back into the field by winning the Demo- cratic nomination for his old post of Governor of Nebraska. And the Tenth District of Kentucky has proved loyal to the New Feminism by nominating Mrs. John W. Langley to fill aer husband's post in Congress while he takes up a tem- porary residence in Atlanta Penitentiary, following his con- viction for illegally removing whiskey from government warehouses. CARMI THOMPSON'S BODYGUARD of newspapermen is doing its best to persuade America that Philippine opinion is divided upon independence and rubber. They make much of the fact that a Filipino assemblyman has in- troduced a bill to permit corporations to acquire more than the four square miles of rubber lands which the present law allows them; they do not mention the fact that the sponsor of this measure owes his membership in the Assembly to appointment by Governor General Wood. No e.ected Fili- pino would dare make such a proposal. Other correspon- dents hail Aguinaldo's friendship with Governor Wood, apparently unaware that Aguinaldo, precisely because of that association, has lost his popular following in the islands. He may soon lose even his presidency of the Veteranos de la Revolucion, which he himself founded; and his government, pension may be cut off because of his intimacy with the hated Wood. And not even Aguinaldo dares openly oppose independence; not one Filipino leader has come out against it. Wherever Carmi Thompson and the reporters have gone, with one exception, they have been met with independence demonstrations. That one exception was the Havemeyer sugar estates in Mindoro. The villagers may be backward, but they have absorbed the traditional belief in self-govern- ment which America itself seems to be losing. MEXICO'S LAWS, harsh as they are, permit priests of Mexican birth to offer the sacraments in church edi- fices to the faithful. But the Catholic church, in its violent effort to bring the Mexican Government to terms, is refus- ing to permit even its Mexican-born priests to perform their sacerdotal functions. To deny good Catholics the privilege of mass while teaching that mass is an important means to salvation hardly seems Christian. From the church's own point of view it would seem that it was committing a grievous moral and spiritual wrong to its own members. No sign appears that the Government is thinking of yield- ing. The protests by foreign Catholics have only strengthened its position at home; indeed it is now talking of prosecuting the archbishop for criticizing the anti- clerical laws and of removing federal prosecutors who have not been sufficiently stern in prosecuting priests who violated the laws. It would seem time for a truce. We would urge the Mexican Government to permit the priests the widest latitude in criticizing the laws; and we would urge the church to accept and obey them while seeking their repeal. ANOTHER FORMIDABLE REVOLUTIONARY MOVE- MENT to overthrow the Soviet Government has started and died — in press dispatches from Bucharest, Copenhagen, Paris, and Berlin. This time Stalin was mur- dered, Trotzky in flight, Zinoviev exiled, and a Menshevik army marching on Moscow. Most editors refused to accept the rumors without a whole shaker of salt, but the New York World's Paris correspondent scribbled as in the good old days of 1917-1920, the New York American plastered several editions with sensational collapse-news, not omitting the usual headline, End of Soviet Rule Foreseen by Kerensky, and the Indianapolis Star gloated editorially over the cer- tain downfall of an economic system opposed to American business morals. The decreasing gullibility of the press concerning alarmist news from Russia is encouraging; per- haps it is related to the growing conviction among American business men that Russia is a valuable market. Certainly the Associated Press came through the last orgy of rumors with no sensational myths to its debit: its Moscow corre- spondent cabled that Peace and order reign throughout Russia. M. Stalin con- tinues to direct affairs of state from his sanctum in the Kremlin. Trotzky, who occupies a small apartment near that of M. Stalin, is engrossed in literary pursuits and work for the concessions committee, while Zinoviev is taking a much-needed period of rest in the Caucasus. . . . There has been no mobilization of Soviet troops, as reported abroad, nor has there been the slightest indication of any uprising within the army. . . . Moscow is as quiet as any American city on Sunday morning. THE PASSAIC STRIKERS have been admitted to the United Textile Workers of America; the United Front Committee is destined to pass from the scene; and its Com- munist head, Albert Weisbord, has promised to withdraw from all participation in the affairs of the new local. Thus a young and outcast strike organization becomes a duly legitimatized union and is taken into the respectable family of the American Federation of Labor. It will be harder now for the employers to refuse to associate with it. During the long weeks of struggle they have exploited and capital- ized the Communist affiliations of the strike leader and some of his associates. They have charged that the strike was directed from Communist headquarters in Chicago, if not from Moscow. They have, perhaps, dragged this red herring around a bit too freely. The transformation of a group of strikers whom they have advertised as bolsheviks and rebels into a local of one of the most conservative unions in the American Federation of Labor has snatched their herring away. They are left with the uncomfortable alternative of discussing terms with their workers or of thinking up a new set of exci JUDGE ROBERT C. BALTZELL of the United States District Court was a major factor in breaking the re- cent strike of Indianapolis street-car men with an injunc- tion enforced in the Daugherty manner. The motormen and conductors of the Indianapolis Street Railway Company, who received 37 to 42 cents an hour, joined the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees and

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation 161 went on strike for a wage increase and the recognition of their union. They had not even started their strike when Judge Baltzell issued a sweeping injunction ordering them not to persuade any workers to break their "labor contract" with the company. John M. Parker and Robert (.". Arm- strong, international vice-presidents of the union, were sent to Marion County jail for ninety days for contempt of court without a trial by jury because they expressed themselves in favor of the strike. Harry Boggs, the local union presi- dent, i I to West Virginia, but was brought back ami jailed. Parker and Armstrong were released on $10,000 bond only after they promised to leave town. So the strike was beaten and Indianapolis made safe for a 37-cent wage scale. COULD MEN BE SENT TO PRISON for contempt of court without a trial by jury for advocating the de- struction of a contract to work for one cent a day for life? Presumably they could be. A contract is a contract, say the judges: men who seek jobs are free agents, say the judges. A few years ago the anti-picketing injunction was the favorite weapon of employers; the restraining order granted by the judge in time of strike was based on the danger of physical violence. Today it seems unnecessary to prove physical violence to get an injunction. In 1924 the United States Supreme Court ruled that even labor leaders should have a trial by jury when accused of violating a fed- eral injunction if they were also alleged to have committed a crime. But, as The Nation pointed out at that time, fed- eral judges were still left free to send men to prison under their most despotic injunctions for acts which were not crimes under the law. So the injunction against breaking a labor contract is becoming even more popular with em- ployers than the anti-picketing injunction. Non-union em- ployees can be bound in perpetuity by contract not to strike: if they strike, a federal judge may be found to send their leaders to jail for contempt of court. An air-tight barrier against strikes — only a federal law against such use of in- junctions can preserve the workers' right to strike. STRIKES ARE AS VARIOUS as pickles. Not all are by employees against employers — sometimes bosses walk out on other bosses. In Brooklyn recently customers of small neighborhood tailoring shops, rushing pround to have a crease put in their Sunday trousers, found the door shut and the following notice staring them in the eyes: CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF STRIKE AGAINST THE WHOLESALE CLEAN- ERS WHO HAVE FORMED A TRUST TO DRIVE THE RETAIL STORE- KEEPER OUT OF BUSINESS BY RAISING THE PRICE AND COM- PELLING US TO ACCEPT WORK IN ANY CONDITION. Also That The Factory Refuses To Be Responsible For Shrinking, Buckles and Belts On Your Clothes. THIS FIGHT IS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC The Retail Cleaners & Tailors Union Local 17798, American Federation of Labor These shops are small places subsisting mostly on repair work, pressing, and dry cleaning, which latter they send out to large establishments. The boss is usually the hardest worker in the shop but he commonly has a helper or so. We know nothing of the merits of this case of Tailor vs. Tailor, but we are often annoyed ourselves at the exactions of big business and heartily sympathize with the grievance in regard to "shrinking, buckles, and belts." T IBERTY, the Chi( . imitation of the A^J Saturday Evening Post, 1. vered a solution to the French debt problem. It is all quite simple— like the Mexican problem. Liberty's solution of the .Mexican prob- lem would be to wipe out the Mexican boundary without consent of Mexico; Liberty's solution of the French debt problem would be the sale of the French West Indies to us \ov part of the debt. It ignores the fact that we do not want the islands, Prance does not want to sell them, and the natives do not want to be sold. The third point is the most important and it is also the one most likely to be ignored. Why should colored citizens of a self-respecting community submit to the patronage and policing of Jim Crow officers from Virginia? And who, after the experience of Haiti, could want American bankers and marines? Incidentally our experience in buying second-hand islands would seem to indicate that the upkeep exceeds the initial cost plus the gross profits by several hundred per cent. WILLIAMSTOWN'S INSTITUTE OF POLITICS con- tinues to discuss international affairs in the cul- tivated atmosphere of an academic tea. Now and then out- siders who do not understand the rules of the game introduce a little realistic bitterness — as when a Bulgar and a Serb discuss Macedonia at the same round table. But it was typical of Williamstown that even in this battle the com- batants violently accused each other of "discourtesy." Some- thing in the peaceful foliage of the Williamstown elms seems to give the discussions a pale cast of unreality. Perhaps, too, there is something in the choice of speakers. We should like to see more of the passion and drama of world politics pr< sented to these round tables — we should like them to listen to a Hindu pouring out the bitterness of his hatred of British empire, a Manuel Ugarte from Latin America proclaiming the menace of Yankeeism, a Russian preaching the advent of communism, a Chinese who has never suf- fered intellectual naturalization in the West. There is nothing to equal the institute as a sounding-board for tem- pered discussion of international politics, but a certain cau- tion in its leadership shelters it from the world as it is. ONE HUNDRED NEGRO TENNIS PLAYERS fought for the Rhetta cup at St. Louis in the tenth annual Negro tennis tournament of the United States. Why should these tennis players be segregated in a race tourna- ment? Is national tennis a white man's burden? Why should not the best of the Negro players be entered in the national tournaments at Forest Hills? Many Northern colleges make a contribution to racial understanding by welcoming Negro players in football, baseball, and track; last year the University of Chicago had a Negro tennis player on its team. But in professional baseball, non-col- legiate tennis, and in most other sports Negroes are barred from competition with whites. The major leagues never admit even the most brilliant colored baseball player; the National Lawn Tennis Association is made up exclusively of white members. Even in pugilism Dempsey has been able to use the color line to evade meeting his most powerful rival, who happens to be a Negro. The colored athletes have only one alternative, to develop sporting events of their own. There are already Negro baseball circuits throughout the country; near Westfield, New Jersey, the Negroes of New York have their own country club and golf course, and a new club is opening near Boston.

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162 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 The Tropics as Factories THE conquest of the tropics means the extension of the factory system to them. Europeans and North Ameri- cans, having reared a civilization on a basis of factories and slums (but not having half solved the problems raised by either), are pushing this method into the plains and jungles of the torrid zone. The character of the factory differs but the system remains the same. In the temperate zone a factory is usually inclosed by walls and a roof and is devoted to the production of a fabricated article; in the tropics it is given to the raising of a natural product and often is not even surrounded by a fence. But in each case there is a large investment of capital, corporate manage- ment, the displacement of handiwork by machinery wherever it is possible; there is a curtailment of opportunity and inde- pendence for a majority of the workers; there is the stan- dardized life of the automaton — company houses, company stores, company schools, company theaters, sometimes even company brothels. The extension of the factory system to the tropics is the result of the difference between the agriculture of the tem- perate and the torrid zones. The diversified farming of the United States has grown through individual effort and ownership. We are still essentially a country of small farms and farmers. Some look to factory methods as the solution of our present agricultural distress, but so far it is mostly talk. Meanwhile factory methods are already an actuality in the tropics. The crops of those regions seem to call for larger-scale production while the preliminary attack upon the land calls for the expenditure of large capital and the application of the best modern technology and science. Parched and desolate plains have been irrigated and made green with rustling sugar-cane; dark, tangled, steaming jungles have been turned into waving banana groves. There is something magnificent about this present-day assault upon the tropics. As recently as a quarter of a century ago many eminent authorities believed that the white man must stick to the temperate zone. Benjamin Kidd declared that the tropics were not for the Caucasian. Yet we are there. The building of the Panama Canal was a great object lesson. Since then no tropical climate or disease has been viewed as beyond the conquest of modern medicine or sanitation; no miasmatic swamp or insect- ridden forest has been regarded as impossible of subdual by twentieth-century capital and engineering working hand in hand. During the twentieth century the United Slates has as- sumed a foremost place in the economic subjugation of the tropics. Tobacco we have long bought there, and in recent years American companies have acquired vast plantations and large control in the Caribbean and the Philippines. The ever increasing demand for sugar has brought still more important changes. Hawaii and Cuba have been planted acre upon acre with cane; they ooze syrup down to the very seashore. The arid south coast of Porto Rico has been re- deemed with giant irrigation works and made sweet with sugar, while the rich, moist acres of Santo Domingo are to- day giving way before the plow to rise in fields of luxu- riant cane. Then there is the banana. The West India islands can no longer supply the demand, and the United Fruit Company owns enormous tracts of land, railways, docks, and — almost — governments along the low, steaming east coast of Central America. Most recently of all has come the stupendous call for rubber. Harvey Firestone has already begun the exploitation of Liberia, and an insistent campaign is rising for large-scale production in the Philip- pines. Carmi Thompson, who theoretically is in the islands to report on conditions to President Coolidge, is practically using his visit — or allowing it to be used — in the interest of a raucous propaganda for the exploitation of the Philippines rubberwise by American interests, even if native wishes and all our promises have to go by the board. There is something terrible as well as magnificent in the entrance of the new conquistadores of the tropics. Our attack upon humanity has been as ruthless and invincible as that upon nature. Native life in the tropics has commonly been poor and squalid but it has been warmly human. We have brought it medicine and sanitation for our own self- preservation and for economic reasons, but we have also brought it standardized ugliness and peonage. We havj turned men and women from a fairly free and easy existence through desultory agriculture into wage slaves with so- phisticated ambitions and vices. We have brought the drab- ness and soddenness of the mill town or the coal mine among the palm fronds of the Caribbean and the Pacific. In Hawaii we have even dispossessed the native Kanakas and imported the more industrious and economically profitable Japanese. Probably the most serious of all the consequences of the introduction of the factory system to the tropics is the elimination of the small landowner and producer — the swallowing of his holdings by large plantations and his own downfall into a wage-worker and a renter. In Porto Rico individual farms decreased in number by about one third from 1910 to 1920; those of fewer than ten acres fell by one-half. The republic of Haiti, as a measure of self-pro- tection, had a law against the alien ownership of land; the American Occupation, in the interest of industrial exploita- tion, repealed the measure. The profit-making industrial system of the United States, in its newest and largest-scale manifestations, is going head-on into the tropics. Thus far there is no stop- ping it, and just in those places where there is most need of limitation and control by government such authority is usually weakest and most corrupt. But there is hope that as the newer, more democratic forms of industrialism make way in the United Stales they will penetrate also to our tropical frontiers. As the cooperative movement, unioniza- tion, and employee control grow, they will make themselves felt. Also the increasing interest in city planning, garden villages, and public parks may lead to some effort toward beauty as well as efficiency in our tropical factories. Most hope of all, perhaps, is to be placed in the rise of intelli- gent proletarianism in Mexico and China— far-reaching examples — and the tendency toward self-protective nation- alism in the Caribbean and the Pacific. For if beauty, in- dividuality, and humanity are to survive in the tropics, they can do so only through an insistent desire for them on the part of the native inhabitants.

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation Must Colleges Be Treadmills? WHY is it that so many college professors at forty are sick of their jobs? There arc hundreds in that pathetic state. They are not the failures or the freaks. As professional ability goes most of them are able; they have at least been through the mill and know how their work. What tries and discourages them is the work itself, the conditions under which they live what is lightly called an intellectual life, and the gloomy outlook ahead. They have spent half their lives and most of their earnings to equip themselves for what they imagined was a career, only to find, when the coveted professorship has been at- tained, that the game seems curiously out of proportion to the candle. Dr. J. F. Kirkpatrick, whose recent book entitled "The American College and its Rulers" contains some plain speaking, finds the explanation of the unhappy situation in the fact that the average American college is neither free nor frank, and in addition is bossed. The professor teaches and studies, but he does not control. The student is offered a bewildering variety of information, much of it useful as a species of intellectual small change, but he is rarely taught or even encouraged to think. The typical college has de- veloped the non-resident board of trustees, few of whose members know anything or learn anything about educa- tion, and legal trusteeship has produced the all-powerful president. In the face of this embattled authority, in- trenched in precedent and backed by certain legal sanc- tions, the faculty has become a body of hired men engaged in tasks about which it may indeed be consulted, but over which it has, in the last resort, no real control whatever. What the students think about it is commonly a matter of indifference; they are in college to take — or leave — what is offered, and in the worship of the sacred curriculum to find salvation for their souls. The result is exactly what should be expected. There is a mass of academic business, but little genuine academic freedom. Someone has remarked that academic freedom does not mean freedom to be a damned fool, but the line which separates what today is called foolishness from what tomorrow may be adjudged good sense is perilously hard to draw, and the all-powerful president and his businesslike trustees usually deem it better to play safe. A so-called consensus of the competent, which being interpreted means a consensus of those in power, shadows the college like a hoodoo, perpetuating outgrown methods because innovations are feared, applauding cheap personal popularity over scholarship because it draws students and funds, and stunt- ing research because research does not pay. Is it a wonder that such a college so often ceases to offer an inviting ca- reer? A certain security of tenure, with a pension when one is about to die, it does afford to those who discreetly hold their tongues and watch their steps, but with faculty influence checked at every point by presidents and boards we get only a treadmill culture labeled preparation for life. Mr. Kirkpatritik agrees with those who think that the authority of rulers has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished, but when he comes to reform he falls under the spell of the hopeful tone. College control, he adjures us, ought to be more democratic, and he even sug- gests that the spirit of youth in college halls may be en- listed by allowing student representatives to sit in faculty meetings. Theoretically, it would seem, the faculty should be the college, leaving to the trustees the fiduciary function of caring for the funds and keeping the property tit; and student opinion is entitled to respect. There are two weighty reasons, however, why no such changes are likely soon to come about in any American college now in being. The first is that the privately endowed college is legally a trust, and the average board of trustees may be expected to hesitate a Ion,',' time before it turns over the expenditure of funds and the management of property to a faculty which, as such, has no legal existence and hence no legal responsi- bility. The second is that faculties have been so long in servitude that they are hardly in the least agreed about what should be taught or how teaching should be done. A body of scholars who do not know their own minds is a dangerous aggregation to turn loose with money to spend. Nevertheless, the salvation of the college seems to lie in the directions which Dr. Kirkpatrick suggests. We need to get rid of the curriculum obsession, and convert the college into a democratic community in which teachers and stu- dents work together at things intellectually worth while. Some day, perhaps, a wise man of exceptional solvency, despairing of making over any existing institution, will pro- vide an endowment, assemble the nucleus of a competent faculty by the grace of God, turn the whole thing over to professors and students, and then go abroad. The experi- ment would cost much less than setting up a new chemical plant in preparation for the next war, and the few explo- sions that might occur as a result of academic careless- ness or inexperience would be sure to do less lasting harm. The Size of the Sky HARLOW SHAPLEY, the brilliant young astronomer who at forty is director of the Harvard Observatory and has been director for five years, has written one of the most satisfactory essays in popular science we have seen for a long while. It is called "Starlight," and it ap- pears as the second member of a series of short books which takes its name from James Harvey Robinson's "The Hu- manizing of Knowledge" (Doran). Mr. Shapley's task was not to write about man, or even about "his" world. It was to describe the universe of in- organic matter which only of late generations science has begun to measure with appropriate and adequate instru- ments. Here is a theme which often has been used to mystify and shock the average man. We have heard a great deal, and too frequently in grandiose terms, about the vast- ness of the heavens. We are used to being told how small man is in comparison with those systems of suns which burn so far away that only their light ever reaches us, and then after thousands of years of dizzy travel through space. Mr. Shapley, going very directly about his business of ex- position, gives us thick and fast the best theories and the known facts. Beyond that no rhetoric, no celestial fire- works. And the result is something more impressive to the imagination than the celestial rhetoricians have ever given us. With eager energy, and with a supply of that learning without which popular science is worse than useless, Mr. Shapley adventures with us among the millions of stars and

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164 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 groups of stars which he and his coworkers over the earth are busy these days examining. He bothers very little with the figures — light years, parsecs, and kiloparsecs — cus- tomarily invoked to stun us. Most of them leave us cold because we cannot take them in. His is a better method of ^ showing the size of the sky. It is the method of implica- tion. He tells us what is going on in space, or at least what the most modern of astronomers have reason to be- lieve is going on; and from the picture of this activity emerges another picture which we ourselves create — a pic- ture all the more appalling because no mere pen has drawn it. It is a furiously whirling and changing universe to which we are conducted. The stars are in their places, but they are doing mysterious things there, and these places are paths or orbits of inconceivable magnitude. Pairs of stars are revolving about each other and periodically eclipsing each other. New ones are flaming up; old ones are fading out. Millions of dwarf stars are already cold and hence invisible; no one knows how many dead, black giants are obscuring live worlds behind them. Regular gradations of color indicate a regular evolution in temperature. Stars be- gin large and red, as Antares, with a diameter of 400,- 000,000 miles, is now; they shrink to yellow and grow hot- ter; they burn for i while pure blue; they grow yellow again, dull down to red, and at last go out. Our sun, which is one of the dwarfs, is in its decline. The great galaxy, however, of which it is a remote ami minute part will con- tinue for billions of years to show its white ring around the sky to any beings who may be here or elsewhere to sec it and call it perhaps something else than the Milky Way. It will continue to draw into itself the great star clusters and distribute them — though Mr. Shapley does not know whether it will ever affect the faint, star cloud called N. G. C. 6822, which is about 4,500,000,000 000,000,000 miles dis- tant from us. He does after all indulge in a few figures. He remarks that the probable diameter of our galaxy is 1,800,000.000,000,000,000 miles. And he does after all indulge in a little pardonable re- flection upon the place of man in this universe. Mr. Bryan would have been bewildered to hear the evolution he mus- tered all his waning powers to fight dismissed as an incident: Evolution is not limited chiefly to the relation of man to his anthropoid forebears. That phase is one of the minor steps in the development that pervades the whole universe. In truth, we cannot restrain the feeling that the whole of organic development ... is trivial and transient from the standpoint of the development of the material cosmos. Mr. Bryan would never have appreciated the restraint with which Mr. Shapley's conclusion upon the significance of man is worded: The future history of the stellar system appears, in- deed, thoroughly independent of our temporary terrestrial career. Man's station in this scheme is not too flattering — an animal among many, precariously situated on the crust of a planetary fragment that obeys the gravitational im- pulses of one of the millions of dwarf stars that wander in remote parts of a galactic system. His place in the uni- verse ... is unimpressive; and his importance in some non- material way is a subject not suited to scientific research or speculation. We leave the subject here, noting that man's role as an investigator and would-be interpreter of the uni- verse is surpassingly fascinating, whether or not it is cosmically significant. The Buncombe of Bigness THERE has bobbed up again in the newspapers a project which has been broached at intervals for a number of years — that of enlarging New York City by creating some nine square miles of new land at the foot of Manhattan Island, filling in the upper bay from the Battery to Staten Island, and leaving only narrow channels along the Brooklyn and New Jersey shores for the passage of vessels. Prob- ably nothing will ever come of the idea — unless influential and insistent real-estate interests buy the ocean and whoop the project up. The lack of such barkers in this instance is more certainly deterring than the engineering and financial obstacles or the difficulty of obtaining the necessary sanction of the States of New York and New Jersey and the federal Government. In this discussion there is a typical American assump- tion that it would be desirable to enlarge downtown New York if possible. A consulting engineer, in advocating the scheme, argues that people and industries are being crowded out of Manhattan ; the new land, he says, would greatly increase real-estate "values" in Brooklyn and Staten Island; and by the expenditure of $400,000,000 at least $5,000,- 000,000 would be "created." We wish we believed that peo- ple and industries were being crowded out of Manhattan, but census-takers seem to find that new inhabitants are rushing in faster than old ones are going out. Why do people cling to the pathetic notion that a big city is better than a small one and a bigger city is superior to a big one? It is doubtless a legacy of the boom psychology of American development that this view is more pronounced in the United States than anywhere else in the world. It would be heresy to suggest in any chamber-of-commerce meeting in any city in the United States that a condition of equi- librium or even restriction might be better than continual growth. Is there more "prosperity" for the majority in a great city than in a small or medium-sized one? Growth means chances for new business, but it also means more persons seeking to exploit them. India has a vast population; are its people happier than Siam's? Is the average German bet- ter off than the average Dane, an Iowan poorer than a New Yorker? For a few persons there are better chances of great wealth in a large than in a small community, but for many there is a certainty of more acute poverty. From every other than a business standpoint most of our cities have surely grown— -are growing — too fast. Overgrowth is behind our most serious problems in connection with transit, housing, almost everything. In New York City, especially, with its intolerable street congestion and inadequate trans- portation, it would be madness to increase the strain right central point. What New Yorkers with vision and intelligence should work for is not the massing of more millions of people on Manhattan Island but a scattering — and perhaps a segregation — of industry and population in outlying districts. And the problem is not much different in other cities. Real-estate speculation is about the only business that thrives through mere bigness. "Bigger and better" is a slogan that has gone too long unchallenged. It is com- monly a contradiction and an impossibility. The real issue is bigger or better.

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation L65 lere in "These Frenchmen claim the} can'l pay us back use they have no money.' "Why don't they pawn those cro ik^S^-^. t_ 1^-*— - -

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166 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 How America Fools Herself Bv LOUIS FISCHER Berlin, July 22 ADD 863,000,000 which England receives in 1926-1927 in reparation payments to $10,000,000 collected from Italy under the Volpi-Churchill agreement to $20,000,000 more from France under the Caillaux-Churchill agreement, and deduct the total from the $160,000,000 which Great Britain annually pays into the United States Treasury. The result is $67,000,000 which Englishmen must actually take from their pockets to meet the obligations Baldwin accepted in Washington. The mighty British lion groans under this burden, and London experts tell you that it fur- nishes one of the explanations of Greal Britain's economic straits. It will require the application of tons of pressure be- fore the Chamber of Deputies approves the French debt- funding treaty with the United States; a Paris daily calls the Berenger pact "onereux, dangereux, immoral" because it involves $30,000,000 in 1926-1927. This sum plus the $20,000,000 paid to England makes $50,000,000, as against $150,000,000 which 1 ranee will obtain during that year in reparation payments. In other words, Britain sighs when she pays $07,000,- 000, France complains though debt payments yield her a surplus of $100,000,000, but the Dawes Plan taps Germany to the tune of $285,000,000 in 1926-1927 and more than double that figure each year after 1928. This is Germany's penalty not for starting the war but for losing it. Assuming the ratification of the Berenger-Mellon accord, the Allies v\. ., .n 1927-1928, be paying the United States about $230,000,000. And in the same year Germany will pay the Allies about $417,000,000. In reality, then, Germany is funding the Allied debts to America. Germany pays. After notes, conferences, bayonets, and Ruhr invasions failed to collect marks, the Dawes scheme is accomplishing that worthy purpose with a thor- oughness which is as cruel as it is futile. The account is a simple one. Unless it wreck its cur- rency and unbalance its budget, a nation can in the long run transfer money abroad only on the basis of a foreign trade surplus. Now, the recent report of Mr. S. Parker Gilbert, Agent General for Reparation Payments, covering the nine months from September 1, 1925, to May 31, 1926, shows that during that period Germany had an active trade balance of 17,800,000 marks. But in the same nine months Gilbert transferred abroad sonic 600,000,000 marks, which leaves a deficit of approximately 582,200,000 marks. Germany's "invisible exports" are greater than her "invisi- ble imports," so that this deficit is even more serious, but it is bad enough at 582 millions. How did Germany make up the loss? By borrowing 850,000,000 marks in foreign countries, most of it in the United Stales. America is thus financing reparation payments, while Germany piles up a huge debt on which interest at 8 per cent is charged her. The money borrowed in Wall Street goes to London, Paris, Rome, etc., in the form of Dawes annuities, is there heavily discounted, and then wanders back to Wall Street and Washington earmarked "Allied Debt Payments." The sooner Americans realize that this silly circle is self-decep- tion the sooner they will be prepared to listen to common sense on the question of cancelation. These loans gradually enslave an increasingly large part of German industry to American capital and burden the country with a debt the interest on which alone is stupendous. Moreover, they are demoralizing the entire German economy. During the last thirty months the United States lent Germany close to $500,000,000, says Secretary Mellon. Much of this gigantic total is now changing hands on the bourse. The stock market blossoms, and credit is cheap and easy to find because the crisis of the last eight months does not diminish. Factories are idle, production fails, and industry cannot absorb much money. So the money is used for bourse speculation which is often misread as prosperity. Nor is the increase in savings- bank accounts a trustworthy index of conditions. The Minister of Finance hints, and a brilliant expert in the Ministry of Finance tells me plainly, that a large, if not the larger, part of these deposits represents sums borrowed in America by states and municipalities for power stations, gas works, etc., and placed by these on savings account until the funds will be required for operations. The presence of much foreign gold in Germany thus prevents the reparation situation from growing critical and creates an impression of smooth progress which is illusory. But when Churchill's statement in the House of Commons immediately after the signing of the Franco- British debt settlement explicitly envisages a reduction of reparation payments it is clear that such a consummation might not be objectionable even to the two countries involved. Indeed, there is reason to suspect that England is pressing for a revision of the Dawes Plan, since it ^vould inevitably lead to a reexamination of the entire debt problem. Preliminary pourparlers have perhaps com- menced already. One may never know just why, about a fortnight ago, Governor Norman of the Bank of England, Governor Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. and Mr. Gilbert suddenly decided, quite independently of course, that the climate of Antibes on the French Riviera was urgently necessary for their health, and by accident reserved rooms in the same hotel. In this connection the European trip of Secretary Mellon and J. P. Morgan naturally becomes the center of varied rumors and combinations. The foreign Dawes instalment collectors in Mr. Gil- bert's office are optimistic, or at least they say if;:"- are, and serve to their visitors large portions of hopefulness based presumably on the conviction that within five or ten years and with the aid of foreign loans Germany will be sufficiently restored to meet from her own means the obligations imposed on her by the Dawes experts. The German Ministry of Finance, however, paints a dark pic- ture. The prevailing opinion is that Germany will not be in a position to pay the two billion marks which will be required of her in 1927-1928. Next January the question will be answered definitely. All depends on the unemploy- ment curve. Germany today counts 1,742.000 who receive o dole plus about 200,000 who obtain aid under the poor

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation 167 law, and then there are 700,000-odd oil part time d the fact that many hands find work during the summer on the fields and in construction enterprises. If the num- ber of the jobless rises next winter, or even if it remains stationary — and this will be clear by January — Germany will be unable to pay the full amount of reparal best she will raise one billion marks, and for tin creditors would have to declare a partial moratorium or give the Government a loan or revise the plan. Now, in . debt-enveloped world moratoria are dangerous precedents, while the country is already bent too low under the of raising interest and amortization on previous make a new billion-mark loan a profitable or ra1 undertaking-. Remains the modification of the Dawes Plan. The Dawes Plan is predicated on the rehabilitation of the German economy. The speed of this rehabili however, has not kept pace with the steep rise in annuities schedule. This is a German as well as a world problem, and the difficulties are: 1. Unemployment is here to stay as it is in En and unemployment is merely the most evident reflection of a sub-normal industry ; 2. Germany has already paid more than she could afford and she has reduced the standard of living of the masses below a decent limit to do so. Wages and th< nomic level of the workers are so low, and the amount of work required of them so high, that to tighten the v order to raise more funds for reparations would I J. M. Keynes has said, to court serious political disturbances. 3. Germany's industrial revival depends, in the final analysis, on the extension of her foreign trade. But such development is hampered by protective tariff walls and im- poverished markets everywhere. Industry could probably absorb some of the free money and labor in the country if it could find buyers abroad. Increased domestic consumption would also make matters better. But neither of tl ditions exists. The benefits of the Dawes scheme must not be denied. It took the reparations problem out of the hands of generals and put it where general staffs and French politicians could not touch it. With the efficient Gilbert at the helm, default on the part of Germany can only be due to her incapacity to pay rather than to lack of good-will. The Dawes confirmed the currency stabilization, paved the way to a balanced budget, and made possible the influx of huge sums of money in the form of foreign loans. In a word, it pro- vided a breathing space. It is largely for this reason that so many Germans are reconciled to outside control of their customs, finances, railroads, and, in part, of their indus- tries. It is largely for this reason, and because tribulation- have dulled their pride, that Germans swallow insults such as the classification by Sir Andrew McFadyean, Commis- sioner of Controlled Revenues, of coffee, teas, cocoa, and tobacco as "luxury articles." This is the tone which Sir Andrew's countrymen assume in Egypt and India, yet the Germans do not protest. To this moral disadvantage must be added far greater economic disadvantages. Despite the foreign loans which they have received, the federal and state governments increased their taxes in order to meet their share of the Dawes annuities; despite foreign loans to trusts and corporations, wages have not risen nor has production. The cost of living is 140 per cent of pre-war. The pawned railroad system charges higher freight and passenger rates, thus damaging business, but cannot under- taki instruction operations b< must furnish almost half of the annuity; finally, the excisi BCCO, and beer which is determined from Mr. Gilbert's office has mounted upwards. Mr. Gilbert reports that have gone up and imports down, and since this elopmenl coincided with a diminution of domestic pro- duction the net resu reduced consumption and a lowering of the living of the masses. All th< evils are of course not caused by the Dawes Plan alone, yet without it (and without reparations therefoi -tate of affairs would be much more hopeful. Foreign loans swell Germany's active trade balance and enable Mr. Gilbert to send reparations money to the Allies. They solve the problem of transfers, assuming indefinite borrowing, but they do not solve the problem of the collec- tion of reparations within the country. Sums from abroad flow into savings and other banks or circulate on the bourse or supply doles for the unemployed (this year as much is being paid in doles as in reparations) or are for the improvement of public utilities and the rationaliza- tion of industries. Ultimately these productive uses should redound to the benefit of the average citizen, but as yet he has had no appreciable gain. In fact, industrial rationali- zation, which is occasionally synonymous with the sweating of labor, is responsible for about 30 per cent of the present army of unemployed. Meanwhile, nevertheless, this average citizen must foot the reparations bills. And year after year it will grow worse. That Germany must default in 1928- 1929 when the annuity rises to two and a half billions all Germans are agreed. But many foresee the crash as early as 1927-1928, which means next spring. Conditions in France also play their role. Today France is producing much and "dumping" everywhere. On the other hand, the "flight of the franc" has brought rather large sums of French money into Germany. The time must come when, with the help of a miracle or of a veiled Dawes Plan, France will cease slaughtering ministries and succeed in stabilizing her currency. It may take three months or six months, but some day the franc must stop dropping. There will follow the unavoidable critical readjustment period characterized by reduced production and increased unemployment. France will not need 1,500,000 tons of German reparations coal as she does today, nor will she permit Germans to carry out construction contracts at home or in the colonies while Frenchmen are idle. She will there- fore demand cash from Mr. Gilbert rather than deliveries in kind and contracts. German mines will have to close down and German firms will lose valuable orders. The cash, moreover, will have to be borrowed in America and the interest will be an additional charge to be met by the nation. When Messrs. Morgan, Mellon, Norman, Gilbert, and Strong meet in Paris, therefore, they cannot treat French conditions as an isolated problem. Nor can they deal sepa- rately with the question of reparations or of inter-Allied debts. The franc, debt funding, and reparations are part of a single complex the solution of which this Big Five must supply. Their meeting is proof that under its present system Europe cannot lift herself out of the morass with- out American assistance. America has been lending Ger- many the money to pay the reparations, with which Eng- land— and France, if she pays at all — pay their debts to America. What right solution will the great men devise next?

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188 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 Britain's Midsummer Mood Bv J. RAMSAY MacDONALD London, August J THE result of the Wallsend by-election on July 29 was so staggering that our papers reported it with dif- ficulty and in the intervening three days have been doing their best to induce us to forget it. Nobody in the end ex- pected the Labor Party to lose Wallsend, though at the be- ginning not a few people were rash enough to entertain the hope that that might happen. Our candiate was a woman, and the Tyneside was expected to shy at that; she was a member of the General Council of the Trade Union Con- gress and shared responsibility for calling off the general strike, so there was a chance of the miners (who compose about a fourth of the electorate) and the left tendencies in the Labor movement being cool, if not hostile, to her candidature; moreover, she had not hidden that she was no admirer of Mr. Cook's leadership and did not accept the slogans upon which he was conducting the mining fight. The Labor movement has frequently sacrificed a big victory under the irritation of a smaller immediate grievance, so there were possibilities of trouble when Miss Bondfield was selected as candidate. In the coalition "khaki" election of 1'J18 the Govern ment candidate won the seat by 10,246 votes against 0,835 given to Labor and 3,047 to what was then called a Free Liberal. In 1922 Labor won the seat on a straight vote against a Tory by 10,120 votes to 12,950. At the "red letter" election two years later we kept the seat, again with no Liberal intervening between us and the Tory, by 17,274 to 15,072. At this by-election, a Liberal returned to the lists. As he came from a mining family it was expected that he would cut into the Labor vote and reduce our chances, if not of victory, certainly of a striking one. The result declared was: Miss Bondfield (Labor) 18,800, Mr. Howard (Tory) 9,839, Mr. Curry (Liberal) 4,000. When the figures came over the wires on Thursday afternoon they were hard to believe. A 9,000 majority over the Tory and a 5,000 majority over both the other candidates combined was not only a victory, it was a smash-up. Once again the Liberal candidate had failed to poll one-eighth of the votes and had forfeited his deposit. What is the meaning of this? Wallsend is a typical working-class constituency with a middle-class piece at 'ached to it, a suburb of Newcastle where perhaps 75 per cent of the electors are socially Tories. The bulk of the electors are ship-builders, boilermakers, engineers, miner.-, and the miscellany of general workers that congregate around these trades. The political traditions of the dis- trict were Liberal, tending if anything toward Toryism before the war, and it is doubtful if any Labor candidate except Sir Patrick Hastings, the eminent King's Counsel, would have won it in 1922, or kept it in 1924. It has been badly hit by unemployment. There arc scores of such con- stituencies in the country, some held by us and some losl in 1924 owing to the dishonest use made by the Tories of the "Zinoviev letter." Wallsend, following upon our almost qually astonishing gain at Hammersmith last Whitsuntide, shows that we could get practically the whole of them. The Government has forfeited the confidence of both employers and work-people for its feeble handling of our industrial difficulties and its failure to put energy and businesslike management into its custody of our national interests. If an election were to come now, the only chance the Govern- ment would have of keeping in office would be the social influence of Toryism on wealth and the sections that imitate and follow wealth, together with the support of the more backward rural areas. Its vote would be far short of a half of the electors and its Parliamentary majority, vastly reduced from what it now is — even if it existed at all — would depend solely upon the fact that by the arrangement of our constituencies a minority vote in the country can secure a majority vote in Parliament. With the reduction of the Liberal vote that will not be permanent, however. If it were, alterations, fortunately not necessarily propor- tional representation, would have to be made to obviate it. The interesting revelation of both the Hammersmith and the Wallsend elections, however, is the light they throw upon the results of the general strike. Immediately it was ended the telegraphs and the cables quivered all over the world with the most absurd accounts of how the Govern- ment and the Prime Minister had the country at their feet. In so far as the news was not conscious humbug it was an excited misreading of the situation, and this was shared by some of the Left-Wing sections, as a recent article in The Nation by Mr. Ewer amply shows. Tory partisans who during the general strike had returned to war mentality and propaganda, and communistically inclined observers who thought they saw a glow of fire in the vsky, never un- derstood the strike and went off like automatic rattles when it was ended. It is now about three months since the gen- eral strike terminated and the forecast of its effect which I made in The Nation at the time happened to be right. The genera] strike united the working class and those whose emotional impulses were attached to it as they were never united before, and at the same time threw this massed union into politics. While lawyers and the Government were fussing about the strike being a challenge to the Govern- ment, the community, and the constitution, the people them- selves were showing good, sound common sense. Whether they agreed with the strike or not, they knew what its pur- pose was, they understood the impulse that made it in- evitable, and they praised the moral heave that made it in its spontaneity, its proportion, and its spirit such a sin- gularly enlightening occurrence. The strike raised the ct in which the Labor movement was held, and thou- sands pay homage to it today who were hostile or indif- ferent six months ago. In other words the general strike has strengthened the influence of constitutional forces in Great Britain, has convinced many that industrial condi- tions are bad and ought to be remedied, has intensified the sympathy for Labor, and has laid emphasis upon the view that the political method of change is that which gives greatest guaranties of permanence and the best assurances of a minimum of social inconvenience and suffering. Hence in the municipal elections which have taken place within

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Aug. 25, 1926] Thi- Nation 169 the last two months Labor candidates have won scats where hitherto they had failed, and in the two Parliamentary elec- tions that have been held our vote is in the aggregate 3,717 more than it was at the general election, and the Tory vote has fallen by 9,278. If we take the Liberal vote as opposed to the Government, the anti-government vote has increased by no less a figure than 9.691. In estimating the significance of the increase in our polls at these tw elections it must be remembered that though we lo many seats in 1924, our polls were higher than they had ever been, so that the increases are on a very high vote and not on a low one. Every political sign of the times here points to the thorough discrediting of the Government. Nol only has it come badly through this industrial turmoil, not only have the pious declarations of some of its leaders about good- will in industry (a virtue so sadly needed) become irritants to men who expect fruit from professions, but the general handling of national interests both at home and abroad is causing concern and apprehension. Mr. Churchill's state- ments regarding our indebtedness to the United States is a case in point. There is a very widespread feeling here that the United States is not behaving well regarding the set- tlement of debts, and that if it would show more genial friendship when it considers the burdens we have to bear a result of the war the condition we find ourselves in would lie eased not from charity, which never i our minds, but from comradeship, which might be expected as ilt of our common effort during the war. Neverthe- no suggestion made here by any responsible ii that we should press for a reconsideration of the Baldwin agreement. That we leave to the United States itself. There is, however, general disappointment with the ure that our Government lias cut in the recent exchange of shots between Mr. Churchill and Mr. Mellon, and the clumsy way in which that controversy has been handled is rded as typical of how our Government is transacting delicate national business. The part we have played and are still playing at Geneva is also raising a feeling ol •rust and disquiet. In all quarters and in all parties one sees heads shaken in doubt and hears whispers passed round that the Government has failed and that some chair necessary. The Independent Labor Party has just issued a manifesto calling for a General Election. That is, perhaps, nothing more than a propagandist document. Discontent will have to go far before the country demands that it be allowed to take matters again into its own hands. For the moment, however, confidence is diminishing and the demand for a change is growing. Unless something happens speedily (here will be a political landslide in this country. The New England Farm Comes Back By NELSON ANTRIM CRAWFORD THE American farmer of popular history, of romance, of poetry, of melodrama, of the cartoon even, is the New England farmer. The revolutionists were in large part farmers from this region. It was at Concord, in Massachusetts, that the embattled farmers "fired the shot heard round the world." The rural snow-storms re- counted by Emerson and Whittier obviously occurred in New England. It was New England farmers who used to say "By heck," and the gaunt, bearded figure that still typifies the tiller of the soil in many a cartoon belongs to the Eastern seaboard and has little in common with the agriculturist of regions farther West. Hence New England farming is invested with a sentiment that does not cling to the prairies or the Great Plains, and there are few Americans but have read with sorrow of the abandoned farms of New England. For years it has been usual to ask the question, What can be done to make the farming of New England prosperous again? The answer is that the New England farm is begin- ning to come back. Its history has throughout been eco- nomically determined. The casual observer commonly thinks only of the loss of soil fertility. This, however, is but a small part of the story. It is true that farming in New England long followed the natural-husbandry system, in which nature is depended on to furnish the necessary recuperation for the soil. But much of the soil was never good. It was thin and rocky. The valley farms afforded a living but the hill farms probably never paid a labor income equal in purchasing power to ordinary factory wages today, though they afforded social conditions in many re- spects superior to those under which wage-earners com- monly live. In numerous cases, whether on hill or valley farms, farmers also had trades, such as shoe-making, watch- making, and cabinet-making. They were not wholly dependent on agriculture for a living. The industrial revolution and the consequent special- ization in industry brought many of the better artificers from the country into the growing cities. Canals and rail- roads made transportation easy and cheap, and led to the production of crops in those regions where they were most profitable. When the more productive lands to the West were made accessible they competed disastrously with New England farms. Finally, the invention of farm machinery, adapted best to great level stretches, gave Western farms a further advantage. Some farmers moved to the cities, some moved westward. Abandoned farms were the result. Much greater than the proportion of farm abandon- ment in New England was the reduction in the acreage devoted to crops. This acreage diminished 22 per cent from 1880 to 1920. Some land formerly devoted to crops was, under the pressure of Western competition, allowed to revert to woodland and pasture, but the fact that the smallest decrease, 2.4 per cent, occurred in Maine, and the heaviest decreases, 36, 42, and 57 per cent, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, suggests that the growth of cities, with resultant development of suburbs and de- mand for parks, golf links, and other recreational facilities, was a more conspicuous factor. The actual number of idle farms in New England is now estimated at about 10 per cent of the total. This is not a large proportion in the light of American agricul- tural practice. In the dairy States and the Corn Belt, where farming is the outstanding industry, nearly all farms are worked; but in parts of the South and of the Far West

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170 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 the proportion of unworked farms is very high, reaching 30 per cent in Montana and Wyoming and 19 per cent in Georgia. Indeed, the last five years, a period of perhaps unprece- dented agricultural depression, have had upon agricultural New England an effect surprising to many. While in other parts of the country, especially single-crop regions, there has been a tendency to abandon agriculture for urban pur- suits, New England, with small farms and a more varied farm system, has increased in number of farms, in farm population, and in land utilization. The increases, it is true, are slight, but they are the first gains shown since 1880, with the exception of a 1 per cent increase in number of farms (accompanied, however, by a decrease in acreage devoted to crops) between 1890 and 1900. There are various reasons for the change. For one thing freight rates are high, and on bulky commodities such as farm products represent a considerable proportion of the cost to the consumer. Nearness to market, which is characteristic of New England farming, therefore makes up in part for the greater productivity of Western agri- culture. This phase of the situation is accentuated by the lower prices of New England farms, which thus do not require so large an acre return. Because of climatic conditions New England wfll prob- ably never produce enough wheat or corn for her own use. She cannot compete with Western farms in these products even on her own market. She may, however, grow enough oats, barley, and rye for local consumption, which she per- haps can afford to do in view of the cost of transporting a bushel of these products from the Middle West. The production of hay, silage, and forage crops in New England is steadily increasing. The large industrial cities offer a good market for milk, and freight rates are as effec- tive as an embargo in keeping bulky crops like hay from being brought in from the West to feed dairy cattle. The carload rate on hay from Chicago to Boston is 59 V2 cents -a hundred pounds; the rate from Greenfield, in the north- western part of Massachusetts, to Boston is only 21 cents. In a region like New England products can often be taken to market economically without using the railroads at all. The demands of industrial markets are also causing in- creases in fruit- and vegetable-growing and in poultry- raising. Nearly one-fifth of the people of the I live within short shipping distance of New England's farms. Massachusetts and Rhode Island have a larger propo of the crop land in fruit than has any other State e California. In these States and in Maine the proportion of crop land in potatoes and other vegetables is exceeded only b\ that in New Jersey. Specialization in these crops and in poultry production. offers distinct future opportunities, provided modern scien- tific methods are employed and quality products sought. In agriculture, as in other fields, the demand for quality, particularly in the cities, is steadily on the increase. New England farmers may draw a lesson from the well-known experience of Pacific Coast fruit growers and the somewhat less known success of Utah egg producers. The latter, sup- plying graded eggs under the trade name of "Milk White Eggs," find it profitable to ship twj thousand miles to the New York market, where the commodity brings a price exceeded only by eggs from the immediate vicinity of the metropolis. The practice of permitting middlemen to d© the grading and reap the consequent profits results in seri- ous losses to agriculture. New England farmers have favor- able conditions for joining together in the production of standard fruit, vegetables, and poultry products. The ef- fect would be simply to give the farmer a larger share than he now receives of the retail price paid for his products. Steps are already being taken. Brands established by cooperatives in the Nashoba apple district in New Hamp- shire and Massachusetts are meeting with appreciation in the larger New England markets. In 1925 the 20,000 mem- bers of the New England Milk Producers' Association sold more than a billion pounds of milk at prices arrived at through scientific study of costs, supply, demand, and other factors. This association, further, is active in emphasiz- ing butterfat content, in encouraging winter dairying, and in leveling out seasons of surplus and shortage. Residents of the Connecticut Valley, farmers and non-farmers, are uniting to solve the problem of the local tobacco-growing industry, which is faced with a falling demand for the types produced in the valley. A careful survey is in prog- ress, on the basis of which readjustment of the agriculture will be undertaken. In zeal to bring back New England farming care must be taken not to try to restore to cultivation such hill land as is better adapted to timber than to crops. Timber is now a profitable and much-needed product. Some of the land allowed to revert to forest since 1865 is now yielding an annual net return of from three to five dollars an acre. This also affords winter employment. In New England the wood-lot is a proper part of the farm. There, as elsewhere, marginal agricultural lands should not be put into crops. Under present circumstances attempts to farm poor soil as- sure the development of a peasant agriculture, living under hopeless economic and social conditions. New England will never be a great agricultural region. It was such, even comparatively speaking, only when there was little competition. The farms will always be small, though not so small as in the past. Farms of upwards of 100 acres are proving profitable, but the very large farms, 1,000 acres or more, maintained by wealthy city men, have, after increasing in number from 1900 to 1910, diminished rapidly since the latter date. Small farms involve both advantages and disadvantages. Agricultural New England will remain largely free from landlordism. On the other hand, small farms, if efficiently managed, require much hand labor, which commonly, though not necessarily, means lower living conditions. Furthermore, hand agricultural labor is, as a steady thing, distasteful to most Americans. The result is seen in the fact that a fifth of New Eng- land's farms are now operated by the foreign-born, and many more by the sons of the foreign-born. The propor- tion has for years shown a steady increase in all the New England States, with the smallest increase in Maine and the greatest in Connecticut. The two extremes in the total proportions are likewise found in these States. According to the most recent census figures, the proportion of foreign- born farm operators to the total number of farm operators was 9.1 per cent in Maine, 12.8 in New Hampshire, 13 in Vermont, 23 in Rhode Island, 27.9 in Massachusetts, and 33.7 in Connecticut. No figures are available as to the sons of the foreign-born engaged in farming in New England. Farmers of native stock complain that they cannot compete with the "foreigners." In part this complaint is a rationalization of the dislike for innovations of any sort in conservative rural communities. The forei»n-born have un-

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation 1,1 familiar ways. Their families, especially the women, do different, though perhaps no harder, work than the families of native Americans. Somewhat different agricultural ods are employed. Often the foreign-born supplement their farm income by taking in summer boarders of their own race — a practice repugnant to many of the native farmers. The objections of the New Englanders, many of whose fami- lies have lived for generations in the same community, are natural enough. One of the prized advantages of New 1 land has been homogeneity of the population, which is dis- turbed by the influx of Europeans. This is a temporary phase. The farms will gradually pass into the hands of the sons of the foreign-born, as indeed many have already passed, and these young people are as American in their viewpoint, habits, and talk as any native. They wear American-made clothes, carry American foun- tain pens, talk American slang, cheer American politicians, and patronize American bootleggers. In their farm prac- tice they are likely to follow more modern methods than the farmers whose remote ancestors settled the region. They employ labor-saving devices. They operate larger farms than did their fathers. Fortunately, they are not real-es speculators — they do not amass great tracts of land to hold for a rise in value; but they obtain if possible the size of farm unit which will yield the most satisfactory annual return, and this is somewhat larger than the old-time New England farm. These farmers, too, tend to be less individualistic than typical rural Americans. They take an active part in co- operative farm organizations, which are proving increas- ingly important to agricultural prosperity. Cooperative marketing organizations, if well managed, will be economi- cally profitable, reducing the spread between the price re- ceived by the farmer and the price paid by the consumer, and experience, notably in Denmark, shows that standards of living rise under a system of agricultural cooperatives. Already, though still relatively young, farmers' cooperatives in the United States are turning toward stimulation of edu- cation and social life. Another development of agriculture and rural life in New England is found in the purchase and use of small suburban farms by factory employees and other city work- ers. The automobile has made this possible. For fifteen miles around Worcester, Massachusetts, farm after farm of this type is furnishing financial returns while affording a more wholesome home life than the owners could obtain in the town. New England, it is estimated, now has 10,000 suburban farms. This manifestly adapts to contemporary conditions the old New England practice of carrying on farming and a trade at the same time, and offers possibilities for the reestablishment of the nucleated village with its opportunities for communal life. Nothing is more to be desired in American rural life than the restoration of a real communal life. New England may offer the opportunity. It will not be the same type of life as existed in the early nineteenth century; husking bees and quilting parties are gone forever except as artificially revived as quaint amusements. For that matter, one need not accept "Desire Under the Elms" as a literal picture of nineteenth-century life in rural New England to realize that not all in that region was truth or beauty. If a communal life develops in rural New England, it will be better, not worse, than what preceded. For under present circum- stances it cannot develop at all except on the basis of an agriculture that rewards fairly those engaged in it, and of cooperation on the part of farm people. Bolshevism in China? By LEWIS S. GANNETT KARAKHAN sits in Peking in the North of China, and Borodin in Canton in the South. Karakhan is the Soviet Ambassador to the Chinese Republic; Borodin is adviser to the Canton Government, holding his appoint- ment from the national congress of the Kuomintang Party which dominates Canton; but both are Russian agents, paid from Moscow, and both are able, energetic men. What are they doing? Are they trying to sovietize China? Karakhan is an Armenian, born in Tiflis, Georgia, only 37 years ago; a revolutionary in his school-days, he was forced to flee to Siberia; in Harbin he served a prison term in 1910, in Vladivostok in 1912, in Petrograd in 1915 (for opposition to the war) ; but he was never outside the bor- der's of Russia until he was named Minister to Poland in 1921. He reached Peking in Septemb" in nine months he had negotiated a treaty with China which made Russia the most popular foreign nation among the younger generation and himself the official dean of the Diplomatic Corps, and in general had created more stir than most diplomats do in a lifetime. He is a born actor, resp< to his audience, with quick, mobile gestures of his almost feminine hands. His lips are full; his nose somewhat hooked; his eyes gleam behind thick octagonal eyeglasses; his hair is already slightly grayed, but his pointed beard, shaved to a sharp line on the cheeks, is thick and brown. He, most foreigners believe, is the fountainhead of all the recent troubles in China, with thousands of paid agents among the students and workers. "Propaganda?" he said to me one day. "Of course I do propaganda. But I don't have to pay for it. Why should I pay students and professors to say what they want to say anyway? Paid propagandists are never any good; how can a man stir others unless he has the fire of sin- cerity in his own breast? I spoke last week at one of the universities, and my speech was all propaganda — and so was your Silas Strawn's when he spoke at Tsinghua; last summer, when student delegations flooded Peking, I re- ceived them all, fed them just such tea and cakes as I am offering you, and talked to them. That was propaganda." He chuckled. "It was good propaganda too, especially when those same students went to your American Legation and were received by a third assistant under secretary who was obviously in a hurry to get away from them so that he could play golf. It was propaganda last week when we lowered our Embassy flag to half-mast on the anniversary of Sun Yat-sen's death, while no other legation remembered to honor the first President of China. They are fools, fools! They miss their chances — and then they think I have to pay for my propaganda!" What Russia wants in China, Karakhan said, is "a

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The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 strong, independent China." "We are the only Power that really supports the Nationalist movement," he insisted. "The others say they want a strong government, but they refuse to abandon their unequal-treaty privileges until China is strong — and of course she never will be strong until she has thrown overboard those treaties. We have proved our sincerity by our actions; we have renounced the unequal treaties. It's not idealism; it's just sense. A strong, independent China will naturally be our friend. Inevitably she will be against imperialism, which is every- where our enemy. She will need foreign capital — she can- not develop without it — but, like Russia, she will not want to grant special privileges and control to the financial powers that lend her money. And in that fight Russia is her only possible friend. The facts fight with us; China's struggle for emancipation brings her every day closer to us. No wonder they are afraid of us; the vision of a strong China close to a strong Russia is enough to make the coloniz- ing Powers shudder. That's why they stick to their treaties." (As 1 look back over my notebooks I find an interview with an American official on the same day that I talked with Karakhan. These phrases rise to punctuate Karakhan's argument: "The Nationalist wants to deal with theories; we have to deal with facts, and the treaties exist." "We don't want to wipe out Japanese interests by a too high customs tariff in China." "The Powers don't want free money to come into the hands of the present Peking Gov- ernment; they don't trust it." "Sentiment is no use. You can't honestly argue that the Chinese have any deserts they have been so absolutely immoral in their domestic and -national relations.") Karakhan scoffs at the idea of sovietizing China. "China is in a very hopeful stage." he told me. "You may read of civil war in the newspapers, but colossal historic- forces are at work beneath the surface. And if you want to know what the result will be, look at Canton." I had looked at Canton, and seen there the things which cause the Constitutional Defense League to describe it as "a full-fledged soviet government." In Canton, for more than a year a Strike Committee maintained a boy- cott of British goods; the century-old foreign hospital has been closed because its employees were not unionized; the foreigners live on sufferance, and the students in the mis- sionary schools are currently described as "running-dogs of imperialism." I had seen union headquarters decorated with pictures of Lenin and Trotzky; walls pasted with lurid anti-foreign posters of obvious Russian inspiration; Rus- sian officers drilling Chinese cadets, Russian advisers serv- ing in half a dozen government departments — although General Chiang Kai-shek summarily ousted, in March, a score of them whom he thought too bumptious. I knew that Russia had lent money to the Cantonese to help them build their army and establish their Nationlist government, and I had talked with Borodin, the tall, dark, slow-spoken Russian who in three years has won for himself a position of curious authority with the Chinese, and with the load- ing "Communists" of Canton. Tarn Ping-san, for instance. Tarn is a veteran re- volutionist reminding one of Hippc'yte Havel, the amiable anarchist who used to have the reputation of being the best cook in Greenwich Village. "Communism is a long way off," Tarn said, "because China is economically so back- ward. But the road to communism lies through China's national emancipation. Our Nationalist movement is to us what the labor movement is to the West — and it is the working class in the most developed parts of China which leads the Nationalist movement here. For the present we have to cooperate with the petty bourgeoisie and the mili- tarists. But it will be a long fight, and in its course class lines will develop. How the class struggle will work out we cannot yet tell." Indeed they cannot. I talked long with many so-called Communists — both older men and passionate young stu- dents who make Sun Yat-sen and Lenin their twin gods, and spend their vacations (often their study months too) touring the country to rouse the villages against the im- perialists— and they never seemed more than very intense and earnest Nationalists. Of the struggle against foreign capitalists they could and would talk in fierce terms; but of class struggle among Chinese they had small conception. I talked too with leaders, both Chinese and foreign, in the well-financed anti-Russian movements which center about the British-owned North China Daily News of Shanghai, and I was never able to understand the basis for either fear or hope of communism in China. Two factors, absent in China, made the bolshevik revolution in Russia possible. One was the network of rail- roads centering in Moscow. The coast regions, accessible to the anti-communist foreign Powers, dropped away; but Moscow, the railroad center, controlled the continental mass of Russia. China has no railroad centers; its great cities are all on the coasts, accessible to Western gunboats, and independent of each other. Canton, Shanghai, Hankow, Peking, Mukden — each has its own government. With the Western Powers in full control of Hongkong, Shanghai, and Dairen, established in Tientsin and Hankow, patrolling the Yangtze, and administering one quarter of Peking, the unification of China is difficult enough under any circum- stances; it would be ten times more difficult to unite it for an economic principle and system of government remote from Chinese practice and tradition. Furthermore, China has no class-conscious farmers. Its rice-and-cabbage peasantry live close to the starvation line (the average farm in some regions is under one acre), and doubtless would gladly revolt if they saw anything to revolt against. The Russian peasant worked in sight of a landlord who obviously lived in relative luxury; and when the Bolsheviks, alone among the Russian parties, said "Take the land" they won the peasants, for the crucial moment, to their support. But the wealthy Chinese live in the cities, often under foreign protection in the foreign concessions; except, perhaps, in Anhwei, China has few great landed estates. Wealth is concealed. In the Canton and Yangtze deltas, to be sure, where the soil is rich and the market cities close, land rentals are oppressively high, and wherever water must be artificially supplied for irrigation — which re- i capital — absentee landlordism, with its attendant evils, enters, and peasant class consciousness begins. Some of the orthodox Moscow economists, who are professional prophets of communism, build vast hopes upon this peasant proletariat; but despite the success of the Canton Govern- ment in organizing peasant unions to support it in that province and the spontaneous appearance of peasant self- defense organizations in soldier-ridden Honan and Shensi, I saw scant reason to believe in their permanence. Peasants and farmers are the hardest class in the world to organize — largely because their class enemy is not visible. The great

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation it:; mass of China lives on as it has lived for untold centuries, untouched and unaware of the industrial contacts which are revolutionizing the self-conscious port cities. China's revo- lutions— dynastic, nationalist, or economic — will receive little either of effective aid or opposition from the peasant masses. Russia's real contribution to the Chinese Revolution is a method of party organization. The Canton Govern- ment, like the Moscow Government, is ruled by the "Poli- tical Bureau" — a sort of executive committee — of a poli- tical party, which in Canton is Sun Yat-sen's old Kuomin- tang, rejuvenated under Russian expert guidance. This party now has nearly half a million members in all China; it governs Canton, and has a certain influence in Feng Yu- hsiang's, the "Christian general's," territory. Where it holds power it rules as a party dictatorship— and this tomes as near as anything in China today to political democracy. The attempt to establish a republic on the American model has been a total failure, nothing is left of it; it had no roots in the soil, and it washed out. Its last appearance was in the Parliament which Tsao Kun bribed to elect him President in 1923. All China, with the partial exception of Canton, is ruled by military dictators, and even in Canton General Chiang Kai-shek seems to be growing in influence. The Russians, with their technique of party dictatorship, have provided China with a method by which it may in time grow beyond personal dictatorships. It may be called soviet- ism, but honest democrats will welcome it. Karakhan and Borodin would, I believe, deplore any- thing like an attempt at Communist rule in China today, because they want a strong, friendly neighbor, and realize that chaos in China provides opportunity for their enemies. They are not averse to stirring up trouble in regions where European — or Japanese — control is strong. The fantastic stories of thousands of Russian agents circulating about China are unquestionably fairy tales, but every Chinese radical who wants it can have sympathy and encouragement at the nearest Russian consulate. Radical leaders in Peking sought the protection of the Russian Embassy when the political climate became unhealthy for them last spring. Borodin lectures every day in Canton on the lessons and methods of the Russian Revolution; and both Canton and the Christian general have had Russian aid in their mili- tary operations. (Since traveling by automobile the 1,100 miles across desert, mountains, and bridgeless rivers which separate Feng Yu-hsiang's railroad base from the Trans- Siberian Railway, however, I have lost faith in the stories of immense Russian munitions supplies being shipped across Mongolia to Feng.) Karakhan dilates upon the for- eign control of Chinese banking (although Russian banks have a virtual monopoly in Harbin) ; he denounces the for- eign bondholders of the Chinese railroads (although the Chinese Eastern is virtually governed by Russians) ;•'• he expatiates upon the nobility of the Russians in renouncing exterritoriality (although it had already lapsed in prac- tice after the Soviet Revolution) ; he elaborates upon the example of Russia in not joining the Powers in their vari- ous ultimatums to China (although when the Chinese East- ern was threatened he spoke promptly and vigorously and effectively). * There the Russians have the excuse that because it fei occupied by Jaranese troops and dominated by th. : South Manchurian Railroad, any effort to return this railroad to the Ch under present circumstances, really mean ham er to the J Westerners in China make much of these apparent in- consistencies. It is their right. It is also Karakhan's right to exploit his position to the utmost. Russia has aban- doned her concessions in Hankow and Tientsin; she is ready for customs autonomy; and as long as Russia and China are capital-importing countries, they will continue to have a real community of interest in defending them- selves against the efforts of the capital-exporting countries to control them. While the Western Powers stumble along in their present stupid unconceding fashion the Russians can make hay. As Karl Radek, rector of the Sun Yat-sen University, which is giving 400 Chinese boys and girls a Moscow education, said to me: "You Americans still have an opportunity to keep the Chinese Revolution in bourgeois channels. You are not tied, like England, to a burdensome past ; and you have capital to invest. If you put yourselves on the side of the national renaissance you can keep the Chinese revolution bourgeois for twenty years at least — perhaps more. But I doubt if you will have the sense to do it." [This is the sixth in Lewis Gannett' s series of articles on China. The last — America's Role in China — will appear in The Nation for September 8.] Fate and the Ohio Gang By EDGAR MELS FLANKED by cohorts of press agents and captained by their leader, Harry Daugherty, the Ohio Gang swooped down upon Washington in the spring of 1920. The Best Minds took office and established a record of inefficiency, graft, and political thieving that will probably never be fully exposed. Much of it is lost beyond recall ; more is buried deep in mountainous reports of Senate-committee hearings. The law has been slow to move against the political adven- turers who pillaged the public till during the Harding regime, although a few are behind bars. And, as was pointed out in The Nation for July 28, the oil scandal is forgotten while the men involved still evade justice. But if the mills of men have been slow in their grind- ing, the mills of the gods have ground both fast and fine. Death, who knows no party and is susceptible to no influ- ence, has garnered an amazing crop among the members of the Ohio Gang. With very few exceptions every notable member of Harding's retinue of personal friends in office is ill, dead, in jail, or under indictment. Let us begin at the top. Warren Harding, riding along Pennsylvania Avenue to take the oath of office, little dreamed that within three short years he would die. Amiable, likable, a weak man for so great an office, a good country editor and a negative Senator, Harding was the tool of the Ohio Gang. Personally honest, he permitted the gang to do as it pleased. Only when Howard Mannington grew reckless did Harding assert himself. He ordered Mannington to leave Washington. Daugherty, the real commander of the Harding Ad- ministration, is in failing health. Indicted in connection with the American Metals case, his trial is scheduled for early next month. His son, Draper, who is accused of having shared in the enterprises and profits of the gang, has been in a sanitarium, from which he was recently released. Jess Smith, Daugherty's best friend and col-

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174 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 lector (so termed by Daugherty himself), died in a mysteri- ous manner in Daugherty's apartment in the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington. That he did not commit suicide is my belief. He knew too much about the inner workings of the gang. His doom was sealed and he paid the price. Cramer, appointed by Harding as chief counsel to the rans' Bureau after he had bought the Harding resi- dence in Washington, committed suicide. Harding's per- sonal physician. Brigadier General Sawyer, accused by Forbes of being the real villain in the Veterans' Bureau scandal, is also dead. Charles Forbes, appointed by Hard- ing to head the Veterans' Bureau, is in Leavenworth prison, serving a term for malfeasance and other crimes. He is partially paralyzed and ma}- not live his term out. Thomp- son, his partner in crime, died before he could be taken to prison. The case of Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, indicted in the oil scandal, is now in the courts. Next comes John T. King of Bridgeport, Connecticut, political boss and opportunist at large. Associated with Jess Smith, he is accused of having manipulated the Alien Property Custodian's office to his own benefit. He was indicted in connection with the American Metals case. Within a few days after pleading not guilty he died. I lis will, offered for probate the other day, left $50,000 in American Metals bonds to his widow. He was accused of having accept', th; t sum to help return the property to its German owners. Indicted with King is Colonel Thomas W. Miller, ap- pointed by Harding as Alien Property Custodian. Miller was Eastern manager for Leonard Wood, but eventually supported Harding. As thanks, Harding appoirted him to handle the vast German properties seized during the war. Miller, like King and Daugherty, is facing trial in connec- tion with the return of the American Metals Company to its alien owners. Miller, who claims a perfect defense, was stricken with blood poisoning shortly after his last, and superseding indictment, and almost died. Then there is George Remus of Cincinnati, who made millions out of liquor withdrawals, sanctioned by the Department of Jus- lice. Remus served a term in Atlanta penitentiary; where Gascon B. Means, another member of the Harding entou- rage, now is. Of the whole gang, Howard Mannington stands out as the only successful .survivor. He is rich. He made large sums during his comparatively brief stay in Washington; his most remunerative sortie being his visit to Cuba for the National City Bank to adjust its sugar investments. Why he was chosen for this responsible post may some day be told. But apart from Mannington the gang has drifted to a destruction which puts to scorn merely human agencies of law and justice. In the Driftway THE following letter breezes into the Drifter from Minneapolis, on the banks of the Father of Waters: Dear Sir: The Drifter has been abroad, I see, and he has I sorry time of it in Constantinople, Paris, and other fi cities, because whenever lie tried to order ham and eg one understood him. English is not as universal as some would have us believe, I take if. May I offer a word of ;:<! vice to the Drifter. Before you go abroad next time study Esperanto for a month and when you leave take with you the Year Book of the Universal Esperanto Association. You will then be linked up with a huge fraternal organiza- tion, as it were, whose members are to be found in every nook and cranny of the world. U. E. A., as it is called for short, has delegates almost everywhere and they are eager to serve you. If you know a smattering of Esper- anto, hunger need no longer gnaw at your vitals, and Constantinople will no longer be a city in which your health and happiness will be threatened by a linguistic food block- ade. Turning to page 261 of your Year Book you will find that the delegate for that far-away city is Constantin Anastassaidi, civil engineer, rue Valide Djisme 37-39, Pera. Go to him and tell him who you are and what you want. The chances are a hundred to one he will not only be delighted to meet you but he will see to it that you are both fed and entertained. How about little old Paris? Is there a delegate there? Bless your heart, yes! One chief delegate, one vice-dele- gate, twenty delegates. You will also find eight Esperanto clubs and the Central Esperanto Office and Library, the latter at 51, rue de Clichy. Kun alta estimo, Dr.. Lehman Wendell, Pres. Twin City Esperanto Club * * * # * THERE is much in this letter which appeals to the Drifter. He would like immensely to trot about in Constantinople with Mr. Anastassaidi, but he doubts if the conversation would continue for long in Esperanto. If Mr. Anastassaidi is enough of an Occidental to be inter- ested in Esperanto, he is also modern enough to speak English much more fluently than the Drifter would be likely to speak Esperanto after six easy lessons — and the Drifter is too lazy' to take any other kind. So after a few intro- ductory passes in Esperanto, in which the Drifter would be a poor second to Mr. Anastassaidi, the latter would politely switch into English. That is the Drifter's usual experience in using a foreign language, and why should Esperanto prove an exception? Esperanto is theoretically the only language that anyone needs to know, but prac- tically the Drifter observes that it is taken up principally by persons who are excellent linguists and have already mastered several other tongues. Perhaps that is why they find it so easy. Another thing which makes Esperanto a good conversational medium is that it is an artificially acquired language on the part of all persons using it. But in similar circumstances possibly any other language is as good. It is common experience, for instance, for an American who has difficulty in understanding the French of Frenchmen to find that he can get along in that language swimmingly with a Russian or an Italian. * -x- # # •::• BUT although the Drifter would like to call on Mr. Anastassaidi in Constantinople he imagines he would have a pretty thin time among the chief delegate, the vice- delegate, the twenty delegates, the eight clubs, and the Central Esperanto Office and Library in Paris. There is not always strength in numbers. Merely to encoun'. r a fellow-American in, say, Ragusa, Sicily, means a friendly welcome, while the meeting of two white men in some parts of the Orient may be an excuse for an elaborate pow-wow. Rut the Drifter would not undertake to go about London visiting persons merely because they were Americans. Too many doors would be closed in his face with the chill information: "I'm sorry but I can't lend you anything."

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation 175 FINALLY the Drifter denies the suggestion that "no one understood him" abroad. The Drifter is perhaps the sole inhabitant of this sphere who does not consider himself misunderstood. His regret is thai both at home and abroad people understand him much too accurately and arc- not all as charitable as the mother of Jurgen — who loved him though she knew him very well. Kun even more alta estimo, The Drifter, Pres. Twin Hemisphere Ignoramuses' Club Correspondence Pay That Debt in Maple Sugar! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The diplomats having been unable to find a way of settling the matter of the French debt, 1 submit, the following plan. The French have been made to appear as a nation of dead beats. This is unfortunate, for if there is one thing above all others which a real American cannot stand, it is a dead beat or bilk. They should call Andy Mellon's bluff, and offer to pay the entire debt at once. The French ambassador should an- nounce that French factories will soon be producing great quantities of a new and improved form of aluminum ware. He should point out, at the same time, that as American shells were admitted to France free of duty in 1917 he would expect a reciprocal favor for his aluminum. For the benefit of Senator Borah he should add that because of the unusual wool crops of Algiers and New Caledonia the French will export many mil- lion dollars' worth of this commodity, and that their plan is to send it all to America to be credited toward the debt. It might be a little more difficult to convince .Tim Reed that enough French corn and hogs could be sent this year to knock the bottom out of the American market, but it would be worth frying. And a few words might be added of the enormous quantities of French maple sugar that are awaiting exportation. If the French ambassador has a sufficiently good poker to do this, I believe that the matter of the French debt will disappear from our political discussions like ice from the ice-box in August. Champaign, Illinois, July 27 Henry J. Ravenswood Mary, Guaranteed Genuine To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In your article, Henry Ford, Antiquarian, you men- tion the schoolhouse at Sterling, Massachusetts, to which Mary Sawyer took her little lamb one morning in 1811 or 1812, etc. There has been a controversy between Sterling, Massa- chusetts, and the Argus-Champion of the Sunshine Towne, Newport, New Hampshire, in regard to the authoress and the scene of this event. I extract from Newport's Sunshine Towne bulletin the following: Newport the Birthplace of Mart and Heu Little Lamb The poem, Mary had a Little Lamb, dear to childhood the world over, was published by Sarah Josepha Hale, Newport's noted author, in a book of verse s entitled "Po< ms for Our Children," in 1830. The schoolhouse to which the lamb followed Mary Cin the person of Sarah Buell, later Mrs. Hale) is standing in Guild, a village in Newport. It was made over into a dwelling-house some years ago. A fund is being collected by the Newport Board of Trade to erect a fitting memorial to Mrs. Hale, Mary, and the Lamb, which shall become a shrine of American Childhood. Brooklyn, July 30 Chester S. Ehrman ( )n the l'nrit y of Readers To the Editor of The N a i Sir: Referring to John T. M tat- mg that the Congressional Library u.l rmit Havelock Ellis's "Studies in the Psychology of Sex" to be taken from the library, whal is the meaning of your cap: ion Officially Pure ever that letter'.' You seem to jump to the conclusion that this excellent rule is another case of ' kery." The librarian of Columbia University, which has a similar ruling, tells me that some of the volumes of this set in that library have I pur- chased three times, and this third volume is already mutilated by vandals who take out a page, or sometimes even four or five, of the more lurid ease histories. The Congressional Li- brary can probably cite a similar experience. How long the books would last if allowed to leave the library may be judged. New York, August 1 Robert J. CONKUN —Advt. To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: To those of us from the North who have long lived in Florida your article Florida Cashes in Her Chips was amusing. It will benefit Florida by helping to keep out of the State such people as those who — incompetent and unsuccessful wherever they may live — poured into Florida last year with the undying hope of finding a place where it would be possible to get something for nothing and to acquire a fortune without labor. Naturally there was prolonged wailing and gnashing of teeth when these people had to learn by experience that, even in Florida, figs are not gathered from thistles. The ad- vent of these, and of the dishonest who came to exploit them, and who callously destroyed magnificent live oaks, great mag- nolias, and many other beautiful things in their avidity for money, made it seem, for a time, that Florida was in the de- plorable process of gaining the whole world and losing her own soul. The fact that these people now cherish the belief that Florida is "seriously affected" by their departure recalls that masterpiece of irony in which Chicken-Little frantically re- ported "The sky is falling!" when a rose-leaf chanced to fall on her own feathers. The fact that the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad is ent spending vast sums on its lines in Florida is not exactly indicative of "collapse" here. Even Coral Gables recorded building permits last month amounting to more than one mil- lion dollars. Many of the automobiles that recently passed "a Georgian, lounging on his doorstep," will appear again when the owners return in the autumn, for many thousands of Floridians spend the summers in the North. We who live here hope that the others will not return. Winter Park, Florida, July 7 Mary Francis Baker Beyond Ford's Utopia To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: If all business men accepted Ford's program and carried it out intelligently; if the wage motive supplanted the profit motive; if prices were reduced to an unbelievable mini- mum, and wages elevated to an Utopian maximum; if we had a five-day or even a four-day week for wage-earners; if all these most desirable consummations were every-day facts of life, then what would happen to the price of real estate and to rents? I am, of course, a single-taxer, but to my obtuse mind the question cannot be laughed off because of that fact. The status of land tenure cannot be ignored. Los Angeles, July 23 George A Briggs

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Books and Music , Live Epitaphs By AMANDA BENJAMIN HALL A Poor Woman Some say she has to wear a shawl To hide her bones, and some Say once a mouse crept from her wall And offered her a crumb. Miser Once through the window we looked in And saw how he would count and gloat: The man is tighter than his skin, And older than his overcoat. Village Belle Three stalwart suitors strove to win Kate Byrd, who wedded last December A man who's never had a chin Since any of us can remember. J )ressmaker 1 think the Lord when he's dismissing Transgressions will forgive her sins. Poor Jenny's lips, once red for kissing, Are sentenced now to holding pins. Inheritors "It is not time for you to go," They told him, but as though to mock Their words, the sick man seemed to know Each had his eye upon the clock. Economist Miss Jones is frugal in her way. To find if something had gone bad She tried it on a tramp one day Who died. It seems it had. First Glance THE Oxford University Press is to me the most inter- esting press in the world. No publisher's catalogue holds half the excitement, I am convinced, that is to be found in the annual volume which Mr. Humphrey Milford issues out of Amen House; no list of titles now in print is better calculated to tease the poor scholar with thoughts of the good things he will never be able to buy. I speak of the scholar, for it is he whom the Press particularly serves. And at present I have even more particularly in mind the scholar in literature who looks to Oxford for editions of the old English poets. There he will find them to his taste — solidly introduced and annotated, impeccably printed and bound, and frequently, alas, expensive beyond the dream of purchase. But there they are; and as he can the scholar provides himself with the Chaucer, the Donne, the Ben Jonson, the Herrick, the Milton, or the Vauglian. He will look elsewhere for signs that literature is alive today, if he wants such signs at all. In his Alexandrian moods he will j lock himself in among the treasures here brought to him' out of the past. In its zeal for definitive editions the Press is some- times Alexandrian with a vengeance, lavishing its wonder- ful resources upon the most minor of men. An instance is "Satirical Poems published anonymously by William Mason, with notes by Horace Walpole now first printed from his manuscript; edited, with an expose of the mystification, notes, and index, by Paget Toynbee" ($14). The six ob- scure satires of Mason are nothing whatever but curiosities, and the commentary by Walpole, while, like anything from the once so busy hand of this supreme dilettante, it is worth preserving, is certainly without present or past significance. Yet Mr. Toynbee as editor has performed his slender task with monumental pains. More can be said for "The Poems of Richard Lovelace," edited by C. H. Wilkinson (2 vols.: $35), though here, too, we have the spectacle of vast edi- torial effort expended upon a text of very little weight. Lovelace wrote two lyrics which many poets would give their necks to have written; further than that, though he published a good deal, he is inconsequential. Mr. Wilkinson, however, rakes all the rubbish ; examines it with exhaustive care; loads notes galore upon it; reproduces in sixteen lovely engravings the faces of Lovelace, Lucasta, and Althea, the texts of documents bearing on the poet's life, and the musi- cal settings for several of the songs as they were sung in the seventeenth century; and gives us in the end a sur- passingly beautiful book for the eye and the hand — though hardly the mind — to enjoy. His biography of the poet, while arduously undertaken, yields little information of a positive nature. The handsome frontispiece, he admits, may not be a picture of Lovelace after all; he proves that To Althea from Prison could not have been written from con- finement; and he concludes that nothing is to be known about either Lucasta or Althea. In an entirely different category are two more recent Oxford reprints. "William Blake's Prophetic Writings," edited by D. J. Sloss and J. P. R. Wallis (2 vols.: $14), and "Wordsworth's Prelude," edited from the manuscripts by Ernest de Selincourt ($8.50), give us in important new forms the major works of major men. Messrs. Sloss and Wallis, following a host of editors who of late years have labored to make their mad master intelligible, may now claim to have produced the standard working text of Blake's prophetic books. The great Nonesuch edition notwithstand- ing, this is the place to go for an understanding — if under- standing is the word — of the whole metaphysic contained in the whirling space which lies between "The Book of Thel" and "The Ghost of Abel." The General Introduction in the second volume furnishes the most patient and intelli- gent statement I have seen of Blake's growing philosophy of liberty; and everywhere the two editors manifest a sym- pathy, joined with a sanity, such as no dealer with Blake henceforth can afford to be without. As for the prophecies themselves, here at last an accessible edition presents them with all their monstrous defects, all their demonic strength, and — on occasion — all their angelic freshness. There can scarcely be a question concerning the im- portance of Mr. de Selincourt's labors, since "The Prelude"

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation 177 is the outstanding achievement in English poetry since "Paradise Lost." The only text we have had here! is that of 1850 — Wordsworth's final version, publi after his death. That Wordsworth valued his masterpiece properly is proved by the existence of five virtually complete manuscripts and several notebooks containii »ns of the poem. Of these Mr. de Selincourt makes a composite text which he opposes page by page to the published otic; and in an introduction he analyzes the significance for dsworth's mind and art of the differ. tween the two. The final version is clearly the best of tin--.; all, tl intellectually the man of eighty was less daring than the man of thirty had been. In the beginning he thou;" much for the good of his art. At the end he thought too •little. "The Prelude" comes out of that happy early prime when he both thought and felt, and when he lust knew how to write. Mark Van Doren remains that what he cially of the la . is full of iii. I them as if they were tit onlj iting rig could he further from the truth. 1 give him iurgundy no! to 1"- matched at the price in Paris. I give him the 1 the Italian-Swiss Colony, ami even some of tin- M I that hailed, not from California, but from the islands in Lake Erie. Can it he that, like mosl wi inally swallows a label instead of the wine? I half suspect it. tainly if he had ever flooded his oesophagus with Cresta Blanca year, he would not talk in so lordly and style of American viniculture. We had still a long way to go, but we were assiduously on our way. In another ten labels would have caught up with our wines, and even English- men would have become aware of Chateau Hollywood, Clos ey, and 1919er Rauenthaler-Sterlinger Terrassenau But I speak of what might have been. H. L. MENCKEN A Bible for Bibuli A Book of Wine. By P. Morton Shand. Brentano's. $4.50. '"PHIS is not a book; it is an encyclopedia. I can imagine no * reasonable question, issuing out of a wine-bibber's yearning soul, that it does not answer. The whole tale of French wines, Northern and Southern, red and white, sparkling and still, is told in voluptuous detail, with lists of all the extant varieties, notes upon the grapes that make them, and wise observations about vintages. One hears (and instantly believes) that Cha- teau Latour is "richly spacious and inspiring," that Chateau Margaux is "delicate and poetic," and that Chateau Lafite is "grand and sublime." There follow glowing pages upon the wines of Burgundy, upon those of the Loire, upon those of Alsace-Lorraine, upon those of the Jura and Savoy. Then comes a superb treatise upon the incomparable white wines of Germany — the tart and lovely Rhenish, the fragrant M the luscious Pfalzer, the ancient and romantic Steinwein in Bocksbeutcl. And there are chapters upon the wines of Spain — not only the familiar sherry, but also the vastly underesti- mated light wines — upon port and its fraudulences, upon the Austrian and Hungarian wines, upon Madeira and Canary, upon the fiery wines of Italy, and even upon the wines of Greece, Algeria, Chili, Cyprus, Australia, the Crimea, and even Persia. Mr. Shand, an Englishman, is both scholar and ai scientist and connoisseur. His learning is of that vast and luminous sort which seems to clothe its subject lik- a blanket — nay, like a brilliant banner, glowing with stars. Tie is no mere cataloguer of vintages and retailer of vineyard scandals. When he speaks of the "hallowed hectai-es" of Puligny-Mnn- trachet one picks up the vibration of his palate; when he says that the humble Cassis, grown near Marseilles, has "a pe- culiar gritty flavor," one feels his teeth gritting. One pictures him spending long days in his wine-cellar, respectfully accou- tered in claw-hammer and white waistcoat, with his eye seek- ing secrets in the cobwebs and his heart going pitter-pat. Is there a suspicious cloudiness in that majestic Chateau Rauzan- Segla? Are the corks sick in that 1917er Hattenheimer Hassel Auslese? Is there what seems to be a fly (Musca domestica) in that last priceless half-bottle of Close de Beze? Then wurrah- wurrah! Then Potztansend Don Then hosanna back- ward out of the Black Mass! Mr. Shand dedicates his book to his father, to his son, and to his old schoolmaster. There are whole chapters in it that were plainly written on his knees. Curiously enough, he shows a foul and preposterous igno- rance when he comes to the wines of California. Can it be that the English have reached such a state of mind that everything American is obnoxious to them? Whatever the cause, the fact The Madness of Nations The Xcm-oses of the Nations. By C. E. Playne. Thomas Seltzer. $5. fT,HIS work is the beginning of what promises to be the most *■ thorough and penetrating psychological study of national- ism yet executed by any author. It is cast in terms of psycho- pathology and, in general, is based upon a sound individual and social psychology. There is a certain risk involved in the direct transference of the symptomology of the individual to the be- havior of national groups. There is also occasionally some quite evident straining in the effort to fit the facts of national- istic expression into the adopted categories of psychopathology. On the whole, however, the procedure is sound and the treatment convincing. The author first describes with some care the typical traits of the individual neurosis as expounded by the bast pr< day dynamic psychology. These he finds to be increased anxiety; heightened excitability; greater susceptibility to intense hatreds, often upon slight or imaginary pretexts; hyper-suggestibility; frequent surrender to illusions; loss of memory; and, occasion- ally, general dementia. Turning to a consideration of national psychology, Dr. Playne discovers in the psychology of Germany and France before the war the following symptoms: (1) A general de- terioration of national morale and intelligence; (2) an increas- ing frequency of easily precipitated panics; (3) the wild and irresponsible tendencies of armed forces, remarkably similar in character to the behavior of criminals; (4) a growing ten- dency to place reliance upon war and to welcome the approach of conflict; (5) a capitulation to the psychology of haste and anxiety; (6) a marked decline in intellectual poise and religious faith; (7) a general lust for concrete achievement; (8) the domination of ruthless personal ambition on the part of un- scrupulous leaders; (9) the gradual suppression of memory and a growing inability to profit by experience. These led to a complete breakdown of group control. Dr. Playne asks whether such traits were ever characteristic of European so- ciety at an earlier date, and answers with the assertion that such symptoms were never so widely diffused over Europe as they were in the generation bsforc- the World War. This was due primarily to the development of the new technology of communication and to the gradual spread of democracy. The remainder of the volume is devoted to a penetrating analysis of nationalism in Germany and France since 1870; a second volume will treat the national neurosis of England. The discussion of German nationalism is illuminating and con- vincing, even if the author relies at times upon such shaky testimony as the memoirs of Ambassador Gerard and of Dr. Davis, the Kaiser's American dentist. The Gerrnar neurosis

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178 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 319(; Dr. Playne assigns primarily to the combination of exuberance after the victorious Franco-Prussian War with the remarkable growth of German material prosperity and power. Added to these were the fear of encirclement and the ability of the German jingoists to exploit the manifestations of the French revenge spirit and the diplomatic threats of the Triple Entente. After Bismarck's retirement those in control of German policy did not possess the wisdom or capacity to keep matters under judicious control. Too much space is given to an analysis of the vagaries of the Pan-American League. Had the author been acquainted with Dr. Wertheimer's admirable monograph he would have realized that, however imbecilic this organiza- tion may have been, it had no general following in Germany and did not receive governmental approval. It offers rich ma- terial for a study of the psychopathology of special groups but it had no great influence upon German foreign policy before the World War. The study of the French neurosis is particularly valuable, not because France was essentially worse than the other Euro- pean states but. because of the general ignorance of the French state of mind on the part of English and American readers. In England and America there has been no lack of convi as to German arrogance and aggressiveness, but we have gen- erally believed France to have been quiet, pacific, and thor- oughly terrified at the prospect of war. A perusal of Dr. Playne's trenchant pages will put an end for all time to this naive illusion. The author deals with gratifying thoroughness with the part playjd by Maurice Barres in stimulating French nationalism, but he does not tell us enough of Deroulede, Cher;: nceau, and Delcasse. It is made clear that tionalism lay in the sting of the defeat. of Frj i the determination to recover Alsace- Lorv. We I to the heart of the complex. This was ised by the German possession of : line. Tills was the center around which the i . . The inhabitants of the provinces or less, settled down under the conditions of Materially, in wealth and well-being of all prospered exceedingly. They had the means to ting, busy lives, and old grievances could be forgotten. While certain families and clans apparently kept up strong francophile feelings, tin- bull? of the popu- lation were taken up with the distractions of a flourishing and busy epoch. Bui French chauvinism, the "France her- self again" tendency, which grew up about the turn of the i/ed on the lost-provinces complex, revived it, and cultivated it for all it was worth. . . . Alsatian men and women in native costume were sent to take part in ons and fetes in France in order to arouse "fine" nationalistic feelings. It is indicative of the neurasthenic character of these feelings that emotional storms were excited by the performances and processions, so that many is they witnessed the affecting sight presented bj those peasants of the lost provinces, in the national dress of the lands which had been "torn from the body of France." Chapter seven of Part II is a very valuable study of the origins of the World War based upon a knowledge of the new evidence. The author errs, however, in contending that a gen- eral psychological explosion brought on the World War; as a matter of fact the explosion came after war had been decided upon or actually declared. All in all the volume is a distinct contribution to the literature of nationalism, and constitutes an excellent supplement to Professor Hayes's somewhat more calm and judicious collection of historical essays on the sub- ject. We shall await with particular interest the appearance of the second volume dealing with England, for it has been generally assumed in America since 1914 that nobody but the most obsessed Hibernian could possibly imagine that England has ever entertained sentiments other than those of the sweetest humility and the most determined pacifism. Harry Elmer Barnks Roads to Illusion Mape: The World of Illusion. By Andre Maurois. D. Apple, ton and Company. $2.50. T T ERE is an intrepid Frenchman. At a time when les jeunei, ■*• ■■■ are one and all wearing hobnailed boots that they may the more ferociously step upon the grave of the Master, Andre Maurois quietly continues the tradition of Anatole France. In him, confronting us like so many reveiiants, are the familiar careful lucidity, the restrained fancy, the library flavor, tht disinclination to take one's characters seriously, and finally, that substratum of idea, never so thick as to be profound,! never so thin as to be trivial. Mape, a child's term for thel world of illusion, is furthermore the world in which so many, of Anatole France's people live. It is a constructed cosmos* that happy "place to stand on" from which, with the lever ofl irony, one may move, or at least, poke at, the world. Brotteauxj and Bonnard already live in Mape. Thay are almost indige-i nous. It is because they are so completely set outside thei hurly-burly of reality that they are able to make so many neatl if not wise remarks about it. In Maurois's book, on the other hand, Mape is a land} sought for, not found. The three stories of which it consists* detail three separate voyages of discovery. How does one] build up illusion? Here are three ways, at least. The first is J the way of the Creator. In the charming anecdotical manner of j "Ariel," the author etches for us a picture of the young Goethe. We see the wooing of Charlotte Buff. Unable to win her, the j poet, suffers intensely. How shall he untie the Gordian knot of I his inhibited feelings? In a flash the mirage of Mape swims into his ken. He translates his thwarted passion into art; and "Werther" is born. By a feat of imaginative sympathy Maurois has evoked the history of a sublimation; and by so doing, he \ has simultaneously presented vis with a piece of pure genetic criticism. That he has chosen to do this anecdotically rather than analytically is what separates his tale from a piece of critic i. ii ; uch as Mr. Krutch's Poe. There is another road to Mape. It is a beaten thorough- fare, this one, for it is that which we take when we read a book. It is the way of the Reader. If the Reader makes his hero-identification in thought only, then is his Mape evanescent. But sometimes he solidifies his Mape. "Life imitates Art much more than Art imitates Life." We act out our heroes. .Tulien Sorel read the Napoleonic proclamations, steeped himself in a mythos, and so lived the life of a Man of Destiny as much as he did that of Julien Sorel. In Maurois's story the course of a young man's life is changed because, at a critical moment, he remembers what a Balzac hero did in a corresponding situ- ation. There is poignant tragedy to follow, for we may not translate the evasions of illusion into the solidities of actuality. True enough that Balzac himself lived the lives of Rastignac and Goriot — but it was in his study and at his writing-table that he lived them. Finally, there is a road to Mape known as the way of the Interpreter. In The Portrait of an Actress Maurois recalls for us Mrs. Siddons, Reynolds's Tragic Muse, and the pitiful story of the love of her two daughters for Lawrence, the portrait painter. It is on this tragedy, not on the figure of Mrs. Sid- dons, that the author throws the clear light of his narrative; only to reveal to us, with an oblique suddenness, the way in which the actre histrion, finds relief for her harrowed soul in the portrayal of Shakespeare's tragic heroines. The Englishwoman in her stopped up the channels of her own emo- tion, but there was always Constance to be played, there was always the Mape of Shakespeare, friendly, a land of relief. The psychology that underlies these three stories is per- haps too agreeably simple. French clarity has been too con- scientious in its labors. But when the idea-base of this book is reduced to a pleasant formula, there still remain, exhibited

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190 Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation 179 as admirably as they were in "Ariel," Maurois's gifts of ironic characterization, narrative swiftness, and ingratiating persua- siveness in the depiction of a milieu. I l II TON P. FADIMAN Jesus and Paul Jesus the Nazarene. Myth or History? By Maurice Goguel. Translated by Frederick Stephens. D. Appleton and Company. $3. The Life of Saint Paul. The Man and the Apostle. By F. J. Foakes-Jackson. Boni and Liveright. $4. BOTH Jesus and Paul were from the first generously heroized by their followers, perhaps quite beyond anything that either of them would have desired. They were both picturesque individuals with dynamic personalities that evoked highly emo- tional reactions even among their contemporaries. Few charac- ters in history have been as devoutly admired and as bitterly hated by those with whom they came in contact, and each paid the extreme penalty of martyrdom, the price so often exacted in antiquity of one whose conduct proved unpopular with the guardians of the established institutions. Jesus was not only admired by his friends, but in the years following his crucifixion he was glorified, divinized, and ulti- mately worshiped. The second and third generations of His disciples composed books in which they blended surviving memo- ries of His words and deeds with their own interpretations of His personality viewed in the light of their present disposition to revere Him as the founder of a new religion. Gradually the simple story of His earthly career was transformed into a dis- play of supernatural power befitting one who subsequently should become an object of adoration. Thus the Jesus of his- tory became the Christ of faith, and ultimately the second per- son in the godhead. This duality in the early Christian por- traiture of Jesus is a discovery of comparatively recent times, when modern historical science has forced students of ancient documents, sacred as well as secular, to distinguish sharply between the interpretative interests of an author and the actual facts that have been embodied in his composition. The New Testament books when read in the light of this critical method of studying documents are now commonly thought to yield two portraits of Jesus, one that of the actual historical person and the other that of the new divinity exalted by the faith of His disciples to a position of honor beside God Himself. Professor Goguel is a distinguished French scholar who maintains that the historical Jesus is discoverable by eliminat- ing His divine features from the New Testament pictures. But others have drawn a different conclusion. Theyr h. ve held that no such real Jesus is recoverable, that, in fact, he never existed at all except as a purely mythological figure. This skeptical opinion, sporadically advocated in one or another quarter for ov< r half a century, has of late been revived in France and provided the occasion that called forth Goguel's book in de- fense of the historical reality of an earthly Jesus. As has formerly been the case with protagonists of the negative posi- tion, they seek to demonstrate their views by appealing to the evidently mythological features in the New Testament records, while the more sober side of the picture fails to impress them as real. He was simply a cult hero, and the gospel pictures are efforts, not to divinize a real person, but to anthropomor- phize a mythical deity. On the other hand, Goguel appeals to the conclusions now familiar to students in the field of literary criticism of the gospels. Thus working from different premises and employing incompatible methods, the result is the usual impasse. Neither party can convince the other. But it should be said that the present volume is a masterly presentation of its author's posi- tion and will seem entirely convincing to readers accustomed to pursue the lines of critical literary study of the New Testament writings. The task of 1 ' different sort. It is expository rather than controversial. Then, too, he has documents of Paul's owi followers have never transported his personality into the meta- physical sphere. These circumstances greatly simplify the task of a modern biographer. Vet problems are not want inc. though of them have been rather lightly touched in the pn book. It will prove very satisfactory for a reader who has never been troubled by the question of how far Paul's Chris- tianity was influenced through contact with other religions, such as the mysteries, popular in the gentile environment within which the apostle carried on his missionary labor-. One whose curiosity has been awakened by this comparatively new but. very important aspect of Pauline study will find no answ< r to his problems in the work of Professor Foakes-Jack Shirley Jackson Half a Kingdom ( 'yclops' Eye. By Joseph Auslander. Harper and Brothers. $2. rTMIIS is a hook not wanting in lyric lines and keen images. * It reveals an alert sensuousness, a young hurt tenderness, a searching responsive mind. But Mr. Auslander seems not yet to have discovered how best to employ his gifts. There are few complete poems here. Most of the inclusions are too elliptically terse for clarity, or flawed by an overstrained in- tensity of emotion, by a technical equipment whose facility forbids strictness. He has the cyclops' eye of the true poet — he sees, he burns, he makes the giant gesture. This is not enough. The pause, louder than sound, bids the listener shud- der. Restraint avoids anti-climax. Mr. Auslander shows his virtues in such a piece as In- articulate, a fine voicing of Spring madness; in the vivid por- trait evoked by the group of Sonnets to Amy Lowell; in such deft images as these: When the branches of the tree Antler velvet in the spring. . . . The wind has edges honed on frost . . .; but most in the lyrics which speak of water, rains, mist, and fog. When he writes of these, magic spills from his pen-point. He finds words which have the half-palpable contours, the cloudy texture, the twilight density of the weathers whereof he writes. He takes you out to feel and smell them, to melt into their vagueness, and to flicker with their sullen lights. The air is webbed with a strict frost; And foggily the kenneled hound Booms; and every noise is lost In its own sound. Black meadow mist steams In a silver vat. Fog like wool Softened the duck's horn; Cow and bull Strayed steaming, forlorn. Ghostly, beautiful. Mr. Auslander can convey color and the nuances of sound with a sure and skilful hand. lie is intensely aware of the sensible manifold that presents itself to eye and ear and touch. He is aware, too, of the tears of things, of the fates that wrench the heart and kindle the mind. But these wake in him a dis- tress that is either too sharp for clear utterance or not woven into the body of his thought as closely as the natural scene which he so finely celebrates. The impression given by this, his second book of verse, is that a poet of nature is discontentedly

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180 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 319(1 seeking to be the poet of man. When Mr. Auslander tries for pure mood, or when he experiments with narrative, be it under the influence of Masefield, Sandburg, or Frost, he is merely adequate, not excellent. His gift is indubitable. It is only his use of it that is in doubt. Because he can write beautifully, one is more impatient with his lapses. There is too much obscurity, too much tenuity; there are too many classic refer- . too many mixed images and words used for the rhyme's rather than the meaning's sake. These faults would matter less in work that gave less evidence of power. Babette Deutsch Books in Brief The Art in Painting. By Albert C. Barnes. Harcourt, Brace and Company. A new edition under a new imprint of an important critical work recently reviewed at length in The Nation. The Magnificent Idler. The Story of Walt Whitman. By Cameron Rogers. Doubleday, Page and Company. $2.50. A great artist trimmed to the size of a conventional modern biography. The Sacred Tree: Being the Second Part of the Tale of Genji. By Lady Murasaki. Translated from the Japanese by Arthur Waley. Houghton Mifflin Company. $3.50. So the delicious story of Prince Genji goes on; and a third part will soon be ready. Mr. Waley wisely prefixes to this portion two essays on Japanese fiction before Lady Murasaki and on the art of Lady Murasaki herself. The Romantic Theory of Poetry: An Examination in. the Light of Croce's Aesthetic. By A. E. Powell (Mrs. E. R. Dodds). Longmans, Green and Company. $1.50. A philosophic farewell t'i the romantic conception of poetry — as something which revealed "reality" — developed by Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, De Quincey, Shelley, and Keats. One of the most careful statements so far made of the intellectual process by which poetry today is being once more revolutionized. Contemporary Russian Literature: 1881-1925. By Prince D. S. Mirsky. Alfred A. Knopf. $4. This book falls between two stools. The critical opinions expressed are too personal for the orthodox bio-bibliographical handbook which the author aimed to make. On the other hand, it is not a history of literature of the more ambitious sort because the main outlines are obscured by a clutter of often irrelevant detail, and further because a good deal of the ma- terial is too recent to be viewed in historical perspective. The author's avowedly bad English is a serious flaw in a book of literary appreciations. In spite of its failings the volume has some uses as a reference work, because it offers a mass of in- formation which is not otherwise accessible to the English- reading public. The Romance of Design. By Garnet Warren in collaboration with Horace B. Cheney. Doubleday, Page and Company. A praiseworthy but superficial effort to popularize the story of designs used through the ages on fine fabrics — silks, velvets, satins. Praiseworthy because the book is the result of research inaugurated by Cheney Brothers, manufacturers of textiles. Such research on the part of any manufacturer is interesting. The authors attempt to set forth the chief social customs, beliefs, and national characteristics which have in- fluenced patterns woven by different nations at different times. Their work is superficial because they fail to show just cause why they do not apply the same standards to modern work. Is there no modern design worth reproducing? And if not, why not? At the back of the book are 76 pages of samples of the designs used by Cheney Brothers, all composed of eclectic work borrowed from other times and other countries. Yet in France Raoul Dufy and other prominent artists are designing patterns for use on textiles, and here the Stehli Silks Corporation are! i, now bringing out a series of "Americana Prints" designed by well-known contemporary artists. Imperial Rome. By M. P. Nilsson. Translated by G. C. Richards. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $5. This is a conservative and sound survey of the political history of the Roman Empire with judicious observations on J social and economic conditions. The author knows the value and , contents of his sources and also most of the pertinent investiga- tions of his fellow-scholars. He has not attempted to impose {, any brand-new explanations of a national tragedy that has [ already invited too many conjectures. The general reader will l| find the book rather level-going and as profitable as any similar j) survey of the period; and the specialist will not be harmed if he reviews his pet theories in the cool light of this tranquil || book. There are many full-page illustrations, but no footnotes ij or references. The translation reads well and seems to be competent. Letters from, William Blake to Thomas Butts. Collotype Fac- simile. Oxford University Press. $8.50. The ten letters which William Blake wrote to his faithful and generous patron Thomas Butts have for long been well known. First printed by Gilchrist and reprinted elsewhere, they have recently been reedited by Geoffrey Keynes in the Nonesuch edition of Blake's "Writings." It is probable that the collection as we have it here is complete, for Butts seems to have guarded them carefully; at most no more than a few brief and unimportant notes are perhaps missing. The extreme care with which they were written makes them especially well adapted to reproduction in collotype; and so exquisite are the facsimiles that in turning the pages one seems to be almost in the presence of the poet's own manuscript. The only novelty in the present collection is a letter from Butts to Blake which had previously been printed only in part. That Butts kept a rough draft of this letter with his letters from Blake accounts for its survival. As now e;iven entire it explains several references in Blake's reply. Its tone of somewhat elephantine humor and good-natured patronage is interesting evidence of the relationship existing between the two men. Music The Emotional Trend in Performance A COMBINATION of optimistic and democratic philosophy is ■**• responsible for the belief that artistic excellence, and excellence alone, is rewarded by widespread appreciation. As proof of this contention there is cited the Sturm und Drang to hear the Boston Symphony under Dr. Muck, the present Philadelphia Orchestra, or Arturo Toscanini. But if the enthusiasm at Mr. Toscanini's final concert last season, an enthusiasm described as unprecedented, was a direct response solely to his competence, why was his first visit, in January, 1021, a comparative failure? As a matter of fact, there was just as great a demonstration at the final concert of Mr. Furtwaengler's first visit a year ago; and if this was, as contended at the time, a direct response to his competence, why did presumably the same competence arouse so much less enthusiasm and interest at his second visit? But the greatest tumult of all time occurred in March, 1921, at the final concert of Mr. Mengelberg's first season with the National Symphony; and if this was a response to competence, why has Mr. Mengel- berar's work since then, though of equal quality, been treated with indifference? It depends usually on the reviewers: let them lose their

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation 1 - 1 heads, and the public will lose theirs. The report of phenomena] excellence (the old Boston, the Philadelphia, Mr. Mengelberg in 1921, Mr. Furtwaengler in 1925, Mr. Toscanini in 192 of anything else that is phenomenal (Mr. Koussevitzky in 1924; also Mr. Klemperer, whose mannerisms triumphed over un- favorable reviews) sends the public scampering after tickets, these are all gone there is a new reason for trying to get in: the fact that one can't. Report; of inaccessibility at- the persons who will struggle for anything that siblc; reports of struggles attract the persons who assunv is fought for is worth fighting for. Inside the hall there is lightning and thunder. Ami to all this the reviewers as confirmation of their own judgments: the public is re- sponsive to artistic excellence. The second season, if the con- are still few and talked about (Mr. Stokowski and Mr. Koussevitzky), the atmosphere continues to be electric; but when the guest returns as permanent conductor of a resident with several series of concerts (Mr. Mengelberg and Mr. Furt- ngler) he is an old story and accessible, and interest, first of the reviewers and then i ntly of the public, dii The decisive fact. then, is that in 1921 Mr. Aldrich of the Times was lukewarm to Mr. Toscanini and all but excited over Mr. Mengelberg, and in 1926 Mr. Downes of the Tir to Mr. Mengelberg and hot about Mr. Toscanini. For me this difference in critical opinion represents a shift in taste, this, in turn, a change in the executive art to which the taste refers. Musical performance seems to be n tting the de- velopment of music itself: from architectural it has become emotional. Formerly changes in tempo and color revealed pattern and structure, now they convey emotions; and as against Mr. Mengelberg's architectonics of form we now have Mr. Toscanini's architectonics of emotions. This tendency is all to the good in a work like "Gotterdiimmerung": Mr. Toscanini's performance is the more shattering, and therefore to be pre- ferred to Dr. Muck's. It is less good for Beethoven: here, though there is emotional content, the style remains architec- tural and demands the solidity of Mr. Mengelberg rather than the sinuous curves of Mr. Toscanini. And it is no good at all for purely architectural music. For it did music with emo- tional content little harm to be performed by Mr. Mengelberg, for example, as though it were purely architectural: the moods were realized anyhow, indirectly; but when architectural music is performed as though it were emotional, it acquires emotional content and in so doing changes its essential character. When, in particular, Bach is played by Mr. Samuel like Chopin or Liszt, he draws closer to Chopin and Liszt. This makes him more attractive, but it is well to realize that what is more attractive is no longer Bach, but Bach plus — plus a style of performance, plus the emotions associated by convention with the changes in tempo and color that make up that style. It is well to realize this because of the very nature of these emotions, which has also changed. Formerly they were objective, a content of the music; now performance has come to include extreme, eccentric nuances which we associate with the emotions of the performer. What is conveyed to us is not so much a romantic Bach as — so we think — a romantic Samuel. Similarly a pressing tempo, interrupted by nuances out of pro- portion to it, conveys not so much an impetuous and imperious Brahms as an impetuous and imperious Stokowski; for this personal or subjective style, until recently re-' to per- formance on a single instrument (a pianist would play more soberly with orchestra), has now been transferred to orchestral performance as well. Formerly, then, though we heard a sym- phony or tone-poem necessarily through the ears of a Muck or a Mengelberg, what wre heard was a structure of the symphony or a mood of the tone-poem; now what we get through the ears of Mr. Toscanini impresses us chiefly as the personal elan of Mr. Toscanini. Formerly the aim was to make explicit in the music its own inner coherence, or at any rate an inner co- herence; now the music is carried along by sheer pel momentum which is essential! musical but as more direct and much wider in its appeal. Hence, perhaps, the shift in ta te lie i ,>f 1921 required the formal architectonics tin y had 1" tomed to, in Dr. Mu.k's performances, for example; and this they found ii Mr. Mengelberg. The nuances and curves of Mr. Toscanini impressed these reviewers as introducing into German music entially alien, if occasionally alluring, Italianate element; and the term they applied to Mr. Stokowski's performances ■perfumed." Today it is precisely the perfumed, the Italianate, the sinuous that is wanted, or rather, the intense personal emotion it. seems to communicate. For the most part "lie architectonic skill of Mr. Mengelberg finds no comprehen- sion; of a marvelously articulated and integrated performance of Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" the incredible Mr. Chotzinoff writes that the parts had no relation to each other. even Mr. Gilman, who d i appreciate it, finds the other more alluring and intoxicating; a mere pressure in tempo and Mr, Stokowski is everything a great conductor should be, in- ■ teail of only one or two things. Music, Mr. Gilman insists correctly, cannot speak for itself, its full stature is revealed only by a great interpreter; but it appears, from his judgments, that it attains its full stature only7 when it communicates to him an elan which is the dynamic force that propels it and the mag- netic force that holds it together. For Mr. Gilman, again, the great interpreter is one who reveals new beauty in familiar music, makes the second-rate appear first-rate, and gives each type of music its correct style; but, so far as I can make out, the new beauty Mr. Gilman hears in familiar music is only the elan of Mr. Toscanini, the first-rate in the second-rate is again Mr. Toscanini, and the uncanny perfection in each style is still Mr. Toscanini. And Mr. Toscanini, paradoxically, is the artist whom all praise for his selfless attitude toward his art. B. H. Haggin IS IT GOD'S WORD? By Joseph Wheless Associate Editor, American Bar Assn. Journal George A. Dorsey writes: "Every boy and girl in America should have access to 'Is It God's Word?' and every pulpit in Christendom should have a copy. The time has come for a show- down between mummied superstition and enlightened curiosity. Wheless deals the fetish worshippers a stagger- ing blow — they should no longer be allowed to control the education of the youth." Sj.oo at all bookstores ALFRED A. KNOPF 7)0 Fifth Avenue, New York '■£$®Z writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section The Bolivar Centennial DWARD K. CURTIS Of Bolivar, I Pan- dredth ' 10 to en of i. Spain ural relations with Latin I and II Were I't p- invited to send I 'an-Ami ' nted. The ment v. Panama; VV to Panama; and Charles W. I ' t . i A number of ln of a vital chai ter. nrbidden fruil iribbcan. There wa venl ion in Haiti, ' laribbean I; vil impression created by our domination of this , . . . 'I'),,, head of each delegation was asked to make a briel ilation, the speeches being delivered in alpha irder accord . beginning with Argentina and ending with Venezuela. Most of the orators confii innocuous generalities and the hand clapping was rather perfunctory. When the turn of Dr. Alfredo Tt !!<) of Honduras arrived, he seized opportunity to hint at the growing power of the Ui bean and to warn his hea t he North." His remarks were greeted with a rm of applause and he was obliged to rise and bow three tim< re the audience would permit, the program to be No other delegate was equally honored, in a thi United States perceived how 'nation of many Latin American,;. Dr. Castillo was the stormy petrel of the congi few di er lie boldly introduced a resolution to the ef- •■ ' cherished aspirations of the Ameri- can sti Porto Rico independent lie presi- [ndependence Party of Porto Rico promptly age urging the congress to support tic lution, but the executive committee of the congress shelved the whole business as containing too much dynamite. The delegate of another Caribbean republic long occu- pied by United States marines also illustrated the suspicion entertained by the countries to the south regarding the government at Washington. Dr. Daniel Gutierrez Navas of Nicaragua proposed thai the headquarters of the Pan- American Union be transferred from Washington to Pan;. ma. At once the fat was in the fire. Everyone realized that Dr. Navas was expressing a feeling widespread throughout Latin America thai the Pan American Union as at present located is too much under the thumb of the State Department. Warm applause greeted the proposal. Mendez Pereira, the pre idenl of the congress, adjourned the proceedings before a vote could be taken, ostensibly on Hind thai Dr. Ricardo J. Alfaro, the representati the Pan American Union, was not present. When the n ter : I. en up. Dr. Alfaro made a cogent plea for the present location of the Union and Dr. Navas with obvious reluctance withdrew his undiplomatic n t ion. n ed, too, thai the aggressive policy of the Uniti d State:- in the Caribbean wa n\ in the minds of the Latin American delegates, when Dr. Harmodio Arias of Uruguay persuaded the congress to adopt a resolution to the thai any acl violating international law conn' against one American republic should constitute an offense againsl all and "provoke a common and uniform reaction." To he sure. President Chiari of Panama tool peech to the chairmen of the different delegations to deny that so far as Panama is concerned the United States harbored any purpose of domination; bul when one con- siders thai Panama is now seeking a loan in the tinted through the agency of the National City Bank, Pre i- dent Chiari's rush to defend the good name of the "colossus of the Nort h" is understandable. The work of the congress was done partly in plenary session and partly in committee. Five committees appointed in addition to a steering committee consisting of the heads of the delegations. One was charged with con- sideration of a league of American states, a second with inject of a pan American university, a third with pan- Americanism and international law, a fourth with the prob- lem of diffusing more effectively among the states of the New World a knowledge of one another's language and cul- ture, and a fifth with the influence of the Panama I Upon the Americans. Scholars had, by invitation, prepared papers on these subjects to be read at the congress. The papers were turned over to the appropriate committees which discussed them and frequently used them as the basis of recommendations to the congress. The official deli of the United States were forbidden by the State Depart- ment to vote on any resolutions of a political character. Outside of the business sessions of the congress and the round of social events tl jnificanl incidents were the unveiling of Benlliures's monument to Bolivar and the inauguration of the Bolivarian University, a pan-Ameri- can institution designed to unite the peoples of America through intellectual ties and develop the ideal: e and cooperation which were Bolivar's dream. The ceremonies inaugurating the university were not. wanting in interest and solemnity. The outstanding addresses were the

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Aug. 25, 1926] The Nation 183 Antonio Mediz Bolio of Mexico and Professor Hackett, who represented on this occasion not the United States Govern- ment but the United States educational delegations. His speech, finely idealistic, was delivered in Spanish. The congress accomplished three major results. First, it recommended the establishment of a league of American nations based upon the principle that an injury to one, in violation of international law, should be regarded as an injury to all. Second, it inaugurated the Pan-American or Bolivarian University. Last, the congress showed that the principal bar to genuinely friendly relations between the United States and its Southern neighbors is the policy of the United States in the Caribbean. Whatever may be al- leged in defense of that policy the fact remains that it raises in the popular mind throughout Latin America dis- trust and suspicion. Statesmen of the two Americas may dwell eloquently upon the common interests of the United States and the other republics of the New World, but their words are, as one Latin-American delegate put it, mere "apple sauce" as long as the United States treats the little Caribbean states as hunting grounds for American capital- ists and training grounds for American marines. Persia and Turkey Form an Alliance THE Frankfurter Zeitung of July 29 gave the following summary of an important Turkish-Persian treaty con- cluded on April 22, 1926, as abridged from the official French text published in the Messenger of Teheran: This treaty, called a treaty of friendship and security, binds the two contracting parties not to attack one another, not to participate in a hostile action undertaken by a third power, not to enter a political, economic, or financial treaty or convention directed against the other. The contracting parties further agree to oppose with its military forces any third Power which attempts to make use of its territory in a move against the other, by the passage of troops or military stores, for military surveys, as a base of military operations, as an avenue of retreat, or by inciting its people against the other state. The contracting parties further agree not to tolerate within their boundaries any organization whose purpose it is to dis- turb the peace or security of the other or to chnnge its con- stitution, and to expel all persons who indulge in such activity. The contracting parties further agree to take all necessary measures, either separately or together, to prevent unstable border peoples living in their territories from making incursions into the territory of the other. Within six months after the ratification of this treaty the two states will send plenipotentiaries to Teheran to conclude agreements on commerce, consular representation, customs, pos- tal and telegraph service, and extradition. They will further agree upon methods of settling disputes arising between them which cannot be settled by diplomatic means. This treaty was written in Turkish, Persian, and French, but in case of differences of opinion the French text is to be considered authentic. Its duration is set at five years, but it will continue automatically from year to year unless denounced, upon six months' notice, by one of the Powers. Your Fall Problems If you want to rent a house or an apartment or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section of The Nation, read by honest landlords and desirable tenants. Rates on application. Special three-time rate. Dept. F. P., The Nation. Contributors to this Issue Louis Fischer, who has been The Nation's correspondent in Moscow, is now in Berlin. J. Ramsay MacDonald, Labor's first Prime Minister of England, is a frequent contributor to The Nation. Nelson Antrim Crawford is Director of Information in the United States Department of Agriculture. Edgar Mels investigated the Daugherty case for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Edward E. Curtis teaches history at Wellesley College. Amanda Benjamin Hall is the author of "The Dancer in the Shrine," which won the Poetry Society's prize. H. L. Mencken is editor of the American Mercury and contributing editor of The Nation. Harry Elmer Barnes is the author of "History and Social Intelligence." B. H. Haggin is a teacher of music who writes on musical subjects for various publications. The Story of Philosophy," ac- cording to book-dealers, reads better and sells faster than tnost novels. 'The Story of Philoso- PHy" is a book for the years. THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT Ifl The lives and opinions of SOC- RATES - PLATO • ARISTOTLE • RACON • SPINOZA . KANT • VOLTAIRE • LOCKE • SCHOPEN- HAUER. SPENCER • NIETZSCHE RERGSON • CROCE • RUSSELL « SANTA YANA • JAMES* DEWEY. <J A Fart: "The Story of Philosophy" is the best-selling non-fiction book in America. This is why: <J "Exciting". — Heywood Broun <J "A liberal education."— B'klyn Eagle <} "Just what I've been hunting for for 44 years." — Hendrik Wiixem Van Loon <J "Thoroughly scholarly, thoroughly useful, hunuin and readable." —John Dewey •J "The profbunde9t story our race can tell, full of wonder and delight." — John Macy <J "Fascinating ... a week wi h 'The Story of Philosophy' is easily worth a year with the average college pro- fessor." —Stuart P. Sherman €J "A book thus brilliantly written is far more than a tour de force. It will be enjoyed by both experts and amateurs." — Boston Transcript <J "Durant brings that refreshment to the general reader which was so notable in the writing of William James: as a biographer he has some- thing of the gifts of l.ytton Strachey." — New York Times <J "Where Addison failed, Durant has succeeded. He has humanized phil- osophy. He has made it live and dance and sing. It is a fit companion for Wells's 'Outline of History'. . . . Fascinating . . . Brilliant . . . Human." - Henry Hazlitt. The Netv York Sun <J Octavo size 586 pages, 21 full-page illustrations. 85.00 at all bookstores. SIMON AND SCHUSTER, New York

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184 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3190 WEALTH, VIRTUAL WEALTH, AND DEBT 'rederick Soddy, F.R.S., eminent Oxford Pro- >r of Chemistry, and Nobel laureate, who ap- plies ■ economic system the accuracy of anal- and the exact reasoning used in the physical sciences. He de . new theory of money, solv- what lie calls "the economic paradox." $3.50. >kscller E. P. COTTON & Co., Publishers, New York AiVIOQfTYVV FM Ai-?V A graphic human-interest story at tho lVl\JJ*^yj VV L/I^ViV I life „f the people in Soviet Russia today. Cloth, i l On postpaid. Aik for book catalog. CHARLES 11. KERR A. CO. 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago (yt& Non Depressant norHabitFormin£ InConvenient AluminumBoxes At every drugstore ^\\A.o\ ....a GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New York REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS °" lr«ct from the M o.tri Manufnct ur^r'n J'rice Suit Lfiiuthh Cut to Oi er. Price J2.00 per Yard. Po>t«K> Paid Nfc".U'\LL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Wmt lor pattern* «(»l.r,? .h,,|,r ,(,, ,K& ' ' nmrmmmmmmmwwmm ADM.T CA3DPS AND VACATION PLACES Trout Lake Hotel and Came* Near L«ke George) Tf natural beauty ami splendor in the heart of the Adirondacks is now under the management of I. B. BAILTN, formei of the Friend and Educa- tional Director of the Workmen's Circle. An ahode for reci ' regeneration. All aquatic activities and tennis- courts, music band, dancing, concerts, read- imp tires, etc. Ilent meals — High class American- i cooking. All modern conveniences. Moderate prict n until October 1st after Labor Day. Write tor Booklet orresrrvat ion to I. B. BAILIN Director Trout Lake Hotel and Cmmp Phone: Bolton Landing 60 F Zl Diamond Point, N. Y. CAMP GREATER UTOPIA Lacka waxen. Pa. Wm. J. PERLMAN, Director Will Dukant. Assoc. Director The most beautiful camp in America, unrivalled in scenery. The prettiest of lakes, with shady shores, plenty of boats and canoes : swimming crib with free instruc- tion. Pine woods with quiet walks and lovers' retreats. Eieht tennis-courts: saddle-horses; ball-field; hand- ourts. etc • of food, an-st, Heliport, L. I. • ; Great South Bay. Ope» June ?.M Cool, Comfortable, Cnurming. Regular guests and we^k-end parties. HOUSE WANTED WRITER wants to buy hou e about ino miles from New Yo untry or small town: " sea ; !l rooms. Would also be glad for suggestions as to locality from Nation readers. Box r>27, car'1 Th> Nation. ADI TT OAMI'S THIRD SEASON Set among famous scenes of Adirondack beauty 5 miles above Lake George Equipped with every known facility for comfort and sports. Re erval ions si rictly limited to 126 campers. !0 per week. n in each log cabin. Round Trip, Nrw York to Lake George, $12.28 UldreSi TAVERN, VVarrensburg, N. Y„ or Phone Wisconsin Rakish Moe Nudei i. INDIAN -iEAD CAMP ECHO J28.50 *»T week Daily rato $5.00 Adulta only I«and and W»tw Sports. Saf* Beaab WATCH FOR 1MB INDIAN 8ION WONDER CAMP OF THE ADIRONDACKS P. O. Box 114, Wnrrenpburs, N. V. ■' to I, -ike George or Day or Night Boat to Albany and train to fjike. George, lo- in Head car will await you. S«)d for booklet. City address: R. Helfant, 885 Brook Avenue). Bronx, N. Y. Tel. Melr«»« 1821 OPPORTUNITY FOR TEACHER r I TEACHER Young man or woman for two boys 1 9 and I '» years old in family of liberal pri in Colorado, and possibly one or two other cbiildren of alio . Hours !> :30 A.M. to noon and 0 P.M. and one evening a wool;. No oi Sunday i utile . lead special outing. Boys have own small school house under their exclusive control. If teacher can drive a car it will be helpful to him or her. Teacher must be familiar with anil deeply interested in modern methods of liberal education. No one else need apply. Write fully, giving all relevant information to Box No. 528, care The Nation TURKEY TURKEY. American livinir in Constantinople and much alone would gladly meet compatriots visit- ire Tu "esidence or travel. Box a2.r>, care The Nn j HOOKS AND BOOKSELLERS GEIST und GES1CHT des Bolschewismus by Rene-Fuelopp-Miller- (in German) Critical survey of cultural life in Soviet Russia, with 500 illustrations. $9.25 postpaid. W. BEYER, Inc., 259 5th Avenue. N. Y. C. TRUTH SEEKER: National P'reethought Weekly. Est. 1873. E. Macdonald, Edr. Three mos. Trial. $1. Sample free. Books: Voltaire, Paine, Ingersoll. Catalog free. TRUTH SEEKER CO., 49 Vesey St., New York EDCCATIONAD MX. Atrtj ^rhnnl A little school in the country wher» boys and girls from 2 to 12 may learn and gm-n in a world not only of text-bookp.. t'.I.'ZAOKTH Moor MARUARBT HaTFJRLO CROTON-ON-HUDSON, Nk.w York POSITIONS WANTED ry() East and Near-East, woman, edu -* and traveled, would go as companion, representative, or writer. Box 526, care The Nation. YOUNG ma n 26, - rience, di nil e posil ion of n where : hought- i Will nything. Bo I care The Nat V/OUNC woman: college graduate; teaching and lis work immediately. The Nation. 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The Nation POUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY. S KPT KM HER 1. No. 3191 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS IS", EDITORIALS: Professor Sam. Militarist Whose Y. M. C. A. ? Stuart Sherman ISs THE SUMMER WHTTF-HO Rv Hend on 180 MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER AND 1 By Stunrt Chase ion THE TARIFF AN" TM" FARMFR. By Georsre W Non SMOKE GOES UP SI OWLY. i: 1 GLIMPSES OF \RTHUR 0L-EASON. By Helen Haves Gleason IN THE DRTFTWAY. By the Drift i ijifi CORRESPONDENCE .... 1;„-, • ROOKS : Bones By Julia Johnson Dnvis 197 The Thoucrhtful State. Bv Henrv Raymond Mussey 197 Mr. Barnes on the War Guilt. By Frederick Bailsman .... 19>; War Diplomacy from th" Inside. Bv Keith Hutchison 1!K a, Nature, and Culture. Rv Melville J. Herskovil inn Molnar's Medium. By Lisle Rell 199 Peeks in Brief 199 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Opium- Up to Pa'o. By El'en W. La Motte 201 Denmark and the Free-Trade Conference. Rv Chester C. Piatt.. OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contriiu'ting Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union. $6.00. THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation. New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1, England. GREECE HAS BEEN TREATED to another revolution and another dark-browed general has come into power. Condylis replaces Pangalos. The affair was carried out according to the strict conventions governing south-Euro- pean revolts. The army and navy are reported to be behind the incoming general; civil liberties are to be restored to the people; the military machine is to be reorganized; the cur- rency is to be stabilized ; and the other elements of a healthy national life are to be established. But are they? General Pangalos was equally reassuring in his language when he seized power. He turned out to be a pretty poor dictator with a flair for issuing unpopular decrees and making him- self ridiculous. He was both bold and foolish. He at- tempted to regulate the length of women's skirts and to reform the morals of the sexes. He announced his contempt for democracy and his faith in armed force alone; and then suddenly he called for elections, had himself made president, and decreed that Greece should be a republic modeled after the United States. He executed and exiled his opponents with no apparent thought of the future. And later, rather rashly, he released many of his surviving opponents, includ- ing General Condylis who has now seized him and promised to put him and his government on trial. We fear that the accession of a new general in Greece, even though he comes in promising elections and a president, will do little more than throw one crop of politicians into jail and another into office. CHINAS POLITICAL MERRY-GO-ROUND whirls diz- zily, but the tide of nationalism continues to swell behind the showier events that absorb the newspapers. Wu Pei-fu has succeeded in driving the army of the Chris- tian general, Feng Yu-hsiang, out of the almost impreg- nable Nankow Pass northwest of Peking, probably because Feng's Russian friends were unable to move sufficient ammunition across the mountains and desert. But in the South Feng's Canton allies have spread northward through the passes and absorbed the province of Hunan, menacing Wu's rear at Hankow, the "Pittsburgh of China." So Wu, after his northern victory, is turning south to defend his capital, leaving Peking in the hands of his erstwhile enemy and present ally, the protege of Japan, Chang Tso-lin. It is a dizzying succession of changes — and unimportant. More significant is the action of the so-called Chinese Govern- ment in denouncing the Belgian extraterritoriality treaty which was about to expire. For although the action is taken by a shadow government, the shadow speaks in such matters with a voice that will be accepted by all China. On these treaties the Canton Government, Wu, and Feng think alike. The Powers may growl and glower, but their treaty "privileges" and "rights" are destined to disappear. SECRETARY KELLOGG'S SPEECH at Plattsburg has received more attention perhaps than its content merits because it had been widely heralded in advance as contain- ing important declarations in regard to the Administra- tion's policy with reference to disarmament. Mr. Kellogg spoke hopefully — too hopefully, we think — of the discussion at Geneva, laying especial emphasis on the practicability of regional agreements as a means of promoting peace and reducing military preparations among special groups of nations. We have no quarrel with the idea, but we do not see how the United States is in a position now to initiate any such agreements. As to the discussions at Geneva, it should not be forgotten that although our delegates went there without any plan to advance in America's behalf they have opposed the suggestion of the French that armament be related to a country's natural resources and equally the proposal for an international body to see that disarmament agreements, when made, are carried out. The latter sug- gestion, however repulsive to us, would seem essential to effective action. Although Mr. Kellogg pretends to be hope- ful of the Geneva conference, we fail to see what the Admin- istration at Washington has contributed to give substance to that hope. THE ACTION of the Passaic mill owners in refusing to deal with the American Federation of Labor after communist leaders had withdrawn from the strike is a little more brazen and hypocritical than anything in recent labor history. For thirty weeks these mill owners have denounced the strikers because of their communist leadership; they have dragged in the wildest rumors with no examination of the sources; they even stooped to circulate a fake scandal concerning Albert Weisbord, the communist head of the United Front Committee. Very well, said the strikers, we

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186 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 will give you conservative leadership and see what you do. Weisbord withdrew, the strikers voted to join the United Textile Workers, the United Textile Workers and the Ameri- can Federation of Labor accepted them. Did the employers soften their opposition? Not a whit. They refused to deal with any labor union. Communism has been their straw man; they have really been fighting against decent collec- tive bargaining and a living wage. The only choice that the workers have left is to fight the strike to the last ditch. THE NEW YORK SUBWAY STRIKE was defeated, but the Interborough Rapid Transit Company is still suing sixty-two strikers for $239,000 damages for violation of their "yellow dog" contracts. Only four strike leaders are left to fight the suit; if they work fifty-two weeks a year at a motorman's wage they can pay the damage bill in thirty-two years — provided they live on nothing a week in the meantime. What does the I. R. T. mean by pressing such a suit against a handful of unemployed men? (The com- pany lias refused to reinstate them.) It cannot hope to recover a cent and its expenses in court will be enormous. It is obviously trying to establish a legal precedent for all future fights between company and labor unions. A legal victory for "yellow dog" contracts and an award of nominal damages might be worth millions to the "open shop" manu- facturers of this country. Joseph Brodsky, labor attorney. who is now waging a lone fight for the strike leaders should have the backing of all American labor and liberal forces. FLORIDA HAS PUT four white men in jail for killing Negroes. Two of them face the death penalty and the other two have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Britt R. Pringle, one of the two men who are condemned to die, is the first white man to be convicted of first-degree murder for killing a Negro. The accused are making the usual efforts to avoid the penalties of what were extraordinarily brutal crimes, seeking retrials and commutations of sentence; but, according to the Associated Negro Press, the county officials who prosecuted the cases seem determined to see the course of justice run to a finish. Florida's passion for the law, how- ever, works curious paradoxes in regard to Negroes. While with one hand she protects the life and property of Negroes from white criminals, with the other she punishes them for securing for themselves the commonest of civilized comforts. Mrs. Blanche Brookins bought in New York a Pullman reser- vation for a through trip to Orlando, Florida. At Jackson- ville she was asked to leave the Pullman in accordance with Florida's Jim Crow law. She refused. At Palatka she was removed from the train, imprisoned over night, and in the morning fined $500 and costs, the maximum penalty for a Jim Crow violal ion. ANEW" YORK BUSINESS MAN, says Postmaster General New, will soon be able to leave his office on Saturday noon and reach San Francisco by airplane for the opening of business Monday morning. Air lines for passenger and mail service are springing up in all parts of the country ; many of them are making money. The New York-Chicago night service, the Salt Lake-Los Angeles and the Jacksonville-Tampa-Miami lines are all on a paying basis. The Government now has an unparalleled opppor- tunity to develop a publicly owned and operated air system. Will it seize the opportunity? Not if Postmaster General New has his way. Although the Government has demon- strated its capacity to run air lines at a profit, Mr. New declares: "I have said as often as I have either written or spoken on the subject that the Government should turn the business over to private capital." Mr. New would have the Government bear the brunt of air pioneering, spend the millions, lose the lives, and discover the pitfalls of air navigation. Then he would have private capital come in to build on the government foundation. The story of the railroads is to be repeated: watered stock, high profits, franchise manipulations, costly regulation, the corruption of government. Perhaps some twenty-first century La Follette will adopt as his campaign slogan: "I will re- capture the air for the people." THAT LITTLE GROUP of men who a quarter of a cen- tury ago had the vision to see in the Spanish-American War and its aftermath the beginnings of the corroding im- perialism which has in fact grown out of it is getting smaller each year. It lost a stalwart figure on August 16 in the death of Henry Wade Rogers, judge of the United States Circuit Court. He first came into collision with the forces that censor the expression of opinion — when it is unfavor- able it> them— in 1900. He was ousted as president of Northwestern University chiefly because of his public dis- approval of the McKinley policies in the Philippines. He went to the Law School of Yale University, of which he became dean, continuing to be an outspoken opponent of centralization in government and attacking the Roosevelt Administration even more sharply than he had that of Presi- dent McKinley. In 1912 he came out for Woodrow Wilson "to punish the Republican Party as the representative of the mercenary interests that have preyed upon the people for a generation, and to punish it for the sins of Big Business in partnership with crooked politics." Judge Rogers and other liberals of his type have been vindicated in all that they pre- dicted of the growth of imperialism, but they signally failed to check it merely by following a "good man" and switching from the Republican to the Democratic party or vice versa. ON CHARLES W. ELIOT, who died on August 22 at the age of ninety-two, we shall make more extended com- ment in a subsequent issue. At this time it is sufficient to add our voice to the great tribute which is being paid to him in every quarter and by every kind of person in this country and in the world. The universality of this tribute is perhaps Dr. Eliot's best epitaph. In his public life he was as much above race or creed or class as in his educational career he was above clique or fashion. For forty years president of Harvard University, Dr. Eliot not only made of it one of the world's great centers of learning but he pro- foundly affected the entire development of higher education in America. In his wider contacts with his fellow men as a citizen he was respected for his abundant wisdom, his high courage, his serene tolerance, and most of all, perhaps, for his fine humanity. It was the latter quality that kept him youthful and gave him the ear not only of the present gen- eration but of the youngest elements in it long after most of his contemporaries had slipped into the background. In one of his last messages to the young people of America Dr. Eliot said characteristically: "Don't think too much about yourself. When all you can think of is yourself, you're in a bad way."

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Sept. 1, 1926] The Nation 1ST Professor Sam, Militarist IN South America Uncle Sam is rapidly becoming a pro- fessor of military expansion. While our representatives at Geneva discuss disarmament our admirals in Brazil and Peru have for several years been teaching these South American nations to build larger and better navies for new- wars. The project began in November, 1922, when sixteen commissioned and nineteen petty officers were dispatched by the United States Government as a naval mission to Brazil. Some naval missions are brief dress parades; this | mission is no dress parade and it is not brief. It has already spent almost four years in Brazil teaching the Brazilians naval tactics and helping to expand the Brazilian navy. Re- cently the State Department announced that Brazil had renewed the contract for our naval mission for another four years from November, 1926. Unless someone inter- feres Professor Sam will stay in Brazil until 1930. Peru is also one of our military clients. An American naval mission has been in Peru more than two years help- ing to reorganize the Peruvian navy, and there is no indi- cation of an early withdrawal. Peru, it may be noted, is building part of her new navy in America; two Peruvian submarines were recently launched at New London. Does our Government appreciate the danger to us from this military intervention in South America? If under our tutelage Brazil gets so strong and rambunctious that she makes war on Argentina and Peru fights Chile, we are likely to see an attempt at intervention by the League of Nations. Peru and Chile belong fully to the League and Argentina has never actually resigned. League intervention would be called for upon a declaration of war and, if any of the coun- tries involved had begun the war in violation of the cove- nant, they would be subject to blockade. Our own commerce would be interfered with ; what would happen to the Monroe Doctrine nobody knows. There are some who would want us to hurl Europe out of America by force. Do we want that sort of a melee? If not, why do we help one American nation that is a member of the League to arm against other American nations that are members of the League? Another question should be faced by our Government. When we teach South American nations to fight, how do we know that they will fight with us in a war? Why shouldn't they fight against us? Take, for example, a war with Japan. The South American nations are restive under our financial domination. Japan has not attempted to rule them. An alliance with Japan is quite as natural as an alliance with the United States. What right have American officers on the payroll of American taxpayers to spend their time teaching other nations to fight? Offhand, we would say that they have no right at all except in the case of allies during a war. When a few Russian officers appear as military instructors in Canton, China, the press of the Western world denounces Russia for attempting to use the Chinese for selfish (Rus- sian) ends. Are we doing in South America what Russia is charged with doing in China? Probably the intentions of Congress were legitimate enough when the special act of 1920 was passed authorizing the President to accept the invitations of South American republics "whenever in his discretion the public interests require, to detail officers of tl e t'n ted -ites naval service to assist the government the republics of South America in naval matters." Th is innocent enough on the surface; it was renewed last May with even more sweeping provisions, allowing us to lend army and marine as well as naval officers. The Cone men who voted for it no doubt considered the act a means of strengthening the friendship between Latin America and the United States, a military bulwark for the Monroe Doc- trine. So it might have been if all the South American nations had invited help. But to date only two have asked for assistance, Brazil and Peru. The effect of extending military aid of any kind to some of the South American republics is unfortunate. Bra- zil's greatest potential enemy is Argentina; we are helping Brazil but not her rival. Peru's nemesis is Chile; we are c >rtainly not helping Chile. To all appearances we are help- ing Brazil to get ready for a war against Argentina and Peru to get ready for a war against Chile. If Brazil and Peru are not preparing to fight their South American neigh- bors, what are they getting ready for? It is a peculiarly tactless thing of our Government to keep a naval mission in Peru at the present moment. Chile is seething with bitterness against the United States be- cause our representatives seemed to favor Peru and con- demn Chile in the Tacna-Arica dispute. Probably Chile deserved the condemnation but her sensitiveness cannot be ignored; if we presume to act as judge it is hardly a wise thing at the same time to play the role of a military auxiliary of Chile's avowed enemy to the north. The Peruvian mili- tarists who want the people to believe that Tacna-Arica is worth dying for do not need the support of an American naval mission. Who is paying the costs of our South American naval missions? The law authorizing these missions provides that the naval officers lent to foreign Powers shall receive "in addition to the compensation and emoluments allowed them by such [South American] governments, the pay and allowance of their rank in the United States naval service." (Italics ours.) A fat bonus for lucky officers ! The foreign governments pay the expenses of our naval missions but we continue to pay the salaries, and the act of 1920 makes no provision for reimbursing the United States Government for these salary costs. If the thirty-five commissioned and petty officers of the mission to Brazil received the lowest pay given to the lowest commissioned officer after ten years service in the navy, our salary bill for the eight years in Brazil would be more than $700,000. The question of costs, however, is trivial compared to the major question: Are we allowing our admirals to Balkanize South America? Apparently we are. We are encouraging armament rather thai- disarmament in a con- tinent which may easily destroy itself in a competitive armament race. We are callously drifting into military arrangements which destroy our claim of impartiality; we may awake some morning to find that we have helped to divide South America into military blocs. The next session f Congress can do much for permanent peace in South America by terminating Uncle Sam's engagement as a mili- tary instructor in Brazil and Peru.

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The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 Whose Y. M. C. A? LIBERALS and reactionaries are fighting a determined battle for the control of the collegiate Young Men's Christian Association. Public attention has not been focused upon the struggle because of the more spectacular rift between fundamentalists and modernists and because there has been no open break in the ranks of the Y. M. C. A. Thus far the liberals have kept in the saddle, but their control is not secure. The struggle goes back to the changing character of the collegiate Y. M. C. A. Something has happened to this institution; it is not the thing that it was ten years ago. Its secretaries, once long- faced vendors of piosity, are evolving into a new type. In most American colleges the new Y. M. C. A. secretaries believe in evolution more or less militantly, hate the Reserve Officers Training Corps and the preparedness gospel, distrust American business standards, and call race discrimination un-Christian. They atedly attacked for their heresies by army officers and civilian super-patriots. In numerous cases the local college Y. M. C. A. has become a center for student self- expression and independent criticism of trustee control, curriculum voodoo-worship, and the football craze. It is quite natural that collegiate Y. M. C. A. secretaries should be converted to the new social evangelism. The stu- are not interested in any other kind. They regard the old evangelism of personal salvation as unimportant or untrue or both ; it will not stand the test of class-room > ialy- sis. Except in scattered denominational schools funda- alism is everywhere on the run in our colleges. The Y. M. C. A. would commit suicide by sympathizing with it. Unfortunately the sponsors of the city Y. M. C. A. do not ap what has happened to the collegiate Y . M. C. A. two branches of the organization move in different orbits, although they are officially bound together by an international committee. The big capitalists who contribute to the support of both kinds of Y. M. C. A. probably do not km w what is happening in the colleges. The alignment of ivo groups under one head is grotesque. The typical city Y. M. ('. A. is a hotel and gymnasium for young business climbers, thoroughly commercialized, thoroughly safe. It is manned by secretaries who combine the qualities of Sun school superintendent, athletic director, and hotel clerk. It teaches short cuts to business success and, on Sunday afternoons, diluted Protestant optimism. It is more directly dependent on the approval of business men than any other religious institution in America. e city Y. M. C. A.'- which comprise the great bulk and riches of the interna i body, would like to whip the collegiate Y. M. ('. A. into line. They (jo not. like its "radical" ideas. Recently in Texas they smashed the South- :rn committee for collegiate work because the commit- tee had brought "dangerous" speakers to the Slate. They are constantly bringing pressure through financial sources to force back the collegiate Y. M. C. A.'s to "the funda- mentals of Christianity." Ultimately the two types of thought represented by the collegiate and city branches of the Y. M. C. A. cannot live together. The collegiate Y. M. C. A. cannot lie sub- servient to the smug success-gospel of the city "Y." An independent college Y. M. C. A. is the desirable and not improbable result of the present struggle. Stuart Sherman THE eager and devoted following which Stuart Sherman enjoyed was the result — if the sheer ability' of his criticism be for the moment disregarded — of two or three human qualities which could not but be felt behind the even front of his many essays. His followers yesterday may not have been identical with those of two or five or ten years ago. The audience he reached through the New York Herald Tribune was not only wider but more liberal than the audience which first acclaimed him — the readers of The Nation of the days before the World War. Y'et there could never have been any disagreement among his admirers concerning the kind of man he was. He combined, for one thing, courage in a high degree with another quality not often found in its company. He was sensitive also. There have been many blustering critics, men who drove straight before them with whatever weapon came to hand, men who blurted their opinions. Stuart Sherman's courage was of the opposite sort, having perhaps been cultivated in an attempt to fight against the shyness, to cover up the delicacy, primary in his nature. Certainly to those who knew him or who read him know- ingly there was evident a mind equipped with many fine, invisible feelers which it instinctively put out whenever a book or a person came near. And the purposp of this put- tine; out was not, it need scarcely be .••aid, to discover what . were thinking; it was to gather the materials of his own eventual thought. To such a man many ideas are possible in a given circumstance. The more light-hearted members of the sensitive tribe end by expressing several or all of these ideas in quick, nervous succession. Not so Stuart. Sherman. His courage and his sense of dedication to the most serious tasks of criticism kept him pondering until he had decided upon a course; th<'ii they thrust him forward, it. would seem half unwillingly, with his mind very (irmly made up and his judgment Hying like a banner. There were those who confused him with the simple fighters; they did not understand the complications of a t< mper which never did or could display the whole of itself. With much of his critical campaign the newer Nation was inevitably out of sympathy. He began (under the shadow of Paul Elmer More) as one who, himself inherit- ing a healthy intellectual constitution, felt called upon to diagnose most of the symptoms of the modern mind as pathological. The brilliant essays — hardly anywhere sur- passed in American criticism — which composed his first published volume, "On Contemporary Literature," applied a rigorous, classical test, to the greatest of our writers. That these writers failed to qualify was the fault of the test, not of themselves; and the subsequent history of Stuart Sherman is the story of his gradual, rather stub- born adjustment, to the fact. Never abating his earnest- ness and never abandoning his search for the best of which the human spirit is capable, he nevertheless concluded that the present had to be studied in its own terms. In that study he was engaged when he died. The preface to his last volume of essays contained an admission that dogma- tism concerning "the good life" is ill-conceived. The con- tents of the same volume showed that he was well on his way toward an appreciation of the vitality which is in con- temporary literature. That he now will never be able to define that vitality is a tragic loss to American letters.

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Sept. 1, 1926] The Nation 189 1 he Summer White- House Spokesman

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190 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 My Great-Great -Grandfather and I By STUART CHASE IN the year 1800 my great-great-grandfather was living with his family in a little farm house near the town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. For the past five years I have been living with my family in New York City. As a test of progress, how much more abundant, more rewarding, is my life than his? He lived at the threshold of the in- dustrial revolution — the first textile mill in America was built in 1802. I live on the crest of the greatest wave of applied technology that the world has ever seen. Newburyport in 1800 was. with its outlying villages, largely a self-supporting community. The bulk of its food, shelter, and clothing was locally grown and fabricated. By and large — save for the town sot — every able-bodied per- son worked, and worked at making something useful. De- spite the rigor of this economic necessity, the work produced bears the stamp not only of utility, but of a gracious and lasting beauty. I sometimes think that High Street in Newburyport is the loveliest architectural grouping in Amer- ica— unless it be the village green of Old Lyme in Con- necticut. An early Nantucket ordinance bears the phrase "mechanics and other artists," and as one looks upon the houses, the doorways, the glass, the pottery, the pewter, the hooked rugs, the masonry, the ironwork, the chairs, the tables, and the cabinets of that eighteenth-century period in New England, one cannot but believe that the town fathers of Nantucket spoke truly. While a few years later in the harbors of Newburyport, of Salem, and of Boston, the spars and halyards and cloud-like canvases were to rise, at has been termed the most beautiful and vibrant thing ever fashioned by the hand of man -the clipper ship. Hen ly was no product of labor driven and unwilling, bul the expression of an age which gave to the shapi olors of .rials vi] igination, and lives lived at the full. And it is dubio things could ever have come to birth at all without a i in thi ir creation by the bulk of munity. md there one finds an i ith-century architect, a ship-designer, a cabinet-maker of outstanding ability rid large the output flowed from hand:- inl- and unknown, too nu e. ii was the work not of an individual genius but of a general culture level. On this level my great-great-grandfather lived his life and from it drew his sense of values and his measure of happiness. Let us run down the list of essentials and compare my life with his. First, as to shelter. I live in a decaying Victorian apartment house up three flights of stairs in a dark and dirty stair well. In certain seasons, for as much as an hour in the afternoon, sunlight will make its way through indow in the kitchen and lie like some rare flower on the floor. Otherwise there is no sunshine, summer or win- ter. And very little light; and not too much fresh air. We open our windows, but we never, if we can avoid it, look out of them. The art of the jerry-builder has affected woodwork, plaster, and plumbing so that nothing is ever quite clean, or quite dry, or quite workable. My wife strug- gled with a New England housewife's conscience for two years and then, to save her sanity, strangled it. We have a bathroom it is true, we have electric lights and a gas stove. But is my housing today — particularly when children and their needs are considered — superior to that of my great- great-grandfather in his sunny, low-eaved, great-ovened farmhouse in the town of Newburyport? It is true that for the same monthly rental we might have secured a cleaner and more attractive apartment, but owing to the immutable laws of real-estate investment, it would have to shrink so in size as to be almost uninhabitable by virtue of congestion. Take food. The food we eat is vastly more varied ; it is probably richer and undoubtedly softer than the diet of my great-great-grandfather. The softness has an unfortu- nate effect on our teeth, and one wonders if the whole-wheat grains, the fruits and berries fresh picked, the simple vege- tables from the garden or the root cellar, did not constitute not only a more wholesome but a more toothsome and suc- culent diet. One grows weary of pale food in cans and bot- tles and packages — however meticulously sterilized, however flamboyantly advertised. Not only vitamins, but the very juices which act most powerfully on the salivary glands seem to be missing. Take clothing. Again the variety today is as conspicu- ous as its lack of durability. As the jerry-builder has under- mined housing, so the shoddy-maker has undermined tex- tiles. Not that sound cloth cannot be made on the machine. 1 saw an overcoat recently which had been used continu- ously for ten winters — and showed no sign of wear. It was not. however, a product of the higher salesmanship, but was made of cloth tested for the United States Government and ordered for a military officer. Today the clothes my wife wears are, I suspect, more comfortable, more suited to the lines of the human body, than those of my great-great- grandmother — however deficient they may be in workman- ship. But the clothes I wear — in town at lea both flimsy and hideous compared with the kn lies, the noble colors, the brave brass buttons of Newburyport a century ago. f doubt if in all the centuries since men wore clot lies there has ever been a mode so ugly and so depressing as the somber cylinders which have encased us since the forties. Along with the smoke of the coal age came what might be termed the smoke-stack style for men. Just lately one notes the arrival of a special sports mode which admits color and line, lint, only an infinitesmal fraction of the popu- lation e and circumscribed seasons and places — can avail itself if. Undertakers' regimentals still constitute the last word for the bulk of the male citizenry. Take health. There were no reliable vital statistics in Newburyport in 1800, but I doubt if the average duration of life was as long as it is today. I suspect that we spend more days per year incapacitated by sickness, but medical science pull.-- us through where the blood-letters of New- buryport only assisted the gentleman with the scythe. If you fell ill, your chances of dying were considerably greater in the old days, but you did not fall ill so frequently — you couldn't afford to. The net result is a lower death rate today, but for that advantage — if it be one in terms of abounding life — consider the price that we pay in the ser-

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Sept. 1, 1926] The Nation 191 /ices of doctors, dentists, hospitals, X-rays, injections, in- sulations, and the staggering costs of blasting water sys- tems, sewage-disposal systems, garbage-collection systems, and public-sanitation systems generally into a congested •ity ana utterly unadapted, through lack of community alanning, to such arteries. Take education. I send my two children to one of the Dest, modern experimental schools. We have tolerated the oleak apartment chiefly to be near this school. Yet 1 gather that the bulk of the effort of those competent women who aperate this experiment in education is directed to the re- ;reation in a hostile environment of those factors of crafts- manship, manual dexterity, awareness of nature, spontane- ous play, which my great-great-grandfather's children re- vived naturally, automatically, and costlessly in Newbury- pOrt. The world those children took to as a duck takes to water, is now being searched for in the city's canyons with a large outlay for "equipment" and "material" and "project Study"; with a terminology altogether stupefying; and with no assurance as yet that, beleaguered by an enviroment in which child life is implacably ignored, the search will be successful. The public schools of course have never even thought of such a search, much less begun it. In respect to the three R's, however, instruction not only in the ex- perimental schools but in the public schools as well is vastly more competent than it was a century ago. Coming finally to intellectual life — the life of the spirit, not classed as a stern essential by economists, but neverthe- less relevant to the parallel which we are trying to develop and supremely relevant to the question of living life to the full. New York City today possesses resources for stimu- lating the mind and the higher emotional centers that places it, at first blush, utterly beyond the Newburyport of 1800. (Incidentally, and in passing, it possesses resources for stimulating the lower emotional centers on perhaps an even more magnificent scale.) One can take one's pick of sixty theaters, scores of lectures, the opera, a dozen concerts, art galleries, museums, scientific gatherings, what not. The sum total on any winter's night is stupendous. And I, for one, in the face of such an intellectual feast, feel often like the historic centipede. The centipede was happy quite Until the frog in fun Said, "Pray which leg comes after which?" And wrought his mind to such a pitch He fell exhausted in the ditch, Considering how to run. Or else, and more frequently, I try to keep up to some degree with the plays that are being talked about, and the concerts and lecturers and exhibitions that are being talked about, and the books that are being talked about. Which tends to leave me very little time in which to talk about things that are being talked about. My wife and I become two highly specialized automatons, gathering pollen with in- credible dispatch from a hundred flowers, booming our way in subway and elevated train and taxicab in and out of lob- bies, up and down elevators, through revolving doors, but — • and here's the rub — when the cultural debauch is ended, with so little opportunity to distil honey for our future joy and sustenance. What is this world so full of care There is no time to stand and stare? And the most saddening thing of all to us is the hos- tility which New York offers to the making and holding of friendships. We have acquaintances without number and among them many whom we long to know better; we call icores by their first names, clap them on the shoulder, promise to call them on the telephone, assure them "we must get together for dinner." We do an immense amount of greeting and an immense amount of handshaking and an im- mense amount of promising and then, because we cannot maintain the pace, a quite collossal amount of what can only be called bare-faced lying. Almost never do we sit down in that atmosphere of peace and timelessness which is essential in the cultivation of friendship. And we find that good, un- hurried discussion in this city is as rare as friendly inter- course. Perhaps the two are governed by the same relentless law. It was Goethe who said that a civilization should be i red by the excellence of its conversation. The keenest intellectual joy I know is good discussion. In it one partici- feels something of the excitement of thought-creation, is not bound speechless in a lecture seat to be thundered at from above. In all the four years we have lived in New York, I have not had a dozen good discussions. Rather I have gone to a hundred committee meetings with a watch in one hand and in the other a pencil which forever seems to be turning out budgets and lists of possible contributors. God knows there is culture enough but it is a spectator's culture, a listener's culture, not a participant's culture. It is handed down at so much a head including war tax. It is not the culture which the free citizens of Athens knew as they sauntered eager and expostulating through their academies, nor yet that cruder but still vital culture which drew every man who could walk to the New England town meeting a century and more ago. Where does the balance lie? In terms of living as set off from mere existing, who lives the more abundantly, my great-great-grandfather or myself? Before you answer, note this point well. He was an average citizen of his com- munity, economically speaking; while probably the joint income of my wife and myself is two to three times the aver- age of my community. Compare him with the average New York family as you find it in the Bronx, on the East Side, in the wilderness of suburban Brooklyn. Where then does the balance lie? I started to make an impartial survey, but perhaps I have tilted the scales. The tendency to become maudlin about the old days — particularly to a New Englander — is a powerful one. I have probably succumbed to it somewhat. Certainly Newburyport in 1800 was no Utopia. Discount, then, the parallel which has been recited by a wide margin of tolerance, and again, where does the balance lie? I confess I do not know. But the significant thing is that there should be any question at all; that I should look back with eyes that are so often envious to a time when all the results of modern technology were non-existent. Finally I may be accused of unfairness in comparing life in a small town with life in a great city. Remember, however, my standard of reference is net welfare. I have included the "life of the mind as well as that of the body. By and large, I believe that a properly planned city promises more in net welfare, and so I think the comparison is not an unreasonable one. There is a machine today which can make nails one hundred and nine times faster than the blacksmith in New- buryport could fashion them; a machine which can make plows thirty-two times faster. Cotton sheeting can be made one hundred and three times faster than ever my great- great-grandmother could spin and weave it. And it is

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192 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 alleged by competent technicians that we have, in the energy released by the turbines and engines of America, the equiva- lent of the labor power of three billions of slaves, or nearly thirty servants for every man, woman, and child in the country. Why is it, in the face of such unparalleled tech- nical improvement and engineering development, such a wealth of natural resources laid bare since 1800, that my standard of living in terms of vital values is so little better, if indeed it is better at all, than that of my great-great- grandfather; while the standard of living of the average family in New York City is almost certainly worse? How has this stupendous gain in technology, in control over the forces of nature, been drained away and wasted? Machine production in terms of tonnage output is a meaningless, and if the output be guncotton, an actively destructive thing. Trade statistics, transportation load, steel output, even harvest yields are only wind to innate the empty brains of small-town boosters until they are corre- lated with the vital statistics of the day-by-day life of the wayfaring man. The wheels hum, the freight trains roar, the mines belch, the forests crash, the oil wells spout, the sand hogs curse, the cities reach their white pinnacles to the stars — and what do we who live here in New York today get out of it? Not nearly as much as we ought. Not a tithe of what Fulton and Arkwright and Watt promised us. The world is full of stuff, but it is largely ugly, depressing, mean, or swanky stuff. It carries little nourishment for the human organism. This is no triumph of human intelligence. This is the defeat of human intelligence. This is a child smash- ing a microscope. This is waste — meaningless, destructive, gigantic. The Tariff and the Farmer By GEORGE W. NORMS THE trouble with agriculture can be summed up under two general heads: First, the farmer does not get the full benefit of the protective tariff. Second, the cost of distributing food products is unreasonably high and add-' to the burdens both of the producer and of the consumer. How can we give the farmer the benefit of the tariff enjoyed by the manufacturer and the laborii g man? A tariff on imports, whether enacted with the idea of revenue or of protection, but particularly if it is for protection, def< ruled if its benefits will not accrue to all citizens alike. The manufacturer can increase his selling until it is raised to the level of the tariff wall. In other words. ets no competition from the foreign ifacturer unless he raises his price above the tariff. added cost is passed by the jobber to the wholesaler; th ■ wholesaler passes it to the retailer; and the retailer adds it to what he collects from the consumer. As a matter of fact, most of these middlemen add more than the tariff, so that in practice the ultimate consumer not, only pays the iiv: extra, if th" consumer be a laboring mail, tile addition;:! price that he pays is to some extent •ed in a higher wage; but when it reaches the farmer ips. He cannot pass the additional burden to someone else. If the tariff enabled ! ,;' to , duty i selling price of his product he would be able, at least in part, to meet this additional cost; but when he sells his produi confronted with an entirely different situa- tion, hi the principal staple food products, the farmer produces a yearly surplus, and this surplus must find a market in the trade centers of the world. In the produc- tion of wheat the farmer must sell the surplus in competi- tion with the wheat produced in India, in the Argentine, in Russia, and in other parts of the world where the cost of production is much less than in America. The price that the American farmer gets for his surplus in foreign mar- kets fixes the price of the entire product. In other words, he must buy on this side of the tariff wall and sell on the other side. He must live, as far as consumption is con- cerned, in an artificial atmosphere raised above world con- ditions by the tariff, while he must sell his product at prices established by world conditions. Because the farmers are scattered all over the country, and because their numbers run into the millions, it is almost impossible for them to meet the situation by organ- ization. The manufacturers, comparatively few in number, can and do organize for the purpose of making the tariff on their products effective to the consumers and for the purpose of limiting production. There is no practical way in which the production of farm products' can be limited. The manufacturer, at the beginning of a year, knows with reasonable certainty what the consumption of his product is going to be. He arranges his business accordingly. And even if he has failed to judge the amount the country will consume he can, almost over night, lessen his production cr increase it. The farmer can do nothing of the kind. He battles against the elements of nature in his business, and cannot know in advance whether he is going to produce a surplus or, if so, how much the surplus is going to be. He often produces a larger crop on a small acreage than in other years he produced on a much larger acreage. He must gamble with the winds and rains, with dry weather, with hail, with bugs, with worms. When his crop is planted there is nothing for him to do but to go on and produce as much as he possibly can. Even though he realizes dur- ing the months of his summer's toil that there will be a large surplus of his product, he cannot shut down his operations as the manufacturer can, but must gather his whole crop, knowing that even if the profit is small on any given unit, his only salvation is to produce an additional number of such units. The legislation recently defeated in the Senate and in the House aimed to give the farmer the same tariff pro- tection that is enjoyed by other classes of our people. It did this by providing a method for the purchase and dis- position of the surplus product. It provided for the pur- chase in our markets of that part of the product over and above what would be required for domestic consumption and the selling of this surplus in the markets of the world, it is conceded that if machinery could be enacted by which the surplus could be purchased and kept off of the domestic market, then the price of the product would rise to the level of the tariff wall. But in the sale of the surplus there

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Sept. 1, 1926] The Nation 19! would, of course, be a loss, and the proposed legisl contemplated the paying of this loss by the farmers them- selves by what is ordinarily known as an equalization fee. While getting the benefit of the tariff, therefore, lie would have deducted from this benefit, and taken out of his profit, whatever equalization fee was levied, so that in practical application of the contemplated law he would still be handicapped where the manufacturer is not. There is nothing involved in the proposal ttiat is no; involved in our existing tariff law as it applies to the man- ufacturer, and no objection has ever been raised to it that does not apply with equal force to any tariff that may be levied on any article produced in America. There are those, of course, who oppose, and oppose strenuously and honestly, the levying of any tariff, particularly a tariff for protection; but we have such a tariff, and everyone must, if he is fair, admit that as long as it exists the farmer ought to benefit as well as the manufacturer. Even if the farmer were given the full benefit of the tariff, he would still be suffering under handicaps not applicable to other classes of citizens. The cost of dis- tribution in many of our principal food products is greater than the cost of production. The result is that the farmer frequently gets too little to pay him for his investment and his labor, while the consumer pays a price so high as to be almost prohibitive. There is no doubt that this excessive cost of distribution decreases greatly the amount of consumption. From the time the food leaves the farmer who produces it until it reaches the table of the consumer many middlemen have either directly or indirectl something to do with the handling of the product, and in every instance have added to its cost. The object of those who would relieve the situation, whether by voluntary action or by legislation, should be to bring the consumer and the producer as close together as possible. The farmer ought to get more and the con- sumer ought to pay less. Cooperative1 organizations of producers and cooperative organizations of con- should be encouraged by law. Much progress has been made in this direction, but even the largest cooperatives have found themselves seriously handicapped by the powerful organizations of middlemen. It will require ion to bring about the elimination of a large portion of this army of middlemen. Our producers as well as our con- sumers are so widely scattered and so difficu" to or; that nothing can bring about the elimination of this waste except the strong hand of the Government. A few years ago the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry unanimously reported a bill which set up a giant corporation, capitalized with government funds, which should act in its corporate capacity as a great middleman betwreen the producer and the consumer. It was authorized to buy from cooperative organizations of producers all kinds of food products and to sell these prod- ucts to cooperative organizations of consumers, either in this country or abroad. It was authorized to est agencies in all parts of the country to handle I ; products; and to construct warehouses of all kinds for the storing of non-perishable products. The proposed legisla- tion turned over to this corporation hundreds of idle ships owned by the Government, then tied up at the docks, with a provision that it was to pay no rental for the ships but was to keep them in repair and turn them over to the Government in case of war or national emergency, without charge. On these ships it was proposed to carry the farm products of America to all parts of the world. The cor- poration would not only have performed the Si a giant middleman but would have preserved intact the mer- chant marine. It was not expected thai this corporation would carry on all the food distribution of the country, but rather that it would do enough busi regulate prices. [t would have given encouragement to a gn extent than has ever been contemplated to cooperative or- ganizations. This bill, although it had the unanimous in- dorsi men! of the committee, was defeated by the power of t!ie Administration and the influence of millionaire middle- men scattered all over the country. The railroad is perhaps the greatest of all middle- men. As far as its principal revenue is concerned, it is nothing but a middleman— a necessary one it is true, but a middleman nevertheless. Its freight revenue is acquired by a levy upon the products of human consumption as they travel from the producer to the consumer. Every living being has a direct interest in the cost of freight distribu- tion. The man who never sees the railroad or hears the sound of a whistle must nevertheless pay his share of the freight. It is part of the price of everything that we eat, wear, or use. Nothing in our modern civilization escapes its charge. It ought therefore be given to the people at cost or as near cost as possible. The farmer has a greater interest in the freight ques- tion than any other class. All dealers, from the manufac- turer down to the consumer, add the price of the freight to the commodity they handle. When it reaches the farmer he has no opportunity to pass the increase on. He is at the end of the equation and therefore must absorb it. On the other hand, when he has anything to sell the freight charge is immediately deducted from his return. The price of his wheat at the farm is the Chicago or Minneapolis price, less the freight. The cost of his plow or his harrow or his clothes or anything else he has to buy is the manu- facturer's price plus the middleman's profit, and always plus the freight. Thus he pays the freight twice, and he is the only class of our citizens who does this. When the farmer begins to realize how directly the freight question affects his business and how he helps to bring about a loss where there should be a gain in his operations there will be a united demand for a solution of the railroad problem ; and when the consumers of the country awake to the fact that the railroads are now in politics and always have been in politics, and that the best way to take them out of politics is to operate a government- own< (1 system, public sentiment in favor of a final solution will be irresistible, Smoke Goes Up Slowly By ELI SIEGEL Smoke goes silently up to the sky, while the sun is setting; Setting, setting, this day after thousands and thousands and thousands of days. Feet move along pavements, people talk in the clean, cool time before twilight, and smoke goes up to the waiting, quiet skies. Work is over, rushes are over; those who went out of kitchens in the morning are now in kitchens again; and smoke goes slowly up to the waiting, quiet skies.

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194 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 Glimpses of Arthur Gleason By HELEN HAYES GLEASON III DINNER parties were to be shunned. Restaurants were different. There one could go with a companion to linger over talk. Though at the very center of rush and con- gestion, Arthur Gleason was at ease in a restaurant; it went with traveling to his nature. The Playbill Restaurant of years gone by in New York was one of his favorites; the oyster-stew counter at the Grand Central Station was an- other. You sank into a restaurant chair as into a well, observing the world through a periscope. Something took place, atmosphere poured down and around, creating a delightful privacy. This was accomplished as easily at Childs as any less popular place. A friend has written of his London days: There was a pleasure in going with him to an Italian restaurant he had discovered near Victoria Station and an engaging charm (like the endearing grace of a child happily at play) in the care he took in choosing the meal — he had found a good Chianti there, I remember. him a new dish, a new drink, a new person, a new scene, by change and contrast brought out the known values of life. His was a stimulating combination of loyalty to the old and enthusiasm for the new. In his own words : There is a wayward element in life which makes the turning of a street corner an adventure. There is some- thing amazing in the squandering of power and charm, at random. . . . Life refuses to be organized, has no bureau of registration for beauty, no central clearing station for its multitudinous wonder. The next inn at the forks of the road may he reserving for us a loyal friend or a fresh encounter. Meals were never just meals when he was home. They were gatherings for friendliness and talk. If we hadn't guests in the flesh, we had their representatives, hundreds of them on shelves at arm's length. He would rise, choose a book in a flash, turn to the paragraph sug- gested by talk, share it, return to food. If that paragraph led to another and another, he would go on, kindling to the thought, dipping here and there. Nothing to do then hut cover his plate. Given a smoke and any stranger, he could talk for hours, leading or following, drawing out, picking up infor- mation— often most valuable contacts — giving himself with complete focus. His conversation was always interesting, frequently brilliant and sparkling, unhurried, lie talked like a connoisseur, choosing words for value and flavor. Their music was his daily habit. He swore seldom but with a fine finish. When he swore his eye carried the glint to kill, if necessary. Certain things, like baseball and movies and vaude- ville, for which he had a special passion, he felt were great common denominators in America. As much as books and travel they were to him channels of friendship and under- standing by which he could identify himself with the mass flow of human life. He read the sporting page regularly for its tang, its touch of vulgarity. He was extremely fond of baseball; the skill of the big League players was pure joy to him. He knew the teams and their records and would grow absorbed matching reminiscences about them. But for many years one of his greatest delights was vaudeville. I am haunted with thoughts of the old Satur- day afternoons when we had subscription season tickets at the Alhambra on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, New York. When we lived downtown we came up; when we lived uptown we came down. The Alhambra was our cen- ter. We liked the third row left aisle, end seats, for on that side passes down the magician from stage to audience. At that angle we could watch the keen profile of Ben Rob- erts, the orchestra leader. He was half the show. We liked his careful work in giving a newcomer a fair hearing and his abandon with the old-timers. We were much saddened when he was lifted over to a newer and bigger theater and from there to the Palace. The best acts on the circuit, the best seats for fifty-five cents, "Red" a property man, and Ben, the most gifted leader, a little spoiled us. Such were the offerings of the Alhambra Vaudeville. It was a mixed feeling of pride in having spotted a good act and disappointment in seeing it go that swept us when one by one the favorites broke through years of hard work in vaudeville to become headliners in glorified revues. But A. G. never forsook vaudeville. In his own words: Vaudeville is speed, skill, brevity, fun. It is various, accidental, and natural. The spirit is one of play. . . . It is not trying to lift the stage nor degrade it. Its stage is level to the audience, so level that the performers walk out among the people and continue their act. They would use good songs as quickly as any group if good songs there were. Vaudeville has no concern with grief and conflict. For human suffering its only answer is a change of tune. But it knows its own little world of play, and sometimes for a few minutes it makes children happy and turns grown folks into children. To some Arthur Gleason was a publicist, to others a reformer, a radical; to his wife he was the writer with the vision of beauty and suffering filling his eyes. Two envelopes, which I found among his papers after my own paragraphs had been written, bear the inscriptions "Dissolution" and "The Darker Drink." This material had been written through the years from 1909 to 1922. It is l he intimate stock-taking of a man's soul: 1912 The next ten years will not be as the last ten years (1901-1911) have been — dreary, a process of breaking the human spirit and then remaining sweet under the disci- pline. One learns at last that we must not lie down under injustice, nor accept deep personal humiliation. I have come to see that we are not called upon to re- sign ourselves to a lifetime of barren routine, nor to bend the will to the arrogance and foulness of men in power, nor to accept their insults in patience and flatter their weaknesses. . . .

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Sept. 1, 1926] The Nation 195 I have done what is "wise" and "sane" and those things that lead to regularity and "respectability" of life, to conforming with the scheme of things, and to su> And I find that they destroy the only living thing within us, the human spirit, the only gift that can create, ami that can communicate joy. . . . 1913 The free life of writing is for me blessed from heaven. It alone brings the sense of earning my way, of being jus- tified in continuing to live. It clears the consciousness of suffering. The routine of ofiiee work is hateful to me be- cause it destroys the power to write, and tills my life with a sense of pain. It carries, too, a sense of futility, unworthy tasks in endless succession. 1 came out of office work sick and wounded. It has taken four years to repair that loss. That which gives inner light and peace is right to do. That which brings darkness is wrong. It is foolish to set the rule of the course by the very moments when we are choked by glooms and blinded by failure. It is time to plan the larger purpose when the outlook ahead is clear. At this level, with an untroubled mind, and a sense of large self-expression, I wish to record for weaker mo- ments my resolve to continue to hold fast to this true way of life, and my resolve not to be turned into routine by temporary discouragement. And, more than that, I wish not to be turned aside from dwelling in this clearer air by the petty ethics of the world's standards. I wish no thought of the lesser duties and responsibilities to deflect me from the work which I do best. All considerations on the give-and-take of aver- age community living are secondary and negligible, save only as they contribute to the main purpose. I write this as giving voice to the best insight that I possess. I believe this to be the way of truth, and any other way a coward's retreat. I believe this is in obedience to the invisible deep-running laws of being which some- how show us what is life's will for us. 1914 Having acquired a technique by much hard work, I should like to use that technique instead of being forced into work where no technique is required. One more year has gone, to a man past thirty-five years of age, and in that year, only a few weeks granted of work along lines which bring out his powers and employ his skill. For the rest, a filling of time with chasing about in many directions on matters of which he is ignorant, and so an ache at the heart through power thwarted and unfulfilled. Never at any other time is there a sense of well- being except when writing. Then alone the thwarting disappears. Only as a singer do we approach the presence. . . . 1922 The attempt to organize the writer, and to force him to fulfil functions other than his own — functions sometimes that are destructive of his aptitudes — awakens the self- protective instinct. We exist to affirm our essence, unless we accept ourselves as clerks of an office. . . . The constant contacts, the many conferences, violate me. They are a scatteration of forces. What I want above other things is quiet times in , quiet places to gather to- gether and arrange the deposits of the flux of things. The essence of life is change. So at each change there were great rejoicings. Whenever he gave up stifling work to become himself, free, winged, we celebrated with a tinee or went voyaging to find a fresh impulse. He never permitted situations to "get him." He moved on. Financial relief I he wrote] is the everlasting problem of the artist. If he works hack, it kills creation. If he makes beauty, it sells poorly. If he accepts subsidy, he becomes indolent. The nearest to a solution seem periods of active prac- tical work, and periods of creative leisure. Only a great purpose like Webb or Darwin can suffer a secure income. ***** It is almost impossible to speak of the years in Europe — they were so close-packed with suffering and loneliness and great experience. Only those few who did it know what price was paid to live from 1914 to 1917 trying to serve the Allied side. First and last we were aliens, under constant and often stupid surveillance of new officials ; cour- teous superiority, a faint amusement from the English, sus- picion from the French and Belgians. We grew tired many times in those years proving that we were friends. But England for the six years was our base. To A. G. England was a second home. Her quiet rhythm, a certain well-seasoned stability, free speech, and her humor were congenial to him. He had known England from boyhood. He loved the best in her. * * * ■><- * At last the time came to go home. We sailed back to New York in early 1920. We had left home in early 1914 to find rest. Now we were wistful to leave the place that had given anything except rest, but which had become so much a part of us; old and dear friends and newer ones, whom we should not see soon unless they came to us. The years in Europe had been devoted to causes. They were six of the most valuable years in his life ; a war at close range, contact with the best in several countries. But they left him dumped back in America, psychologically quite alien, as all those who had any real war experience felt on returning — a crispness lacking understanding, an intolerance with the war-weary — physically and financially at low ebb. "Your much-valued word," he wrote, "cheers the heart in these desolate days in America. We have come back to a suppressed, freedom-hating community. It seems to me I have never known folks so short-tempered, so full of bitterness and the desire to strike down the hopes of the world." During the interval abroad nothing could be saved and savings had been invaded. All the money above living ex- penses had been given to the soldiers and to the babies. It was not much, but it was all he had. There was now a real need of rest, for, with brief bits of respite here and there, winters and summers had been much alike, those years of service and separations. The un- derthrum of war bred doubts even then ; always the anxious separation followed the holiday. War lifted through the surf; bombs fell at high noon: destruction spilled more accurately under a full moon. War means separation from all that is worthy and dear; it is the essence of war. It took home, art, health, some of the best years of his prime. War really took him. He "went West" with the others. Acute danger, sudden danger, laughed at him, fell about him like a mantle and left him undaunted. But like the drip of water on stone, the long drumming fatigue of war ate into vitality, sapped strength and resistance. . . .

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196 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 In the Driftway AS these lines are written, that Jersey leopard is still at large. In fact, he is so much and so long at large that officials of Monmouth County, from a zoo in which he was reported to have escaped, are said to be coming to the conclusion that there isn't any such animal. They are putting him in the same class with the giraffe. An escaped leopard, it appears, must kill a man, or at least a chicken, every day or so in order to be believed in. This Jersey beast, not having killed anything of which anybody is certain, has lost caste, and inhabitants of Monmouth County who for several days lived behind barricaded doors and windows are coming out to gossip with the neighbors again. T I HE Drifter confesses that from the first his sympa- have been with the leopard. He imagines that if alone in the jungles of South America or Africa— or when- ever it is that leopards live — he were confronted by one of animals his sympathies would be largely with the Drifter. But wmen from a safe distance he thinks of the entire population of a county in arms against a single leopard his sense of fair play is outraged. Probably the leopard meant no harm in his escape. He may have tired of his diet of fresh meat in the zoo and strolled out in search of vegetables and vitamins. But the chances are that he had become enough of an American to take up with our idea of summer vacations and simply decided to start off on his own well-earned outing. There is no reason why wild animals should not get away for a few weeks in the country as well as anybody else. As one sees them in the zoos they seem to need it. The Drifter commends ome enterprising newspaper "Vacations for animals" as a good slogan for a campaign. In fact, the leopard's example was followed a few days later by a pet ape in a nearby town, so that the idea may be spreading without any special propaganda. * * •>:■ * * THE most humane man in Jersey is the one who supplied a picture of a leopard or a stuffed representation— the Drifter has forgotten which — for the benefit of the amateur rs of Monmouth County. The man proclaimed him- self to be a lover of yellow dogs and declared that since the leopard no animal was safe in Monmouth County that had a streak of yellow in its hide and ran around on four legs. Even yellow taxicabs were in some danger, as everybody was going around with whatever weapon he could lay his hands on from a pea-shooter to a scixante-quinze. (You knew what thai was during the Great War even if you've forgotten since.) * * * •>:• * AND if the Drifter's theory is correct, that the leopard has merely gone on his summer vacation, he is likely to be back at the zoo any Monday morning as tired and un- ready to resume his job as any other beneficiary of our conventional summer outing. He'll be back except for one possibility. His human pursuers seem all to have been distanced, but there are worse dangers in the State. He may have had a grade-crossing collision with a full-grown Jersey mosquito. If so The Drifter Correspondence Whitewashing the Shipping- Board To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: The men guilty of or responsible for the gigantic looting in the Shipping Board were, with few exceptions, not of President Wilson's party, but, in the emergency created by the war, were called by him to the service of the Government. They then killed two birds with one stone — they made a ghastly failure of the government merchant marine, the legislation for which they had by every device attempted to defeat and block, and they made way with and dissipated the taxpayers' billions. The alibi offered by the New York World — "It is true that the Government sometimes made bad bargains because of the inexperience of its agents or because of the need of speedy action during the rush of the war" — will not hold for the Shipping Board. The men who administered that organization were our most prominent and experienced shipping men, and more than 80 per cent of the money spent by the Shipping Board was spent after the war. A few of the ships were, long after the war had ended, given to inexperienced and unfit agents who employed certain lawyers whose fees in the matter certainly did not cover legitimate legal services. The people have fallen between two stools — the Democratic Party is responsible for the Shipping Board's doings under the Wilson Administration and would whitewash it, and the men who profited most are Republicans of national prominence. That is why we have had so many whitewashes of the Shipping Board. And now, the last act in this tragedy is about to take place by the disposal of the remaining worthwhile ships — all that the Shipping Board has to show for the expenditure of more than five billion dollars of the people's money — for a few million dollars, which will quickly go the way the rest of the people's money wen) so as to clinch the lies against government owner- ship and government operation. New York, July l Philip Manson Tsanko BakalofF Tserkovsky To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The death of Tsanko Bakaloff Tserkovsky on May 2 removed the father of the Bulgarian Peasant or Agrarian Party from the stage of Bulgarian politics. He was also a most prolific and popular poet, short-story and play writer. Being a cabinet minister from the armistice to March, 1923, he put into operation the well-known Bulgarian universal labor- service law and rendered tremendous services to the post-war reconstruction of his defeated country. When in 1919 Georges Clemenceau, handing the treaty of peace over to Premier Stambulisky to sign his name on the dotted line as the sole delegate' of Bulgaria, asked aloud: "Is Bulgaria a monarchy or a republic?" Tserkovsky wrote to King Boris advising him to abdicate in favor of a republic. After the military coup d'etat which overthrew the Stambulisky Government in June, 1923, the old poet was thrown into prison and held under lock nearly three years without judicial sen- tence or warrant and under such harsh treatment that he officially begged to be shot dead. As late as February, 1926, he was brought to trial, charged with high treason against the king. The court, of course, acquitted him. But as soon as he left the prison and returned home he died, saying to his family: "Tell all my relatives and friends that no one should even think of any revenge." Bulgaria lost one more of her worthy sons — a poet, a statesman, and father of thirteen children. New York, Jum Theodore Geshkoff

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Books Bones By JULIA JOHNSON DAVIS Bones, bones, boyies, bones, Nigger, th'oie away dem bones! De debbil once say "I needs a game Fo' ter pass de time away," An' he got him de bones of a po' black man Dat come ter Hell dat day. He cut 'em off straight, an' he trim 'em off smooth, An' dey look like li'l squar' stones. An' he mark 'em wid soot an' den he say, "Now I gwi' roll some hones!" Roll dem bones, roll dem bones, De debbil say ter roll dem bones! Now Li'l Joe an' Big Dick down in Hell Is de debbil's two right han' men, An' nigger, w'en yuh calls on eider of dese You's callin' on de debbil's frien'. Snake-Eyes wuz de one dat talk ter Eve, Don' you 'member po' Adam's moans, Oh think what de bulge in yo' pockets means, An' nigger, th'ow away dem bones ! Bones, bones, bones, bones, Nigger, th'ow away d< m bones! Oh nigger, I sees you on yo' knees, But you ain' kneelin' down ter pray, "De baby needs new shoes, come on, bones!" Dat's whut I heahs yuh say. "Bring home de bacon," yuh hollers an' shouts. But brudder, I sets an' groans, Fo' you'll be de bacon fryin' in de pan. An' de debbil he will roll yo' bones! Bones, bones, bones, bones, De debbil he will roll yo' bones! The Thoughtful State Social Control of Business. By John Maurice Clark. Uni- versity of Chicago Press. $4. IT is a rare thing to be the thoughtful son of a thoughtful father. John Maurice Clark possesses both distinctions, and his new book is an excellent example of one of the best kinds of thinking that are being done by contemporary economic theo- rists— which is to say, with all due deference to the past, one of the best kinds of thinking that have ever been done with regard to social affairs. This is not to say that the book is simple or is easy reading. On the contrary, its distinguishing merit, like that of all the best contemporary theory, consists in its keeping forever in mind the endless complexity of the forces and the motives at work in our bewildering present-day life, and trying to search out the lines of social action most prom- ising in consequence. The result of the search, needless to say. is not a panacea. It is not even two or three satisfactory "principles" on the basis of which everything can be settled without further thought. We have got to get forward from where we are; in Mr. Clark's judgment, we shall probably get ir fastest by further thoughtful development of methods already in use. rather than by saying lo here or lo there. It is a disappointingly pedestrian mode of ), but at least we are not likelj i Hat tire or to have both brakes sud- denly go bad half way down a steep hill. Mr. Clark is not one of those social philosophers who know all about it. Even "the goals we need to define and set for ourselves are long-run affairs and call for more knowledge and foresight than we have available to bring to bear; while the objectives of our actual policies are sadly shortsighted and icial." The idea thai • ng individualistic scheme is somehow a natural one, in which control is aba in fact, that scheme is made up of a particular set of controls, with government playing a highly important part by maintain- ing our present, laws of property. Those laws might be vastly different from what they are; they do vary widely as regards different kinds of property (compare a street railway with a pencil factory) ; and they are constantly changing. It is silly to represent our choice as a choice between control and no control ; we can only choose between systems of control, our present one or some other. Mr. Clark, on the whole, is for what we have, made just as good as we can make it. After a careful definition of terms, he gives an excellent analysis of the existing scheme of control. The compulsion exercised on us by machinery is strikingly brought out, then the control to which we are subjected by our economic necessi- ties working through the pressures imposed on us under our property system; and, in more detail, control by competition (whose essential nature it is to harness the predatory interest in man to the end of service), control by the ethical codes of business and the professions, by public opinion, vague as it is, and by the law operating in manifo'd unseen ways. Social con- trol is thus an omnipresent fact. Men being what they are, our present system works, on the whole, pretty badly, with great friction and waste. Any other one would probably work worse. Even those who disagree should be grateful to Mr. Clark for indicating so clearly that legal and other institutions, along with men's habits, beliefs, and aims, are important economic facts. We proceed finally to a detailed study of the practical problems of regulation and price control, which must be solved if we are to make progress along present lines. A brief review cannot thread the economic and legal maze of costs, earnings, fair value, and fair return through which our author must find his way. Suffice it to say that, like most sensible economists, he rejects reproduction cost as the proner basis on which to figure returns to railroads and public utilities. As regards the trusts, in the light of our experience he still favors the indirect methods of control advocated a quarter of a century ago by his distinguished father and since that time increasingly embodied in our legislation — publicity and the legal prevention of unfair competition, together with the growth of business knowledge and the development of business morals. "Industrial knowledge is a public utility, which may properly be delegated to private ownership only so far as that is the best condition for the performance of its public function." The sole test of control is that it should aid in making business subserve the ends of life. Reformers in a hurry will quarrel with Mr. Clark for the moderateness of his proposals and the inconclusiveness of his conclusions; they will damn him for a conservative professor. They would do better to understand the genuine open-minded- ness and liberality of his thought, the broad understanding and genuine wisdom underlying his concluding sentences: "Even a wrong solution which those concerned have worked out for themselves may be better than a more enlightened one imposed from above. And this is the last lesson of tolerance, which impatient reformers find it hardest to learn." Henry Raymond Mussey

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198 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 Mr. Barnes on the War Guilt The Genesis of the World War. By Harry Elmer Barnes. Alfred A. Knopf. $3. fpHIS excellent work proceeds upon facts stated not always *■ with the composure of historical writers but stated clearly, fully, and well. The citations are copious and the bibliograph- ical tables most comprehensive. And there is no retreat from any of the positions originally taken by the author; on the contrary, there is an advance. The memoirs of Sir Edward Grey, when read by a penetrat- ing, informed mind, are signally convincing that the British Foreign Office had a more willing hand in this bad business than we dreamed. Parsons and good old ladies, to be sure, find in dear Sir Edward imperturbable virtue, but students will see how adroitly Grey leads his readers around pitfalls of truth. Indeed many such students will, upon gaining the whole view of Grey's policy, turn against him from his own account of it. The present reviewer, when he first perused these memoirs, felt himself convinced that the Grey-Northcliffe party had at least resolved not to prevent the war — had resolved simply to let France and Russia crush Germany, while there should be pre- served a spotless record north of the Channel. But the record was not spotless. Grey's tale of British pre-war conduct must be read along with the narrative of Colonel House in order that we may fully discern the adroitness of the maneuvers made to draw our country also into the war. Upon this phase Mr. Barnes does not enlarge. It is the complacency of Grey, his piety of attitude, that maddens us; the fact of his being safe because most readers will not look beyond his own book; the fact that they wish to believe just what he says, and that in consequence one of those who could have done much to prevent the great crime is during the present generation its most se- cure defender. A keen exposure is made by Mr. Barnes of one plausible act often cited in Grey's favor and in proof of his desire to prevent the war — namely, his proposal of a "conference" in tiie last few days. Xow, as was long ago pointed out, and is today by Lowes Dickinson, this conference was to consist of a group among whom Germany would be outvoted — a conference which Britain herself would never have entered in the same circum- stances. Mr. Barnes now fully analyzes the situation at that moment, setting out each of its stages to show what Grey's sug- gestions were worth under rapidly changing conditions. He expos- cample, Grey's failure to mention that Russia too had rejected this proposal. As he says, another proposal, the one made by Germany that Austria and Russia themselves have an immediate and direct consultation, was better. In point of fact, Grey himself had favored it, though he now says nothing about it. Mr. Barnes properly comments upon the terrible price to Britain of all this diplomacy. It is too early, however, to reckon loss or ga tutorial profits of Great Britain by the Treaty of Versailles are prodigious — so vast that in the long run they will probably compensate for all the loss. As Moulton and Lewis in their recent work on the French debt estimate that Alsace-Lorraine will reimburse France in the devastated regions, so German East Africa and rich Mesopotamia and a hand no longer controlled in Persia may in a decade make Britain fat again. This fearless book closes with an estimate of the changing opinion concerning war guilt, a point which the experience of the present reviewer serves to illustrate, since only three years ago no American house was brave enough to print a book by him containing almost identical arguments not more tartly stated. It was in London that a publisher had then to be found. Opinion has indeed changed, and Mr. Barnes has helped to change it with his brave attacks. He lays about him now with no gloved hand, for when the public prefers to plug its ears only the loud can be heard. This much is certain — that almost without exception every batch of new documents tends to prove France and Russia more guilty. Readers are at last begin- ning to notice that the French still refuse to open their files, while the memoirs of Allied statesmen when scrutinized tend to confound their authors. Mr. Barnes's book should be read by all scholars and his- torians. Incidentally, it is one more proof of the lively ar- eumentative powers of its author. Frederick Bausman War Diplomacy from the Inside Smaranda. A Compilation in Three Parts. By Lord Thomson of Cardington. George H. Doran Company. $2.50. ONE of the most remarkable features of war literature has been the bitterness with which the soldiers who did the ac- tual fighting have assailed the politicians, the diplomatists, and particularly the General Staff at whose hands they suffered most directly. Now comes a book by a distinguished British soldier who during part of the war combined the functions of staff officer and diplomatist on a military mission. Lord Thom- son is in an excellent position to thrust a satirical pen under the gold lace which covers up the weaknesses of his former colleagues, and he makes good use of his opportunities. "Smaranda" is divided into three parts. The first half is the diary of a "General Y." It is difficult to see why Lord Thomson chose to mantle himself in this very exiguous dis- guise. "General Y." does everything in the war and after the war that Lord Thomson did and dies very conveniently on the day the Labor Government assumed office and his editor was elevated to the Peerage, as Minister for Air. The diary is largely devoted to "General Y.'s" experiences in Rumania, which he calls Smarandaland. Here for two years of the war he was engaged in a semi-military, semi-diplomatic mission, the tribu- lations of which were offset for him by a romantic friendship with a great lady of the land whom he calls Smaranda. The romance is described with considerable charm and humor, but the main interest of the diary will undoubtedly be in its first- hand account of war diplomacy in the Balkans. "General Y." went to Rumania early in 1915 with instruc- tions to "bring in" that country on the side of the Allies. It was not altogether an easy task. Bucharest was a center of intrigue where representatives of both sides strove, with cajol- ery, bribes, and threats, to capture Rumania as an ally. Nor was the General's heart entirely in the job. He was far from convinced that Rumania would be a greater asset as an ally (ban as a neutral, and events certainly proved him right. How- ever, the pundits in high places would not listen to his warn- ings, and in the end Rumania came in. When "General Y." was ordered to destroy the Rumanian oil wells he pointed out that the cost of compensation, which the British Government was to meet, would be enormous, and that even if the Germans got the oil the difficulties of transport for them were enormous. He was instructed to go ahead. In carrying out the destruction it was necessary to secure the co- operation of the Standard Oil agent, whose comments he re- ports as follows: "'Well, it's a wicked waste, but if the British Government is going to pay, I'll help you.' I thought sadly to myself, the British always pay. His last remark was — 'I reckon God made oil to be burned some time or another, and it makes no odds to me — if you are going to pay for it — when and where you burn my stuff.' And on this practical and pious note we parted." Without doubt this diary will be read with interest by those in high places, though probably they will derive no great pleasure from such comments as the following: Army and navy officers profess contempt for politicians and say that polities is a dirty game; yet many play it when they get a chance. On their side, the politicians are discover- ing that intrigue is not unknown in military and naval circles.

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Sept. 1, 1926] The Nation 199 I met one yesterday who six months ago was less civilian; he is now a colonel, and told me he had back from our headquarters in France to breathe the - air of Westminster for a while. The second and third parts consist of a number of sket( of the Near East during and after the war and a longish story written around the perpetual struggle between Greek and Bul- gar in Western Thrace. They are interesting and well written, but the present reviewer would cheerfully have sacrificed the lot for some more of the indiscretions for which, we are told in the compiler's preface. "General Y." was notorious. For those who took an inside part in the war, indiscretion is not only the better part of valor but a boon to a war- weary world. Keith Hutchison Man, Nature, and Culture The Relation of Nature to Man in Aboriginal America. By Clark Wissler. Oxford University Press. $3.50. THE swinging of the ethnological pendulum continues at an *■ accelerated rate. A few years ago its direction was away from the extreme of the theory which held that all societies developed along the same lines and in identical evolut fashion; it was swinging toward a new theory that each so- ciety had to he studied historically to be understood. Passing this point, the pendulum swung on until it reached the extreme of the historical point of view, which may be called diffusionism, or the idea that all cultures are the result of traits each of which could have originated but once somewhere — that when two cultures have similar traits there must have been contacts making for diffusion. It is to this school, in its less extreme form, that Dr. Wissler's book belongs. He presents a diffusion- ist position, it is true, which is more logical and tenable, and much more acceptable, than that of the extremists Elliot Smith and Fritz Graebner. But, reading the work, one can understand why many ethnologists believe that one must be cautious in ap- plying the diffusion principle — that, valuable as it is, it is most valuable when it is used with the realization that culture is too human, too psychological a thing to be plotted on a map. Briefly, the thing for which Dr. Wissler is searching is any possible law that will enable us to cope intelligently with the problem how old a culture may be and what historical con- tacts it may have had. Developing an idea which has been pre- sented by him and others in the past few years, he produces a work which, if taken with the caution with which he surrounds his theses, is very stimulating. The method used is one which Dr. Wissler foreshadowed in his earlier works on "The Amer- ican Indian" and "Man and Culture." It comes from a con- sideration, first, of archaeological data, and, in essence, is this: If you plot the distribution of a trait, either cultural or somato- logical, on a map — any trait, Dr. Wissler emphasizes, and one found anywhere — you will discover that it is found most fre- quently, and, if it is a cultural trait, in its most intensive and complex form, at a certain place. From this region, as con- centrically as the topography of the continent allows, will go, like ripples in a pool when a stone is thrown into it, a series of areas in which the trait will become less intensive and less complex. The center of this distribution, then, is the place where the trait presumably originated and has grown to its present complex form, and in the outlying regions with i to this center you will find the simplest, and therefore the type of the trait. The book tests the theory by numerous distributions. Ma- terial culture and archaeological traits and trait-complexes, which are treated in the first two chapters, offer, of course, the most persuasive results. Next are considered social traits, and Dr. Wissler was courageous indeed to plot distributions of such illusive things. One can imagine his sigh of relief as he turned to the physical traits of the human form. In a final chapter he brings all his findings together, formulates his law, and studies the geographical ba the distributions the type of which he has found. One would not in any sense call Dr. \\ ler a geographical determinist, but hi the im] the environment element, and he further dr. Wissler are operative and important, that he will pursue his researches further ::ne] give US the elab- oration of the present work that it calls for. Melville J, vits Molnar's Medium Eva and The Derelict Hoot. By Franz Molnar. The Bobbs- Merrill Company. $2.50. 'TUIESE two stories by Molnar exemplify a formula to which •*■ the Hungarian novelist and playwright returns again and again and in the manipulation of which he is thoroughly at home. The strength of human passion is matched against the frailty of other human relationships, and the resultant drift toward a tragic conclusion is traced quietly, deliberately, and with a due regard for the artistic value of atmosphere. In "The Derelict Boat" the scene is laid in Budapest; in "Eva" the silver mines of the Slovakian highlands provide the setting. In one case the woman is a child ; in the other the men are children. In other respects the mood and the treatment are much alike. Eva is a symbol for all the discord which the heartlessly feminine may spread in a tranquil community. Even before her arrival the atmosphere of the mine officials' club under- went a disturbing change; it was "dedicated to expectation." "The thoughts of all the men were occupied with that woman, some of them rather sensuously. 'What's her name?' They smiled to think that this question had not occurred to them before. The director answered : 'Eva.' This name appealed to them. 'Eva,' they said, 'it's a beautiful name.' They would have thought any name beautiful." In prose of this simplicity, gently and ironically, Molnar weaves his tragedy. Mellower and more melancholy, "The Derelict Boat" is remniscent of other Molnar tales, done in the Schnitzler mood. "Pirko was fifteen, her father was a lawyer and her mother a tall blonde woman who whispered at five o'clock teas with young men behind the window curtain." And like all unhappy fifteen-year-old heroines — at least in Hungary — Pirko would rather die than grow up. Emil Lengyel, who translated the stories, has written an introductory study of his fellow- countryman. Lisle Bell Books in Brief Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England. By Frances Elizabeth Baldwin. The Johns Hopkins Press. $2.50. A rather pedestrian account, twice too long, of sumptuary legislation in England from the accession of Edward III to the death of Elizabeth, together with extended descriptions of English costume in that period. It is primarily a collection of facts drawn from the printed sources of information, often at second hand. Education in East Africa. Report Prepared by Thomas Jesse Jones, Chairman of the Second African Educational Com- mission of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. The Phelps-Stokes Fund. This work, taken in conjunction with the Report of the First Commission of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, gives a compre- hensive account of education in Africa as far as the native peoples are concerned. The present volume deals with East Africa, and contains full accounts of all the types of schools

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200 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 in all the provinces and countries of the eastern half of Africa from Abyssinia to the Cape. The statistics in every case are full and adequate. Dr. Jones is a firm believer in the Hampton- Tuskegee program primarily of industrial training for Negroes, and is convinced that it is education of this type which will be the solution of the problem of "civilizing" the natives. Per- haps he is right; one wonders if there is not also need among them for an appreciation of the value of their own cultures. The American Year Book. A Record of Events and Progress for the Year 1925. Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart and William M. Schuyler. The Macmillan Company. $7.50. This is a revival of a publication that appeared annually from 1910 to 1919 and then was interrupted. It is described as "not intended to be an almanac of various concentrated infor- mation and statistics, but a general survey of the advance of the nation for each year," with particular attention to "new ideas" and "the new results of scientific and other intellectual activity." It would be easy to attack it from these or other standpoints. The chapter on Territories and Dependencies is a statistical presentation with no hint of the seething discon- tent in many of our island possessions, while of seven pages given to a scant review of our Latin-American relations, a third is devoted to two separate articles on the Tacna-Arica question which overlap and to some extent conflict. But, although it is easy to point out defects in a work of this kind, it is better perhaps to concede that in the delude of "current events" which overwhelms us any honest, intelligent effort at summarization and classification is welcome. A71 Immigrant in Japan. By Theodate Geoffrey. Houghton Mifflin Company. $3. This volume would naturally be classed with travel books, but it is so different, so far superior to even the best of travel books on Japan, that it should have a classification to itself. Mrs. Geoffrey came into contact with the "foreign colony," including the missionary element, and because of her remark- power of detachment was able to see it with all its faults and all its virtues, bath of which she finds among missionaries as well as business people. Later she moved into Japanese quarters in a suburb of Yokohama and lived very much in the Japanese fashion. The book is a most valuable contribution to the interpretative literature of our Pacific neighbor. Dean Eriggs. By Rollo C. Brown. Harper and Brothers. $5. Dean Briggs is a sturdy flower of the Cambridge of Presi- dent Eliot's day. He is even more of a gentleman than a scholar, and his gentlemanliness takes no account of clothes or class. Scoffers at New England Puritanism would learn by reading of him — if Mr. Brown's story did not seem too good to be true. It is, in fact, almost too true to be good — such constant appre- ciation, even salted with so many good stories, must make Dean Briggs seem unreal to those who have not known and, know- ing, loved him. The Life of Stephen F. Austin. By Eugene C. Barker. Dallas, Texas: Lamar and Barton. $5. The first account of the personality and performance of "The Father of Texas." A remarkable book, moving with the economy and firmness of a Cromwellian summons. Austin emerges as a gentleman cultured, sensitive, patient, tolerant, the very opposite of the burly, damn-your-eyes backwoodsman typified in Sam Houston, who came to Texas barely in time to reap what Austin had sowed and who yet has popularly been regarded as summing up in himself Texan pioneer character. The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ethical Movement. D. Apple- ton and Company. $2.50. Here are recounted a half century's experiences ir a new type of religious organization far more radical than even the most liberal of the modernist churches. As Felix Adler explains in the leading paper, this pioneer movement was called into being in order to accord to ethical progress — independently of any theological sanction — the primacy among man's needs, to search for more light on life's ideals than can be found in the Bibles of a simpler age, and to put into practice the better ways of personal and group endeavor thus indicated. Seventeen of Dr. Adler's colleagues in America and abroad contribute autobiographies, confessions of faith, and records of the activi- ties of the societies. The New Baltic States and Their Future. By Owen Rutter. Houghton Mifflin Company. $5. Mr. Rutter has given us a most informing, useful, and read- able volume concerning the infant republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia. There is just enough of geography, of history, of economics, of social conditions, and of politics to satisfy the reader who makes a specialty of none of them. And there is just enough of personal adventure and actual con- tact with the peoples to give the book a flavor of life and reality and make it acceptable as a '-ravel book. The Heart of Black Papua. By Merlin Moore Taylor. Robert M. McBride and Company. $3. A belated contribution to the literature of discovery. The author and a British official, learning that there is trouble in the interior, dragoon a native village, force its men to leave their tasks to act as burden-bearers for them (knocking them about rather freely when they become dissatisfied), and, with the protection of native members of the governing constabu- lary, proceed into the interior, where they demonstrate the majesty of the law by violating every item of the code of ethics, religion, and good breeding which either they or the natives have been brought up to respect. Outside of some damage from leeches they all come through in good shape. The tale is as good an example of how to misgovern a native people and how not to obtain ethnological information as may be cited. By tin- City of tlie hang Sand. By Alice Tisdale Hobart. The Macmillan Company. $3.50. In the tradesmen and their wives who set up tiny American Main Streets in all the treaty ports of China, Mrs. Hobart sees the legitimate successors of the pioneers and homesteaders of the great American frontier. Here is a vivid and sweet picture of China as reflected in the life of a Standard Oil wife. Your Fall Problems If you want to rent a house or an apartment or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section of The Nation, read by honest landlords and desirable tenants. on application. Special three-time rate. Dept. F. P., 77/,- Nation. LECTURES □ MEXICO AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH Interpretation of this vital problem in relation to the future. By HARRY WATON author, lecturer and thinker. Friday, August 27th, 8 P. M. Community Church House, 34th St. at Park Ave., N. Y. C. ADMISSION 50 CENTS AUSPICES WORKERS' EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTE When writing In advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Opium — Up to Date By ELLEN W. LA MOTTE [}/ l.i LET me give you the latest news about the opium situa- tion, as seen during the eighth session of the Opium Advisory Committee 01 the League of Nations, held at Geneva from May 26 to June 8 of this year a thoro prejudiced account, by a thoroughly prejudiced observer. Without straining a point, you could call that opium mittee a "packed" one. since the maj represented countries with large stakes in production, con- sumption, and manufacture Great Britain and India. France, Holland. Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan. There was also Siam, browbeaten and discouraged, and one real anti-opium delegate from China. But the Chinese delegate, while profoundly antagonistic to the opium trade and traders, could promise nothing on behalf of his distracted, disorganized country — one of the worst offenders as far as production goes. Normally, the committe three assessors or experts, representing no country, un- biased and honest. One of these, however. Sir John Jordan, died a few months ago and has not been replaced. Mrs. Hamilton Wright was thrown overboard — she always made a fuss at these meetings and insisted that the trade was being shielded. And the French assessor, a negative per- son, did not even show up this last time. Mrs. Wright has been replaced by Colonel Arthur Woods, who necessarily played a watching game, being unfamiliar with their methods. So, except for Mr. Chu of China, nothing disturbed the international harmony. The only work done (if you call it work) was to go over the vast mass of reports on illicit traffic sent in from every corner of the world. Every country was caught out, trading in contraband. And as one country after another was exposed, the delegate would shrug his shoulders and smile, and the others would smile with him — their turn next. But, after all, there was nothing to do about it, since they were all in the same game, and all determined that the game should go on. These contraband seizures are supposed to represent a tenth or a twentieth of the ac- tual contraband in transit. And the figures were so for- midable that even Sir John Campbell of the India Office commented on the "colossal magnitude" of the illicit traf- fic. Everything, in fact, is wide open — production booming and the drug factories turning out drugs by the ton. Not the slightest effort was made to deal with production, or to limit the factory output — no rationing of factories, no over- sight of their sales. To sit listening day after day to these disclosures, and to realize that the delegates were only con- cerned with the annoyance of having these figures made public, makes one realize the huge financial interests in- volved. Colonel Woods remarked toward the end of the sessions that these revelations showed clearly that nothing could be done till production was checked and factory output limited. At which, the Dutch delegate flew into the air and said that his Government would never tolerate any rationing of the factory. And the British delegate added, with some hesitation, that of course this would seem to be the direct method of dealing with the question, but that the indirect way (i.e., the superficial and futile) seemed more feasible. The abuses of the export and import certificate sys- tem were completely revealed. Each consignment of opium or drugs is shipped from country to country on these cer- tificates, issued by the importing country and honored by the exporting country. Hut who questions the pood faith of Patagonia when it asks for three tons of morphia for "medical purposes"? What nation dares cast the first Besides, countries like Patagonia are so useful. Three years ago Sir John Jordan said this certificate sys- tem was a device through which the illicit trader could drive h and four today it seems like a circus parade, with crowds cheering the procession. To defeat publicity the committee adopted rather ex- traordinary tactics. At all previous meetings the documents under discussion have been given out from day to day to the press, and to the two or three persons who go to Geneva for these opium meetings — persons interested in the sub- ject, who often represent large associations or organiza- tions. To this handful, as well as to the press, the docu- ments have always been freely and generously given, thus saving months of waiting till they are published. Not so this time. Nothing was issued except to the delegates themselves, and the discussions were conducted in so guarded a manner that the public could gather little or noth- ing. Thus, the delegates would read their documents in silence, and the chaiman would ask: Gentlemen, you have now read Document 418. I take it there is no discussion. Good. We will now pass on to Document 419. Any dis- cussion? Sometimes a delegate would ask for enlighten- ment as to paragraph 3, page 9. To which would come the answer that if you turned to Document 399, page 10, third paragraph, full details would be found. Whole mornings would be spent in this fashion, days in fact, if one added the hours. While preserving the appearance of open meet- ings the public was shut out from all information as com- pletely as the committee could manage it. True, a lot spilled over in spite of their best efforts, and the astonishing thing is that one learned as much as one did. This dis- graceful proceeding, this effort of a committee to reverse the one policy the League has stood for successfully — pub- licity— is a sufficient commentary on the Opium Commiteee and the interests it represents. The statement made by the Indian delegate as to India's "sacrifice" in giving up her exports of smoking opium to the various countries of the Far East is not as good as it sounds. This proposal was made originally by Sir John Jordan, a year ago, but he qualified it. He suggested that India shouM decrease her exports 10 per cent a year for ten years, while pari passu these countries should decrease con- sumption by a like amount. Now India makes the gesture, but no answering signal comes in return. Not a word from all the British colonies — Straits Settlements, Federated and Unfederated Malay States, Hongkong, North Borneo, Bru- nei, and Sarawak; not a word from French Indo-China; not a word from the Netherlands Indies; not a word from Portuguese Macao. Presumably therefore all these coun- tries are going on with their consumption, their monopolies, and their revenues. So one asks, where will they get their opium? If not from India, then where? Will they buy it from the Native Indian States? These

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202 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 Native States raise large quantities of opium, and sell a great deal of it to British India, but their production, con- sumption, and sales are unknown quantities. Which is odd, considering they are right in the middle of India, with a population of some seventy million. The Indian delegate at Geneva does not represent them, nor have they a dele- gate of their own — a curious situation for a group of large producing states. One knows less about the output of these states than about China — much less, for there are many to guess at the size of China's production, while no one men- tions these Native States. When one hears of reduced acreage under poppy in India, that means British India; there may be a compensating rise in acreage in these inde- pendent States, but no figures are ever given. A highly convenient situation, evidently. So: Will the opium smok- ing countries get their opium in future from the Native States? Or from Turkey or Persia or elsewhere? Or will they raise it themselves? Another thing: For the last few years we have been constantly told that Indian opium is so low in morphine content as to be useless for manufacturing into drugs. An exploded bubble, as this meeting showed. It is now sud- denly discovered to be quite as rich if not richer than Turk- ish or Persian opium, and just as valuable for making into alkaloids. England is already importing large quantities of it for manufacture (as she did during the var, when other supplies were not available) and now it seems that India itself has gone in for the manufacture of alkaloids. Manufactured indeed, in 1924, some 2,033 kilos of morphia, or about two tons! As if the world was not already over- loaded with drug factories! Therefore, this "sacrifice" assumes a new aspect. It may not be as onerous as it sounds. It comes at the very moment when Indian opium is found to be as rich as that of any other country — at the very moment when India itself has become a large producer of alkaloids. Can it be that the cessation of exports to the Far Eastern countries for smoking will be compensated for by other markets more profitable? Denmark and the Free-Trade Conference By CHESTER C. PLATT Copenhagen, August 2 DEMOCRACY, in the field of economics, has gone far in Denmark. Among other things Denmark prohibits child labor; it has established old age pensions, unemploy- ment insurance, widows' pensions, sickness insurance; it has a liberal workman's compensation law, government owner- ship of railroads and steam ferries, low freight rates, thou- sands of cooperative stores and factories, free homes for country school teachers, compulsory education, state aid to farmers by government loans, cooperative banks, and almost complete free trade ; it has started a system of taxing land values which will help to destroy landlordism. It was the political atmosphere which engendered these reforms which led to the selection of Copenhagen for the Third International Conference to promote the Taxation of Land Values and Free Trade, held there from July 20 to August 1. This conference brought together over 400 per- sons, representing 17 countries. Two members of the Ger- The New School for Social Research Registration begins September 27 School Year begins October 4 Harry E. Barnes — Intellectual History of Europe. Wednesday. 5.20—6.50 P. M. Franz Boas— Race and Culture. Tuesday, 8.20 — 9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Nathaniel Peffer — Imperialism and Its Practical Implications. Thursday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Edwin B. Holt — Psychology of Response. Monday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. (Ten lectures) John B. Watson — Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis. Friday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) S. Ferenczi — Selected Chapters in the Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis. Tuesday, 8.20—9.50 p. M. Edwin W. Kopf — Insurance History of the Nine- teenth and Twentieth Centuries. Thursday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Ira S. Wile — Conduct Disorders in Childhood. Monday, 5.20 — 6.50 P. M. Frankwood E. Williams — Mental Hygiene — Its Personal and Social Aspects. Monday, 8.20—9.50 p. M. Leo Wolman — The Labor Movement in the Na- tional Life. Monday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Norman B. Ware — Rise of the Modern Labor Movement. Wednesday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Paul Singer — Social and Economic Functions of International Banking. Friday, 8.20—9.50 p. M. Walter W. Stewart — Current Tendencies in Finance. Monday, 8.20 — 9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Frederick R. Macaulay — Principles of Statistical Method. Thursday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. H. W. L. Dana— Literature Since 1918. Friday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Stark Young — The Theatrical Season, 1926-27. Tuesday, 5.20—6.50 P. M. Waldo Frank and Others — Modern Art. Wednesday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Terry Ramsaye — The Motion Picture. Thursday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Arthur F. Payne — Technique of Vocational Guidance. Friday, 5.20 — 6.50 P. M. Everett Dean Martin — Fundamental Problems in Adult Education. Wednesday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Eduard C. Lindeman — Method and Content of Adult Education. Monday, 5.20—6.50 P. M. Harry A. Overstreet — Practice Course in Adult Education. Tuesday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Leta S. Hollingworth — Educational Psychology. Thursday, 5.20—6.50 P. M. Tuition for course of eighteen lectures, SIO; for twelve lectures, SI Write for Catalogue 465 West Twenty-third Street, New York City When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Sept. 1, 1926] The Nation 203 ADULT CAMPS AND VACATION PLACES Trout Lake Hotel and Cam? Near Lake George) THIS place of natural beauty and splendor in the heart of the Adirondacks is now under the management of I. B. BAILIN, formerly editor of the Friend and Educa- tional Director of the Workmen's Circle. An abode for recreation and regeneration. All aquatic activities and sports; tennis- courts, music band, dancing, concerts, read- ings, camp fires, etc. Excellent meals — High class American- Jewish cooking. All modern conveniences. Moderate prices. Open until October 1st Special rates after Labor Day. Write for Bookletjorreservation to I. B. BAILIN a Director Trout Lake Hotel and Camp Pfatoe: Ballon Lauding 60JF 21 , Diamond Point, N. Y. <^j »-? echo i LAKE-* TAVERN m/Af ADIRONDACKS THIRD SEASON Set among famous scenes of Adirondack\beauty S miles above Lake George Equipped with every known facility for comfort and sports. Reservations strictly limited to 125 campers. Rates : $30 per week. Modern sanitation in each log cabin. Round Trip, New York to Lake George, $12.28 Address TAVERN, Warren sburg, N. Y., or Phone Wisconsin 3754-2164 Lena Barish Moe Nudell INDIAN HEAD CAMP LAKE Adolta •nly Land and Wat«r Sports. Safe ECHO 128.60 par week Daily rate $5.00 WATCH FOR THE INDIAN SIGN WONDER CAMP OF THE ADIRONDACKS P. O. Box 114, Warren sburg, N. Y. N. Y. Central to Lake George or Day or Night Boat to Albany and traia to Lake George. In- dian Head car will await you. Send for booklet. City address: R. Helfant, 885 Brook Avenue, Bronx, N. Y. TeL Melrome 1821 THE LLOYD, BeUport, L. I. On Great South Bay. Open June 2Id Cool, Comfortable, Charming. Regular guests and week-end parties. MEADOW BROOK LODGE A Summer Camp for Girls OCATED in the heart of the Berkshires, L< will accommodate adults for the Labor Day week-end, following the closing of its summer camp season. Open September 1st to September 15th. Modern comforts and con- veniences. Tonic effect of Berkshire air, lake bathing, tennis, hockey, basketball, baseball, volley ball, horseback riding. Rate $6.00 day. Take N. Y., N. H. & Hartford R.R. to Springfield, Mass. Change at Springfield for Northampton, Mass. Camp bus will meet you at Northampton station by appointment. Camp telephone: Cum- mington 56. In three wort NOT too much Turkish, not too little Turkish; neither over-rich nor commonplace . . . But just enough Turkish . . . there, in three words, is the secret of Fatima's extraordinary delicacy What a whale of a difference just a few cents make Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. EDUCATIONAL ROAD to FREEDOM CAMP CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N. Y. A course on Child Education will be con- ducted by Alexis C Ferm during the week of August 23 to August 29. Monday — What does it mean to be educated? Tuesday — The family and the child. Wednesday — The child and society. Thursday — The educator. Friday—Childhood and play. Saturday — The Creative spirit. Sunday — Summary. All week the lectures will be conducted in the evenings at 8 :30 P. M. Saturday and Sunday in the mornings at 10:30 A. M. Camp is within one hour's ride from Gland Centra^ station. Trains run every hour. Stop at Croton-on- Hudson. ML Atrn grfanl A little school In the country where boys and girls from 2 to 12 may learn and grow in a world not only of text-books. EUZABKTH MOOS MARGARET HaTFTBLD CROTON-ON-HUDSON, Nbw York HELP WANTED A HOUSEKEEPER for the Living House of the Modern School, Stelton, N. J. Must be an all-round person and have an educational approach towards children. A TEACHER and a Kindergartner to conduct their respective groups along the lines of pro- gressive education, at the Modern School, Stelton, New Jersey. WANTED by the New School for Social Re- search, a competent typist and bookkeeper. Hours, 1-9 P.M. Salary. $35. 465 West 23rd St., New York City. YOUNG woman ; college graduate ; teaching and business experience, wants work immediately. Indulges no preferences. Box 520, c/o The Nation. ROOM WANTED GENTLEMAN wants large room with many closets and private bath. Preferably with board within 20 minutes from downtown. No radio or victrola around. Room with fine view and open fireplace preferred. Box 530, care The Nation. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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204 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3191 man Reichstag were present and one member of the British Parliament. An American delegate, Charles O'Connor Hennessy, was the president of the conference, and there were present some 40 Americans, representing 15 States. The conference met in the Danish Parliament building and discussed a program which occupied six days; but ten additional days were spent visiting various cities and country places in Denmark in order to study the schools, the small farms, and the coopera- tive enterprises. The people of Denmark do most of the banking of the country and put into their own pockets the excellent profits thereof just as they put into their pockets, through their cooperative enterprises, the profits which otherwise would go to grain speculators and middlemen. Progressive legislation, resulting in the breaking up of old feudal landed estates, the creation of many small farms, ■\nd the adoption of a wise system for the taxation of laml values, has been brought about by a fusion of farmers and labor votes in Parliament. Social Democrats have their principal support among the trade unions, while the Liberals are strong among the farmers, but they have usually voted together for reform measures. More than 90 per cent of Danish farmers now own the farms they occupy, and this percentage is growing; in America about 50 per cent of the farmers are tenants, and this percentage is growing. Al- though nearly one-third of Denmark's revenues conies from the tariff, present duties average less than 5 per cent, and this average has been falling. Most of the articles in demand by people of moderate incomes enter the country free. The conference sent a message to the League )f Nations asking it to recognize in protective tariffs and the private exploitation of natural resources the principal cause of war. Contributors to This Issue Hendrik W. van Loon's most recent book is "Tolerance." STUART ('mask is attached to the staff of The Nation. An article by Mr. Chase on another aspect of the problem considered in My Great-Great-Grandfather and 1 ap- pears in the current Harper's. George W. NORRIS, United States Senator from Nebraska, is chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Julia Johnson Davis is a poet, living in Virginia whose verse has been included in Braithwaite's Anthologies for a number of years. Henry Raymond Mussey is professor of economics at Wellesley College. Frederick Bausman, a former judge now living in Seattle, is the author of "Let France Explain." Keith Hutchison is a young Englishman at present con- nected with the London office of the New York Herald Tribune. Melville J. Herskovits is a lecturer in anthropology at Columbia University. Lisle Bell is a New York journalist at present in Franc". Chester C. Platt is a Wisconsin journalist. Ellen W. La Motte is the author of "Peking Dust," "The Opium Monopoly," "The Ethics of Opium," and other books. UTTON'S AUGUST BOOKS SEVENTY YEARS A SHOWMAN "Lord" GEORGE SANGER tells of his life as "Europe's Barnum" with all the zest of a born showman. $2.00 WEALTH, VIRTUAL WEALTH AND DEBT FREDERICK SODDY, famous chemist, analyzes our con- cept of money with the exact reasoning of the scientist. $3.50 BIRTH CONTROL AND THE STATE By C. P. BLACKER (Today and Tomorrow Series). Reviews arguments for and against and urges sane han- dling or the subject by both church and state. $1.00 E. P. DUTTQN & CO., 68S Fifth five., F8.Y. HOOIiS AM) 1H)()KSI'.I,LEHS Just received from Germany Geist und Gesicht des Bolschewismus by Rene-Kueloep-Miller- (in German) Critical survey of cultural life in Soviet Russia, with 500 illustrations. $9.25 postpaid. \X. P.^YKlt. Inc., 259 Filth Avenue. New York City The TRUTH SEEKER ■hi Weekly. Est. 1ST:',. G. E. Macdonald. Editor. Three mos. trial, $1. Sample free. Books: Voltaire, Paine, Ingersoll. Catalog free. Tltl'TH SKEKER CO., 49 Vesey Street. New York The Lost Manuscript of Marx and Engels translated for the first time in English in THE MARXIST (Third Number) German Ideology (The Materialist Conception of History) by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Two articles analyzing and criticizing this subject, by Harry Waton. Obtained from Workers' Education Institute, I'. O. Box 24, Station E, Brooklyn, N. Y., and at li.Mn-.-il Monk Stores. Trice r>0 cents. MISCELLANEOUS N E hollar introduces vow to The Harry Dearborn Lessons. Unorthodox, Free, Constructive Thoughts. Harry Dearborn, Box SI. Cashmere, Wash. o American Telephone and Telegraph Company And associated Companies BELL SYSTEM One Policy, One System, Universal Service AK/I {~\GIC f~\\\f !"*MAE>V A graphic human-interest •tory of tfa* 1V1WOV/UW UIJ\IS. I life 0f the people in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth, $1.00 postpaid. A«k for book catalog. CHARLES H. KERR & CO. 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS BDtirec^ru0f" trom the Makers focturer** Price Suit Length* Cut to Or er. Price $2.00 per Yard. Pontage Paid .'•if7. WALL, ISO Stornoway, Scotland. Write (or pattern i stating chades desired J accept /.,f- Non De .iressant norHabitFormin£ fnConvenient Alu m i nu m Boxes At every ^HEADACHE store GENERAL DRUG CO. 94 N. Moore Street, New York When writing to advertisers, please mention. The Nation

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The Nation POUNDED ll«5 Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER -. L926 No. 3192 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS EDITORIALS : ; Valentino and Yellow Journalism Professor Ripley Pokes the Pig If Gandhi Were Emperor The Importance of Beins a Socialist • \RTOON. By Hendrik van Loon AMERICA'S JOB IN CHINA. By Lewis S. Gannett.. "BYNG OR KING": THE ISSUE OF THE CANADIAN By Richard De Brisay.... CONFESSIONS OF \ MOVIE READER. By Ruth Sarin ... THE KEY TO EUROPEAN PEACE. By Phiiip Snowden ROBERT GRAVES. By Edwin Muir THE AGRICULTURAL RECOVERY. By Louis II. Bean WHO'S WHO IN WISCONSIN. By Bevier Robinson.... IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter SORRESPONDENCE BOOKS AND ART: Words for a Younpr Woman Who Wanted to D It Glance. By Mark Van Doren Two Stages of Historical Science. By Harry Elmer Barnes.. The Time of Woman. By Do Whither Mr. Beebe? By Lewis S. Gannetl Swnn Song? By Clifton P. Fndiman Inside Looking On. By Sylvia Kopnld Auld Lang Syne. By Alexander Goldenweiser Books in Brief Art: Words of Cheer for Worms. By C. J. Ducasse INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: South Tyrol Again. By L. O. N Abyssinia Appeals to the League ... . 211 21T 22S B29 230 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD Ki: Managing Eoitok Litbkart Editor FREDA KIRCHWET MARK VAN DOREN CONTRIBI'TING EDITORS JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN II. L. MF.NOKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. ADVERTISING Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United Sta Mexico: to Canada. $5.50: and to foreign countries of the Postal Union THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City- Cable Address: Nation. Mew York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising : Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square. London W. C. 1. England. WE ARE IN DEEP in Nicaragua. The policy of attempting to regulate the internal affairs of little Latin American republics has led us from one misstep to another. If it were not tragic the situation would be comic. The latest scene is the landing of several hundred United States Marines to prevent the revolution which the United States Minister to Nicaragua had invited. How deep we shall sink into the bog of Nicaraguan politics remains to be discovered. We landed troops in 1912, and did not get them out until 1925. Then we withdrew, following the elec- tion of Carlos Solorzano as President. Solorzano was shortly deposed by General Emiliano Chamorro, veteran of a dozen revolutions. We refused to recognize Chamorro, although he obviously controlled the country. Our Minister invited the chiefs of the political parties to the Legation and told them that, while opposed to violent measures, the United States could not and would not recognize Chamorro, and earnestly hoped for the restoration of the constitution- ally elected Solorzano. Solorzano's friends took the hint; they started a revolution. It threatened to succeed. There- upon the hoary old story of "protection of foreign life and property" appeared on the stage. We rushed warships to both coasts. When the revolutionaries were about to take Bluefields, the government commander appealed to the Marines to save the foreign property. They saved i1 and saved Bluefields for the Governmenl too. Meanwhile, two American army aviators who ha\i ged in train- ing Nicaraguans to drop bombs flew over the sea hunting and bombing — the revolutionaries' supply ships IN SHORT, THE UNITED STATES is fighting a Central American war. In the 1912 campaign the Marines — under the redolent Smedley Butler — killed 3,000 Nicara- gua ns. They may get out of the scrape more lightly this time, but it is plain that Washington's meddling endeavors to pro- duce a nice, constitutional government in Nicaragua have produced not constitutionality but more warfare. On the other hand, we may get in even deeper than we did in 1912. We refused to recognize Chamorro on the ground that he came into power in violation of the Central American treaty of 1923. But it is reported that the latest Nicaraguan revo- lution was organized in Guatemala, which would be ano^lv r violation of the Central American treaty of 1923. That treaty forbids each Central American country to allow its territory to be used as a base for military operations in any other Central American country. If it was our duty to enforce the 1923 treaty by encouraging revolution in Nica- ragua, is it not our duty to enforce the same treaty against Guatemala? This business of serving as a tutorial maiden aunt to all the naughty little boys of the western hemisphere has its drawbacks. CARMI THOMPSON behaved like an American gentle- man when faced with the possibility of trouble in Zam- boanga, Mindanao, where Moros and Christian Filipinos meet on almost equal terms. While the local commandant, Major Allen Fletcher, leaped fences in his eagerness to get the President's representative away from the pro-independence Filipinos, Mr. Thompson listened patiently to everybody, belittling the "misunderstanding" which led the Filipino crowd to break the agreement and flood down to greet him on the pier. He heard without comment the clear eharge that American army officers had engineered the anti-inde- pendence demonstration, feeding and housing the demon- strators in the army barracks, then moved over and listened to the other side. Apparently the chief incident was the hot excitement of an American major who made trouble by his own nervousness. The Moros and the Filipinos get along together well enough when Americans let them alone. It does not he'o to predict, as Leonard Wood did, that they will be enemies forever because they have sometimes been enemies in the past. Governor Wood was at Zamboanga looking for trouble two days before the "incident"; he re- turned immediately afterward; and instead of calming ex- cited passions he delivered a public curtain lecture to the Filipino patriots in a fashion which could not possibly do anything but aggravate racial and religious prejudice. If there is any less worthy occupation for a governor-general we do not know what it is. SIX MEXICAN REVOLUTIONISTS, headed by General Jose M. Range], spent thirteen years in a Texas prison because one Mexican serving as an American deputy sheriff

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206 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 was killed in 1913 when the Mexicans sought to cross the Rio Grande. They have just been pardoned by Governor Miriam Ferguson after years of vain petitions for their release by President Obregon, President Calles, Samuel Gompers, and William Green. The case against these Mexicans was doubt- ful : there was no direct evidence to prove who killed the deputy sheriff. The prisoners deserved a one-year sentence for violating American neutrality laws, but only the intense anti-Mexican feeling of 1913 could have produced a convic- tion for murder against all of them. In releasing them Gov- ernor Ferguson said that "in all frankness it must be said and admitted they did nothing and were doing nothing more than the immortal Travis. Eowie. Crockett, and their brave companions were doing at the time they were captured and massacred at the Alamo." Their long imprisonment was a case of Yankee tyranny; their release does "Ma" Ferguson honor on the eve of her disappearance from public life, crushed by "Dan" Moody in the second Texas primary. NEW JERSEY has evolved a new technique of expres- sion for its prejudice against its Negro citizens. Isaiah Hopkins, a Negro contractor, bought a plot of ground in the residential section of the town of Kearney and began excavating in preparation for the building of a Negro colony. At once numbers of white residents gathered at the spot and jeered the laborers so effectively that work was sus- pended. The townspeople next threatened to quit the town unless Hopkins v ced by the municipal authorities to resell his lots to citizens of an acceptable color. Unfor- tunately the world will be deprived of the chance to witness a second Exodus, for the Town Council is firmly attached to its fellow-whiles and has promised to convert the ground into a playground if Hopkins carries the case to court. THE ORGANIZED CAP-MAKERS of New York City won a notable victory in their general strike when the manufacturers signed a three-year agreement for a mini- mum wage of $44 a week for operators and cutters, $30 a week for less skilled workers, an unemployment insurance fu.,d to be created by the employer and administered by the union, and the 40-hour week after July 1, 1927. That looks toward health and constitutionalism in industry. The ladies' garment workers of New York are not so fortunate. Thirty thousand of them are still on strike after rejecting Governor Smith's offer of immediate arbitration. The gar- ment workers refuse immediate arbitration with the large manufacturers because the jobbers who control 75 per cent of the production would not be subject to an arbitration award. As the fall season nears its height both sides need peace badly. P>ut there will he no permanent peace until the chaos of irresponsible, small-scale producers is replaced by a responsible, inclusive employers' body capable of main- taining minimum labor standards. ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE BILLION locusts settled down for a summer vacation last June in the Crimea and proceeded to eat everything in sight. The Soviet Government, not believing in biblical methods of meeting a plague of locusts, sent a few airplanes with poison The locusts were killed. We call this incident to the attention of James F. Norris, president of the American Chemical Society who made a speech at Willi;;:, i ;ibout m gas. Mi-. Norris indicated his belief tl ;ment not knowledge has been the driving fore d the attack upon chemical warfare by women's clubs and other organizations. Is it sentiment? Can a human being live through a barrage of gas that kills 4,000 locusts per square yard? The people of New York would have no more chance of survival under a strong poison-gas attack from the air in the next war than the Russian locusts. More dangerous types of poison gas are being perfected each year; gas-masks are entirely useless against the new varieties of gas. No adequate defense against an air attack with gas and bombs upon a city has ever been devised. It is simply a question of which will be eliminated, war or the human race. KRISHNAMURTT, YOUNG HINDU MYSTIC, may or may not be a "Vehicle of the World Teacher." We know no way of divining the presence of deity in the person of a pleasant and cultivated young man, and we tend to be skeptical about claims to supernatural relationships. But we refuse to admit that those claims are weakened by the modern tastes and the conventional appearance of the "vehicle" in question. Krishnamurti wears attractive clothes; he enjoys swimming, tennis, and golf; he speaks several languages and delights in Shaw and Anatole France; he holds Shelley's work as sacred as the Bible. None of these proclivities disturbs us. Far from doubting the quality of this young man's mysticism, we respect it far more than if it came dressed in white robes and sandals and flowers of speech. Jesus dressed in the manner of his day and country. Krishnamurti is a modest, well-educated, quietly dressed modern. Mystic power may cheerfully in- habit a body that can swing a racket and a mind that can appreciate Voltaire. Even interviews and lecture plat- form and trips on the Twentieth Century Limited should be compatible with modern saintliness. The modest utter- of the young teacher are often apt and well-directed and in the vein of our better-educated Christian ministers. If the Vehicle of the World Teacher is to operate in the United States he must not be asked to use the methods of ancient Galilee. A MERE WEEKLY MAGAZINE cannot hope to keep up with the procession of Channel swimmers. We had no sooner finished welcoming Gertrude Ederle to down-town New York than Mille Gade (Mrs. Clemington Corson) plowed across from the French coast to Dover in 3 5 hours and 38 minutes, and disclosed to the world that she was not merely an American and a woman but a mother as well. She was, perhaps, unnecessarily insistent upon her mater- nity and her determination to win riches and honor for her two children, but the gallantry of her performance was not dimmed by her talk. And the talk had not yet subsided when a German, Ernst Vierkoetter, propelled himself across . set a new record, beating Gertrude's time by 1 hour and 49 minutes. The business has now arrived at the point of accusations and challenges and races and contracts. Already an international contest at Catalina Island has been arranged, and a race around Manhattan ii proposed by Mille Gade's managers. Huge purses d or discussed; fat sums are mentioned for exhi- s. The hazardous adventure of a few courageous and sturdy persons is suddenly, by the magic of commercialism, transmuted into a competition for prizes and publicity. This is inevitable; but it should not be allowed entirely to dim tii" victory of man — and woman — over a peculiarly : o'i nature.

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 207 Valentino and Yellow Journalism PUBLIC sobbing, onion-produced tears, and peach-colored extras made the illness and death of Rudolph Valentino a startling and hideous orgy of sentimentalism. Lines of the curious eleven blocks long waited in the rain to see his body; women screamed and fought for a glimpse of him. Was this demonstration a revelation of "the American mind" or was it a phenomenon of publicity produced by the press? While Valentino was dying the newspapers made hjm into a colossus by the simple device of featuring everything about him; his breathing, his temperature, his ex-wives, and his bracelet. They could probably create a similar in in any tolerably famous person whom they sought to exploit. They have done it at various times with Dempsey, Helen Wills, Harry Thaw, Gerald Chapman, and Calvin Coolidge. Only last month the papers of Los Angeles performed a similar feat with Aimee Semple McPherson. The mob likes familiarity. But having once worked up public interest to a hysterical pitch the yellowest of the New York papers felt a moral (financial) obligation to keep it up. New editions must be produced, new developments must be discovered to sell the extras. That was evidently the policy of the New York Evening Graphic. On August 18, when Valentino was critically ill but apparently in no immediate danger, the Graphic flashed a two and one-half inch headline: "Rudy Dead". Then in small letters on the side: Cry Startles Film World as Sheik Rallies. Valentino was steadily improving when the edition went to press and probably the editors knew it. But people bought the paper by thousands and rumors based on the head-line flooded the hospital with thirty-two tele- phone calls a minute. Mobs collected outside the hospital. Two days later when public excitement lagged the Graphic sprang its second fake. The whole Valentino scare was a publicity stunt, the public was informed. The headline read: Pan Rudy's Fight as Publicity. The story declared that Valentino's recent film, "The Son of the Sheik," needed publicity, so his illness which was a trivial one had been exaggerated for the sake of advertising. The Graphic even declared that Valentino had hired a large hospital room on the first floor for $300 a week as a publicity bureau; the indignant denials of the hospital authorities were ignored. After Valentino's death the Graphic published an edi- tion which devoted eight complete pages to the star, crowd- ing out nearly all news of international importance except the diary of "Peaches" Browning, which blazoned the legend across the top of a page: I'm Sitting on Top of the World; Peaches Writes of Her Love-Life. The same reporter who had produced the fake advertising story now followed a new tack. Across the top of Page 1 screamed: Foul Play Hint in Death of Rudy. Within, the reader was greeted by a streamer: "Jealous Woman May Have Poisoned Shiek in Re- venge." The story began : Persistent reports along Broadway the past week, hinting darkly that the death yesterday of Rudolph Valen- tino might be attributed to causes not disclosed in official bulletins by his physicians, may result today in a complete investigation of the film actor's last visit here. Soon after Valentino had been rushed from an all-night revel at fhe cabarets to an operating table in the Polyclinic Hospital these three stories began circulation : 1. Rudolph Valentino had beer poisoned by a jeal woman. 'J. Tlie sheik had been injured in a fight with a man who had resented Rudy's attentions to a woman. Valentino had been shot in a quarrel during a gay party. Told of the nasty reports that had followed Valentino's sudden appearance at Polyclinic a week ago Sunday, Assist- ant District Attorney Ferdinand M. Pccora declared last night that when the matter is brought to him officially he will begin an investigation to refute or prove the stories. [ Picture of Mr. Pecora.] At the same time Dr. William B. Rawles, assistant house physician at Polyclinic, denied that Valentino's condi- tion has shown signs of poisoning or foul play. Neverthe- less, in Broadway's nierht clubs and cabarets this morning credence was given this general belief by the bright light habitues: "Poor Rudy — the kid was knocked off. Yuh can't tell me he died from those things the doctors said — the whole thing looks fishy to me." Not content with the blazoning of this baseless rumor the Graphic flung across an inside page another headline: Spirit Declares Sheik Poisoned. The editors could not locate any responsible human being to act as vehicle for their story, so they appealed to heaven. They chose an Italian spiritualist medium. The story read: Psychic confirmation of the report that Rudolph Valen- tino was poisoned at the party which he attended before being taken to the Polyclinic Hospital for operation was obtained last night from the medium Nicola Peccharara during a seance at 800 West End Avenue. The seance was under the auspices of the Unbiased Commission for the Investigation of Psychic Phenomena, sponsored by Ghost Stories Magazine, which is offering $10,000 in prizes for actual materializations from the spirit world. . . . "What was the cause of his death?" the spirit was asked. "Strong medicine." "When was it given to him?" The reply was muffled and confused. "What was the medicine?" There was a ghastly shriek and a long drawn out cry. The voice then continued: "But that was not the primary cause. Valentino was poisoned at the party he attended before taken to the hos- pital for his operation. The doctors there did their best, but they could not work against the poison which he had taken before. Valentino's spirit is in the room now." It seems that the seance was a very successful one; in fact the spirits rattled tambourines, moved tables, and said just what the Graphic wanted them to say. Strangely enough, however, there is no announcement that Mr. Pec- charara won the $10,000 offered by Ghost Stories Magazine. Ghost Stories Magazine and the New York Evening Graphic are both Macfadden publications. In the long run such journalism must be its own reward. A censorship which could destroy Bernarr Mac- fadden would be more likely to destroy many a brave pio- neer of social idealism. We must trust to a growing intelligence in the reading public to demand more accurate, honest news.

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208 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192} Professor Ripley Pokes the Pig ALL too commonly the investor in an American industrial corporation buys a pig in a poke. He should be grate- ful to William Z. Ripley, professor of economics at Harvard University, for at least poking the pig. Incorporation covers a multitude of sins. And it is a method whereby the control of industry has fallen more and more into a few hands although investment in it is becoming increasingly scattered. A generation ago people with small savings to invest put them into real estate or real-estate mortgages and occasionally into government or railroad bonds. But the rapid evolution of the United States as a manufactur- ing nation has opened vast fields for new capital in indus- trial enterprises, while the incorporation of such business and the raising of capital through the sale of stock has made it possible for people even of humble means to have a small stake in this great fabric with its unrivalled tunities for making— and losing — money. Almost anyone •an have at least one share of oil. steel, public-utility, or department-store sto Our financiers boast of the wide distribution of stock ownership in America: they point to it as a proof of the democracy of Big Pusiness. But although a minority stock- holder is theoretically an owner he usually has no practical control and not even any adequate information about the business that is supposedly part his. Wall Street, which makes its living in buying and selling securities (ironic word in so many cases'), is oblivious. Wall Street is hard- fisted and hard-boiled when it comes to either tne losses or the profits of an investor. But it is not oblivious to any- thing which affects the value of or the market for the wares which it handles. Thus when, not long ago, Professor Ripley assailed the growing tendency on the part of indus- trial corporations to issue non-voting shares, it had an im- mediate repercussion in Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange barring from its list several proposed issues of that sort. We look for a similarly eneficial — and probably more important — result from Professor Ripley's article in the September issue of the Atlantic Monthly, in which he criti- c unsparingly the meager, meaningless, and misleading information which most industrial corporations in this country supply to their stockholders and theoretical owners. Professor Ripley does not write in general terms either; he names names and cites instance after instance of the way in which large corporations have defrauded the many and enriched the few by concealing their true financial condition from all but the insiders. Nor can Wall Street ignore or pooh- pooh the strictures of Professor Ripley. He is not only an educator of conservative and high standing but has served as an economic expert to the United States Industrial Com- mission, the War Department, the Shipping Board, the In- ters: imerce Commission, and private companies. Professor Ripley calls for better accounting and the publication of adequate balance sheets and income accounts on the part of our industrial corporations. He thinks their finances should be revealed as fully as are those of railroads and national banks under the regi lations of the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Reserve Board re- spectively. He emphasizes the fact that incorporation is a privilege, carrying with it obligations: The people grant to a private body the ineffable enjoy- ment of immortality, of succession, of impersonality, and, the greatest boon of all, of limited liability. Under part- nerships or other purely private forms of organization, where trading is carried on without limitation upon the personal liability of those who engage therein, certain obvi- ous safeguards for creditors and the public arise from the purely personal attributes of the concern. The grant, by public act, of limitation upon this personal liability for debts or other obligations abrogates many of these formerly existant safeguards, which must of course be offset by new provisions at law. But in any event the release from these personal obligations affords so great an advantage, and is accompanied by such novel risks, as to make it clear that it is indeed a privilege, conferred out of hand by gift of the people. In other countries where these valuable grants proceed from a single source, and that, too, a supreme one — to wit, the central government — this privilege is more likely to be taken at its face value. But in the United States such public gifts are scattered with a lavish hand by forty-eight different little sovereignties more or less jealous of one another both financially and prestij>e-iously. Professor Ripley thinks that little can be accomplished through State legislation toward remedying the conditions which he criticizes. "Blue-sky" laws have been useful in suppressing palpable frauds, but that is the most that can pected. Professor Ripley gives the New York Stock Exchange credit for having done a great deal already toward protecting investors, and he thinks it can, if it wishes, accomplish much in the way of obtaining better informa- tion from the companies whose securities are listed on its board, although not too much can be expected of any com- pany whose competitors do not conform to the same usage. He notes, also, that the securities of a large number of im- portant enterprises are not listed on the New York Stock Exchange but are sold on the Curb, in the exchanges of other cities, or simply over the counter, as brokers say. He believes that ample power and machinery for obtaining better financial information from industrial corporations already exists in the Federal Trade Commission, citing convincingly the law establishing that body. While certain phases of the law are now in litigation, he thinks a vigorous assertion by the President of an intention to press for cor- porate publicity through the Federal Trade Commission would carry the day. We agree with Professor Ripley in his criticisms and in his suggestions for betterment, but we think any initia- tive at this time must come from Congress; it will not emanate from Mr. Coolidge nor from the Federal Trade Commission which, as emasculated by the President, has been trying to restrict publicity as much as possible in the work of the board. Messrs. Thompson and Nugent, the two remaining liberal members of the commission, are quoted by the newspapers as in sympathy with Professor Ripley's proposals, but a majority of the membership is said to be in opposition. It would be. Timid business men and "me too" journalists are arguing that the publicity which Pro- fessor Ripley advocates would reveal valuable trade secrets to competitors and injure the companies making the reports. This is antediluvian rubbish. Any company that would be injured by such an X-ray of its financial past and present deserves to b<

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 209 If Gandhi Were Emperor THE phrase "If I were King" has served more than idealist as the key to a door of escape from the gloomy present into a future of his own. A British journalist writ- ing on India opened that door for Mahatma Gandhi with a challenge. "If he [Gandhi] were Emperor of India in- vested with full plenary powers," this writer ventured. ;"the regulations that lie would make for the admission of Europeans and their settlement in India might not g differ from those which the South Africans are attempting to impose on Indians in South Africa today." The challenge is readily answered. The South African Color Bar Bill is the restriction imposed by a powerful majority on a minority which has neither defense nor escape. Gandhi's ideals of Swaraj and Swadeshi represent the desire of a majority deprived of power to he free of the control of a minority, free to govern itself and grow to its natural height. If this majority suddenly were given power, the means it would use toward its end might take a form similar to the South African bill. But its < its motives, even its effect on the restricted class would remove it from all suspicion of consanguinity with the Color Bar legislation. What he would do, if he were Emperor, is a subject on which the Mahatma is clear. He says: If I were Emperor of India I would extend the hand of fellowship to the whole of the world irrespective of caste, color, or creed, for I claim the whole of mankind to be the children of one God. I would disband the whole of the army of occupation, retaining only such police as may be necessary for the protection of her citizens against thieves and robbers. I would not bribe the frontier tribes as they are being bribed today, but I would cultivate the friendliest relations with them in order to find out the ways or means of providing useful occupation for them. I would guarantee the fullest protection for every European living in India and all honest European enterprises. I would impose a prohibitive tariff on all foreign cloth so as to exclude it entirely from India and bring Khaddar under State control so as to enable every -villager who chooses to spin to feel that the products of his or her spinning-wheel would be taken up. I would prohibit the importation of intoxicating liquors and close down every distillery, confining the manu- facture of alcohol and opium for proved medical necessity. I would guarantee full protection to all forms • f religious worship, save what is repugnant to the moral sense of man- kind. I would throw open to the so-called untouchables every public temple and public school to which all other Hindus have right of admission. I would summon the representatives of both the Hindus and Mussulmans, search their pockets and deprive them of all eatables and of all lethal weapons, if they have any, and lock them together in one room and open it only after they have settled their quarrels. Whatever else may be said against it, benevolent des- potism is indubitably the shortest and quickest route to a given point. The Mahatma goes as the crow flies to the realization of ideals which seem sadly distant of attain- ment by the man-built road. His remedy for the Indian communalism which cleaves so threatening a chasm be- tween Hindu and Moslem is delightful in its directness. Yet, although we speak only from Occidental experience, we would suggest that quarrels are more likely to be set- tled when the disputants are well-fed than when they are starving — provided they have not got indigestion. The Importance of Being a Socialist BLNARD SHAW, upon thi »n of the seventieth birthday dinner recently given him by the Labor mem- if the House of Commons, made what for him was a modest gesture when he attributed his achievement as a man and as a writer to the fact that in his youth, casting about for something to be and do, he had become a socialist. "Socialism," he insisted, "made a man of me"; and he implied that whatever value his plays possess derives from the faith which through all of them he has so valiantly kept. This, with all respect to Mr. Shaw as man and writer, is surely nonsense. Think of the faithful socialists — faithful to the end — who have not been brilliant, or convincing, or moving, or valiant, or gloriously wrong. And think of the writers in this day — they are few, it must be confessed — who have been some of these things without the aid of socialism. With all respect to socialism, we must suppose that its importance in the case under dispute was to Mr. Shaw alone; and even this may be questioned. For the essential thing was that Mr. Shaw should find some ground upon which he could stand and continue to stand. Some other ground might have done as well as the one he chose — Nietzscheanism, for instance, or theosophy. Or, granting that the very fibers of his being called out to him to join the Fabians and make street speeches in the East End, granting that there was no other ground suitable to his peculiar genius, there is still the little matter of that genius, which, we are inclined to think, came into existence in 1856. Given genius, it is of course necessary that a man who wishes to write well or do anything else well shall fall into a consistent way of looking at the world. To see life at all, correctly or no, he must see it from somewhere; and the biographies of great artists are the stories — or could be — of efforts made to arrive at points of view. No major work of its generation is without this point of view; and the chances are that works claiming to be major will rank in the order of their comprehensiveness. The greatest of them will be that in which the author has seen the most things with his single pair of eyes, has brought the largest number of apparently separate phenomena into one circle of vision. There is no proof, unfortunately, that this author must be he who stands closest to the truth. We might like to think so; we might like to believe that Mr. Shaw is great as aa artist because he has seen things as they are. But there is Mr. Hardy, a contemporary, who has seen things far other- wise— and, for the purposes of art, as fruitfully. And there was Shakespeare, whom Mr. Shaw affectionately abuses be- cause he beheld the world as a stage upon which people are moved inexplicably to joys and rages; there was Shake- speare, who had no trouble finding things to write about significantly. Remoter still, there was Homer, who filled a capacious scene with careless heroes and filled it very well. And then, too, there were Milton and Wordsworth, seeing the universe finally as something personal to themselves — not at all something which needed correction by legislation. To see something — anything — well is what matters. No, we prefer to think that there was a man in Mr. Shaw before he went to London and read Karl Marx. With- out this experience a very good and useful man might have been wasted. The important thing is that he was there.

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210 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192, The Movie Finger writes; and having writ. Moves on; and all our Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all our Tears wash out a word of it.

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 211 America's Job in China By LEWIS S. GANNE IT SOME Americans think of our role in China as that of a guardian angel, pointing the way to true democracy and assisting China to struggle along it despite her wicked enemies. The Chinese do not see things that way. They have had a little sentimentality about America, but they are beginning to think of us as just one of the rest. We kept the "open door" in China twenty years ago — but the open door is not so beatific a vision to Chinese as •to us. America wanted it because it prevented other nations from staking out reserved areas into which our trade would not be able to grow. We were for it because it was in the interest of our commerce. It helped China at that time, but it is associated in Chinese minds with the indefensible treaties, to which we are a party, which keep her from shutting the door, even partially, in the face of all parties. She would like to raise her customs duties, as the United States and other nations have done, and protect her home markets, as we do; and we, among others, refuse to allow her to do so. Very recently the Customs Conference, which was to realize the good things promised at Washington in 1921, dissolved without action, ostensibly because China was in such chaos. Of that, more anon. We "remitted" part of the Boxer Indemnity in 1908 and more in 1924. It was a good piece of diplomacy. The money has been carefully spent under American auspices in giving Chinese students an American type of education, and the American-educated "returned students" have vastly in- creased American influence in China. But the cynical young Chinese patriots of today say that the indemnity was an outrage in the first place and that if it was to be remitted it should have been returned to the Chinese Government without condition, to be spent exclusively at its direction. We have given largely to missionary enterprise — which, again, the young Chinese regard as an effort to de-Chinafy China. And we maintain a "Legation Guard" of 450 men in Peking, another guard of 1,000 men along the Tientsin- Shanhaikwan Railway, a fleet of river patrols which run a thousand miles up the Yangtze and six hundred miles into Canton and Kwangsi provinces; we share through our consul in the administration of the foreign city of Shan the chairman of whose Municipal Council is an American lawyer from the State of Maine; our consulates in Tientsin. Shanghai, and Canton are in foreign-ruled quarters, under the protection of foreign flags; we cling to exterritoriality (or "extrality"), which gives Americans in China rights which Chinese do not have; and we are allied with the Powers in maintaining foreign control of China's customs. At the Washington Conference, in 1921, the world was assured, great things were done for China. A careful read- ing of the treaties and resolutions shows rather that they were, so to speak, adumbrated. A foreign commission was planned to "inquire" into the state of justice in China, "with a view to reporting" conditions to the foreign gov- ernments and suggesting to China legislation and reforms which might eventually warrant the Powers in taking steps toward relinquishing extrality. Which really did not mean much. A customs conference was to discuss — not customs autonomy but a -J ' '2 per cent increase in the customs rates. At Washington also Japan promised to return Shantung and Britain to return Wei-hai-wei, and it should be noted to the honor of the Japanese that theirs was the only pledge which has been fulfilled. The British are still hag- gling, 1 understand, about the privileges which their officers may continue to enjoy at the golf course in which they have invested so much time and money, and they refuse to give up Wei-hai-wei until the golf question is settled. The customs treaty was not even ratified until, three and a half years after its signature, the outbreak of nationalism in China stirred the Powers into a semblance of action; and the customs conference broke up as soon as the nationalist move- ment seemed to sink out of sight behind the civil war. Customs and extrality conferences dragged a weary life through last winter in Peking. The American delegates were pledged to the principle of cooperation with the other Powers; the official theory was that America was ready to give almost anything to China if the other Powers would agree; but that independent action by the American Gov- ernment would somehow be most unfortunate — a theory which condemns us to sterility. The extrality commission met solemnly, studied the new Chinese law codes (which may be applied occasionally in model courts) and found them excellent; visited a few recently white-washed prisons, and enjoyed the pleasant cosmopolitan social life of the Lega- tion Quarter. It intended to tour China in the spr.i /ime. Unfortunately civil war cut it off from Shansi, and Canton's proud Government told it to stay away. So it left extrality where it found it — which is what it was intended to do. At the customs conference the Powers rather ludi- crously revealed the nature of their interest in China. The conference began with an ambiguously worded declaration in favor of tariff autonomy three years later — a declaration which, however, requires confirmation in a treaty which has not yet been drawn up, much less ratified — and which some of the signatory parties hold is conditional upon simultaneous abolition of internal customs duties, or likin, by the Chinese. If it is really conditional, it is meaning- less, for the local militarists are not likely to give up likin. The Powers next discussed immediate steps to increase the Chinese customs receipts. A program was worked out to increase the duties sufficiently to develop $90,000,000 of new revenues; but when the proposed increase was analyzed the surprised Chinese discovered that it meant nothing to them. Thirty-seven millions were to go to the provinces to compensate for likin and assure its abolition; 30 millions were to be applied to pay interest on the consolidated debt — in part on the infamous Nishihar? loans which Japan forced on China in 1918; 10 millions were to pay interest on the Hukuang and Tsinpu railway bonds, already in default (it will be recalled that Morgan interests bought up the Ger- man rights in the Hukuang railway) ; while the remaining 13 millions were at first destined for a Chinese govern- ment, the Powers began to feel doubtful of the wisdom of giving it to any government in China's state of chaos and decided it might be wiser to convert it into a contingent fund, to pay interest on the other railway bonds which

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212 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 > were sure soon to go into default! The conference finally adjourned, however, without taking even this action, leav- ing China stuck with her old ridiculously low customs rate. The Powers had exposed their self-interest. The British and Americans, desiring to open large-scale trade with the ior, were most concerned with the abolition of likin, and also with provision for interest payments on the rail- way bonds in which their nationals had invested; the Japa- wanl d interest paid on the government debts, but tut raising the customs duties, which would interfere 'lie market for their cheap goods in China; the Italians, Dutch, and Belgians, having no trade, but heavy invest- willing to have the customs raised to the sky limit if only interest was provided for their railway bonds. It was a sorry spectacle. The amiable policy of giving an air of intense a wheni Chinese wax turbulent, and of offering to do thing on condition that the Chinese do somethinj is wearing out. The Chinese do not accept the quid- pro-quo theory; they want to be free, even to misgovern themselves, and the nationalistic philosophy of the Ww status. 3. Withdrawal of all United States troops from Chinese soil and of United States warships from Chinese waters. This would mean abandonment of the six river ships which we are now building in China for the Yangtze River patrol. 4. Abrogation, in so far as the United States is ernod, of the anachronistic clauses of the Boxer protocol which give the Powers special rights in the Tientsin-Peking area. 5. Recognition by the United States that China has the right to fix her own customs rates without interference by foreign Powers. Such action sounds like red revolution to the crusted minds of the foreign business community in China. They have lived for years in the tradition that while Chinese hould be greeted with romantic respect, politically and economically the yellow races must submit to white leader- ship forever. They may be right; if so, it is high time for the Powers to use their gunboats and restore their prestige. But also they may be wrong, and if they are wrong that policy would be disastrous. At present all the white nations are drifting — and drift is dangerous. If they continue to drift they may wake up some day to discover that their own nationalistic, imperialistic, militaristic philosophy, absorbed by the East, is at last creating a real Yellow Peril. [This article concludes Leivis Gannett's series of im- pressions of China. A later article ivill recount his ex- coming out of China across the Gobi Desert and the movvtains of Mongolia.']

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 213 i . Byng or Kin (T & i ' The Issue in the Canadian Election RICHARD DE HK1SAY THE present state of Canadian politics is confused and exciting, and the election of September 14 will bo the hottest battle in the history of the confederation. The late Liberal Ministry of Mr. Mackenzie King is accused of an unholy partnership with a gang of millionaire bootleggers; the present Government of Mr. Meighen is charged with having defied the supremacy of Parliament; and the Gov- ernor-General is a storm-center as a result of having exer- cised a prerogative that everybody considered as dead as Queen Anne. The indirect cause of this interesting situa- tion lies in American legislation, and the outcome will have a direct economic effect on the relations of the United States and their Northern neighbor. The scandals in the Customs Department which caused the fall of Mr. King's Government were unquestionably due to the workings of the Volstead Act. The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States may or may not have been a good thing for that country, but it has certainly proved a very bad thing for Canada. When the United States distilleries were closed down and bootlegging across the border became a new and profitable trade, it rapidly developed into an organized industry on which many of Canada's recent fortunes have been founded. But with organization came new developments; the brighter minds engaged in the business recognized the waste of a transport system in which all the freight was going one way, and they soon had their vehicles carrying goods both ways and making double profits for its management. Motor trucks loaded with scotch and rye going south, rolled back over the border carrying silks, cigarettes, and cotton goods; and with this smuggling business operating at its present rate, a conservative estimate puts the customs revenue loss to Canada at $30,000,000 a year. Probably it is more. Of course, if the Liberal Government during the past session had had a working majority of its own party it would have easily survived the revelations of this organized smuggling business with its ramifications of graft anri corruption in the Customs Department. But Mr. King's Ministry suffered from an inherent weakness for which the development of the new agricultural group in the Cana- dian Parliament was responsible. After the election of 1921 Mr. King found himself with a Liberal majority of one over the combined opposition, which was fairly evenly divided between his old opponents, the Conservatives, and the new Progressive group representing the farmers — who had gone into politics with a splash when they made the belated discovery that the Liberals were free traders only when out of office. But since the Progressives were more kindly disposed toward the Liberals, who at least paid lip service to free trade, than toward the Conservatives, who openly derided it, Mr. King found it fairly easy to hold office for four years without doing anything of importance; it was a "safe and sane" government which let things take their course and patted itself on the back as each year marked the slow improvement in conditions that was bound to follow the post-war slump. In October, 1925, Mr. King went to the country, and the result mark nd of the traditional two-party system in Canada. True, the Bervativea gained many seals, while the Progressives lost half of theirs, but for the first time in history neither of the old parties had a clear majority in the House of Com- mons. Mr. Meighen and his Conservatives had 1 1 G seats; .Mr. King had only 101; and the Progressives held 24. The Progressives had the whip-hand at last, and they cracked the whip with gusto. Mr. King they placed in power, but they bent him to their will. During this year's session more sound, radical legislation was passed by the House of Commons than is usually talked about in a decade; the high tariff on motors was cut, the income tax was reduced on the lower levels and raised on some of the higher ones, an amendment to the Grain Act was put through which meant millions of dollars for the farmers' pockets, a scheme of old-age pensions was carried, and money was voted for the completion of the Hudson Bay Railway. The Liberals themselves groaned, but the Conservatives gnashed their teeth; some of this unpalatable legislation they managed to hold up through their majority in the Senate; but for their prime object, the defeat of the Government, they had to seek a lever with which they could pry the Progressives off their Liberal benefactors, and they found it in the cus- toms scandals. There are some issues on which feeling in Canada is divided on much the same lines as in the United States. One is the liquor question; and while there are urban constituencies in which a wet candidate has a chance of election, there is hardly a rural constituency in Canada out- side the Province of Quebec in which any candidate would have a dog's chance unless he pledged himself to undying war on the Demon Rum. Also, the farmers are strong for public morality. Consequently when the Conservatives dug up evidence of the corruption of officials in the Customs Department, and proved that they were hand in glove with a gang of millionaire bootleggers, they had the Liberals and Progressives exactly where they wanted them. And when the report of the Parliamentary committee of investigation was put before the House, the Conservatives presented an amendment censuring the Government for its indefensible negligence which put the Progressives in a cleft stick. On the one hard, if they helped defeat the Government, their chances of any more farmer legislation were doomed; but on the other hand lay the devilish alternative of having to face their stern-eyed constituents at home as the shameless champions of the wicked old-party men whom they had consistently denounced. It is not surprising that they broke under the strain. After an exhausting week of turbu- lent debate it was clear that a fatal number of them were determined to follow their conscience rather than their material interests, and Mr. King walked over to Rideau Hall and asked the Governor-General to dissolve a Parlia- ment which could no longer be carried on with dignity. This, of course, meant another federal election immediately; but to Mr. King it seemed the lesser of two evils. To every-

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214 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 body's surprise, the Governor-General refused to follow his Prime Minister's advice, and took the ground that Mr. Meighen should have the chance to form a Government before the drastic remedy of a general election was resorted to. Mr. King resigned; Lord Byng asked Mr. Meighen if he would accept the responsibility of forming a Govern- ment, and Mr. Meighen accepted it with pleasure. But if the Liberal tenure of office had been short and stormy, the career of the Conservatives was even more spectacular. Mr. Meighen had to form a Cabinet, and according to the Canadian Constitution when a member of Parliament accepts a portfolio he automatically loses his seat and must be reelected before he can sit in the House holding a position of emolument under the Crown. Yet if Mr. Meighen took enough members to form a Cabinet out of the House while it was sitting, he automatically lost his all too narrow majority. On the first day of his Govern- ment the House was informed that he proposed to wind up the work of the session by appointing a Cabinet of Act- ing Ministers. On the same day the Acting Government got a majority of ten on the vote of censure on the defunct Government of Mr. King. On the third day the Liberals retaliated by introducing a motion that Mr. Meighen's Government was unconstitutional — either his Ministers were really Ministers of the Crown, in which case they had no right to sit in Parliament, or they were not Minis- ters and therefore had no right to administer the govern- ment moneys. And on that motion Mr. Meighen's ill-starred Government was defeated. The next day members of the House of Commons were astonished to find its doors shut and to be informed by the pages that Parliament was dis- solved. The work of the session was left unfinished, and the Liberals and Progressives took it as an insult that they were thus dismissed with no ceremony of prorogation. The chief issues of the election are therefore constitu- tional ones. Both Liberals and Progressives hold that the Governor-General had no right to refuse Mr. King his dissolution, for although there are precedents for His Ex- cellency's action they all date from colonial days, and since Canada is now an independent nation and a copartner with Great Britain in the Commonwealth, a Governor-General can have no rights that the King has not in Britain. Technically, the King still has the right to refuse his Premier's advice, but since he has not exercised it for a hundred years it is now considered obsolete. Some of the Liberals, fearful of being branded disloyal or separatist, are now trying to explain that their quarrel is with Mr. Meighen rather than with the popular Governor-General; but the Conservatives feel that "Byng or King" is a good battle-cry. So the Governor-General's action is undoubt- edly the major issue of the campaign. The result of this election is bound to have repercus- sions in the United States. It is improbable that the Liberals can get a clear majority, since their strength has always been greatest in the rural districts and the Western farmers now realize that they can gain more by returning their own representatives. Therefore we may expect either that the Conservatives will have a clear majority or the Liberals will again be returned to power subject to the will of a Progressive group. If the Conservatives win, they will be encouraged to put into effect at last their cherished idea of a brick-for-brick tariff wall against the United States. But if the Liberal-Progressive alliance is continued, a definite advance toward free trade will be made, and the question of reciprocity with the United States in natural products will be revived. It is an interesting exposition of the interlocking interests of the two countries that an amendment to the Constitution of the United States should be the indirect cause of a constitutional issue being raised in Canada, and that the result of a Canadian election fought on that issue may affect to an appreciable extent the eco- nomic interests of American industrv. Confessions of a Movie Reader By RUTH SAPIN I AM a reader for the movies. In the great industry far flung to the Pacific, rising skyward on the Atlantic until God who once upon a time treated a super-movie of his own must be jealous and dismayed, I am an ant. I have never seen a movie producer or a movie director or a movie star. I have never been in a movie studio. I am so busy working for the movies that I have neither the time nor the inclination to go to a moving-picture show. My business is with books. Most scenarios have a connection, though a remote one, with a book. Befoie the one book can be chosen for a scenario, hundreds of books must be read. I am the creature who by burrowing through mountains of books breaks the ground for the higher-ups who, later on, must deal indirectly with them. In order that I may get no false notion of my own importance, after I have read a novel (four hours), done an eighteen-hundred- word synopsis of it with various • arbons, record sheets, and filing cards accompanying it (four hours more), and returned it to the office, I must sign a paper headed in big black letters Petty Cash Voucher! I am told that there are some people, even intelligent ones, who cannot read a novel and give a coherent account of its plot. A movie reader must possess this slight ability. In addition, the reader must bring to the narration of each plot as much enthusiasm as though she or he had not encountered the same plot in the last five novels read. The reader must be equally polite to all novels — a story by May Christie, that unconscious Daisy Ashford of English lady novelists, must be treated with as much respect as a novel by Jacob Wassermann. Finally a reader must be able to express herself in language that a director can understand. I was onci* called to task because in a synopsis of a college novel I, following the author's example, referred to a fraternity man as a society man. To a director, I was told, a society man means one thing — a person in full-dress clothes. At the end of each synopsis the movie reader is allowed one inch of space in which to pass on the picture possibili- ties of the novel read. An inch is too much. For how, when plots are so similar and the most convincing story can be made absurd or the most absurd story convincing in the filming, is a reader, far away from Hollywood, com-

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 215 petent to judge of the picture qualities of any given i I recently read a crime story in which the hero by means of a spray containing a potent chemical, the very touch of which was death, went about killing off men for whom he did not particularly care and nearly ending the life o\ an innocent maid with a gift of beautiful but poison-treated pearls. Even with my vague notion of what is wanted for the movie public, I felt safe in saying that this would not do for the children, however much their parents might enjoy it. But as a rule, removed as I am from the whims of actresses, the "flops" of pictures which must stand as warnings, the activities of other companies, my views on the picture possibilities of a story are worthless. Why then, since the pay is poor, the work largely drudgery, and my services to the game (or the art") of little value, do I continue to be a movie reader? For the simple reason that I like to read. Ten years ago, in my youth, I read everything. Not only the aristocracy of books but the great unwashed as well — crime stories, trashy love stories, Saturday Evening Post stories. Latterly, in- fluenced somewhat by my book-reviewing friends, I had become rather snobbish in my reading. The movies have restored my equilibrium. A scenario-editorial office is the most truly democratic library I have ever entered. It is a literary grab-bag into which one puts one's hands and one day draws out Ethel M. Dell and the next day Aldous Huxley; one day, Pirandello and another, Peter B. Kyne. Frequently the novels are read in the raw — the movie reader is given the author's manuscript or the galley proofs or the unbound volume rushed over post haste from the publisher. All undressed, as it were, without a jacket, without blurbs, without book reviews to enhance it, that is the time, if ever, for a novel to be judged on its merits. There is, for instance, the matter of the English lady novelists. By a lady novelist I mean the type of novelist of which A. S. M. Hutchinson is the supreme example. (Many men are lady novelists, though the class, particularly in England, is largely female.) They are forever solving problems. Somewhere in Chekhov's correspondence he writes to a friend — to Maxim Gorki, I believe — concerning the solution of a question and the correct setting of a ques- tion in a novel or play: "The latter alone is obligatory for the artist. In 'Anna Karenina' not a single problem is solved. But it satisfies completely because all the prob- lems are set correctly." The English lady novelist, since she is incapable of profound thought about the problems she tackles, cannot possibly set her questions correctly. When she gets into a hole she brings in a vicar, or a layman who should have been a vicar. He either converts or is converted and, presto, a burning question is solved! American novelists who write for the popular maga- zines are fortunately free of this preoccupation with prob- lems. They set out rather to write a "strong" love story. What they have" to say of love is unimportant. What they possess of literary background is negligible. But "the great open spaces" of America do something to redeem them. Here is a person who does know what it means to be lost in a snowstorm in the Canadian Rockies. Here is another who has lived through a forest fire. And a third who has been brought up in a part of the country where corn and cattle are more important (and really more inter- esting) than people. The jaded movie reader traveling up and down in the subway is suddenly storm tossed in a fish- ing schooner off Cape Cod. When she gets to her typewriter and starts to make a synopsis o\' ry she has probably forgotten both characters and plot. Hut the schooner or the corn country or the Rockies sticks in her mind long after the supposedly "strong" part of the story has vanished from memory. The movie reader, dealing with even the "significant" fore they are reviewed or lectured about, has an excellent vantage point from which to judge professional comment as it comes along. This year John Masefield wrote an adventure story called "Odtaa." Now "Odtaa" on nu- merous counts failed to be more than a fair story. Yet most of the reviewers, who read one adventure story to a movie reader's fifty, hailed it as a masterpiece. When they had finished describing it as a remarkable adventure story i hey began on its poetic qualities and lyric fervor. In be- half of unknown Tom Smith and John Jones whose adven- ture stories come and go without a word of notice from the reviewers, I must confess that I found as much lyric fervor in their novels as in Masefield's and considerably better construction, suspense, and ingenuity of incident. Recently Arthur Schnitzler's "Beatrice," new to Amer- ica, though it was written some thirteen years ago, was published here. Since the novel deals with the erotic prob- lems of a middle-aged woman the reviewing seems to have been turned over chiefly to young men. The result was that a second-rate novel that is no more like Schnitzler at his best than Schnitzler is like Zane Grey was heralded as a "penetrating analysis" of the soul of a woman, "a work of compelling truth." Of these thousands of short stories and novels read in the course of a year (over five thousand were read in the office I know most about, the titles including works in foreign languages as well as in English) only about twenty- five are purchased. Despite the fanfare that goes with a movie sale, the novels and stories purchased represent such a tiny proportion of the total number written that it is hardly worth a writer's while (especially if he has not a celebrated name to sell) to concern himself very much with what he imagines the movies "want." What happens to the material once it is purchased is another matter. The vicious are made virtuous (virtue now, more than ever, is a commodity that is priceless in the movies), the virtuous are altered out of all semblance to the selves that once lived in the pages of a book. But at least it is a hopeful sign that the large motion-picture concerns plow the entire field of current fiction (and even paying out petty cash for the plowing, the job costs money) in an endeavor to turn up new and fresh material. The literati may sneer at the movies; the movies don't sneer at the literati. If an author meets their needs of the moment the captains of the industry care not whether he be alive or dead, whether he be German, American, or Hottentot, whether his name be Ibanez or Sabatini, or Sholom Asch or Oliver Onions. And so I read them all — from the featherweight opus writti frivolous American flapper to the powerful soul-searching of a sad Scandinavian. Perhaps I am not an ant; perhaps I am that figure beloved of the movies — Cinderella sitting by the embers. But the prospect of ever becoming a princess would fill me with horror. For being a cynical Cinderella, I know that movie princesses must work like horses — while I read peacefully by the fire, ragged, ignored, pettily paid, but infinitely amused.

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216 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 The Key to European Peace By PHILIP SNOWDEN London, August 19 EUROPEAN peace depends upon permanent good rela- tions between Germany and France. The framers of the Locarno Pact realized that fact. For centuries these two great European nations have been at war or in a state of armed peace. French anxiety at the menace of a power- ful, progressive, and energetic Germany is easily under- stood. The desire of France for security against the possi- ble aggression of her neighbor, superior in population, in education, and in industry, has become an inherited obses- sion. To safeguard herself against this menace France has sought European alliances, which have divided the Continent into hostile combinations. This has created an intolerable situation. Although the other Continental nations have their antagonisms and jealousies and ambitions, Franco-German relations have mainly dominated European policy and diplomacy. Great Britain has been drawn into this net and in the last two centuries has on many occasions been involved in wars in which she had no direct interest, but which primarily arose from Franco-German hostility. Even America, far re- moved geographically from the scene of these international jealousies, could not escape from participation in the age- long quarrels of France and Germany. Sensible people have begun to realize the folly of this insensate hate and Suspicion. War, as a great British writer has said, is a game from which both sides rise the losers. The Great War gave no victory. It left all the European belligerents more or less ruined financially and industrially. The Locarno Pact was an effort to give France that sense of security which would turn her thoughts and energies from military preparations to economic and com- mercial development. Under peaceful and confident rela- tions, France and Germany, owing to their contiguity, should naturally have close commercial relationships. In the heavy industries this is particularly the case, owing to the natural disposition of coal and ores. Intimate inter- national interests in trade are one of the best means of promoting friendly political relations. That fact is being appreciated by the great commercial magnates of France and Germany, as well as by politicians publicists, and diplomatists. A very important and very promising movement in the direction of establishing better relations between the two countries was made recently. Meetings have taken place, in Paris and Berlin at which a number of eminent industrialists, politicians, and diplo- matists gathered to consider steps for removing all un- justifiable causes for suspicion between the two countries. The entry of Germany into the League of Nations. which now seems to be assured in the course of the next few weeks, should effect a great change in the relations of Germany, not only to France but to all the European countries within the League. Germany will then have the full opportunity to bring her grievai ces before the League Council. There are a number of important matters which will demand early consideration. One of these is the con- tinued maintenance of troops in the remaining occupied Rhineland zone. The conditions of good international rela- tions cannot exist as long as part of Germany is occupied by foreign troops. The Locarno Pact fully recognized this fact and made provisions for the gradual reduction of the area and the strength of the occupation. But this has not been done. On the contrary, there are some 7,000 or 8,000 more troops in the area than there were in September last. Natural resentment is caused by the extra requisitions of quarters in the Rhineland, and as long as there are actually more troops in the present occupied area there will be sub- stantial grounds for this resentment. Feeling in Germany is strong on this matter, and on its early satisfactory set- tlement depends to a great extent whether the Locarn» Pact realizes expectations, and whether Germany's entry into the League of Nations fulfils the high hopes which are entertained. Beyond this question lies the problem of the Dawes scheme. Little is said in public on this subject, but wherever politicians, industrialists, economists, and finan- ciers meet the future of the scheme is discussed. Nobody in any country really believes that the Dawes Plan can be permanently maintained with advantage even to the recipi- ents of the proceeds of the plan. But, on the other hand, it is realized that the time has not come to agitate for a revision. The plan has only just begun to work, and it is too early to form definite conclusions as to the measure of success it may achieve. But apart from the question whether it can give reparations without grave economic reactions, there is the psychological effect upon the German people of having an alien body controlling its economic life. The question of the inter-Allied debts is poisoning the relations among the Allies in the late war, and the effect of the Dawes payments is precisely similar. Perhaps few things could do more to promote good relations between France and Germany, and among all the countries who were belligerents in the late war, than an early cleaning of the slate of all war debts and reparations. Such a settlement would leave France at least as well off as she is likely to be if she pays her annuities under the Anglo-French and the Franco-American agreements and continues to receive the Dawes annuities. But by cleaning the slate, France's resentment at having to pay annuities for two generations to her late allies and Germany's resent- ment at having her financial and industrial affairs con- trolled by foreigners would both be removed. A new and pleasant atmosphere would be created in both France and Germany, which would greatly help to promote a feeling of freedom and good-will. These are some of the problems for the statesmanship of the League of Nations when Germany becomes a full member. They are difficult, and it would be unwise to press them with undue haste. War-time feelings are subsiding and a spirit of reconciliation is at work. This new spirit has many difficulties to encounter and to overcome. France and Germany, with the help of Great Britain, can make the conditions of a peaceful Europe. The conflict of centuries between France and Germany can be ended by the realiza- tion by both countries of a community of interests which can only be promoted by mutual good faith.

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 217 Robert Grave MR. GRAVES is one of the most puzzling figur temporary literature. He is ously ho yet he is often evasive; he is bold — and suddenly cau he is more dogmatic than any other contemporary poet, and perhaps more really skeptieal at the same time. And it is in his poems of conflict that he is most skeptieal: in his poems of escape that he is most daring. The poems in "Country Sentiment," which he describes him- self as poems of escape, are admirably sincere; the;. the reality of things more concretely than mo later poetry, concerned with more everyday problems. Their sincerity, moreover, is of a very rare kind. For it takes far less courage of mind, as modern psych us, to face external realities than it takes to reco realities within us, especially where these are urn realities becoming conscious, as they are in "Country Sentiment." Like everybody else the poet must, of c> adapt himself to the world around him. To learn what one's environment is and to relate oneself to that utilitarian activity which cannot be avoided, but its ;, ment is not the work of poetry but of common sense. Ap- proaching reality directly in this way, we are working with the conscious mind on the raw fact : harmony, there- fore, cannot result, but only a compromise. Where Mr. Graves's poetry fails, as where a great deal of modern poetry fails, is where we have this bare confrontation of the conscious mind and the raw reality. The identity of the seer with the thing seen, the subjective-objectiv. ity of vision, is not attained; and this condition is only a stage toward its attainment; poetry in embryo, not poetry- born. And though it is desirable that the modern world should find expression in poetry, that will never be done by one who sets out, whatever his repugnance, to do so. It will only be done when a poet finds the modern world within himself, when not merely the outward, conscious adapta- tion to it has been made but the inner, unconscious one as well. This is, indeed, a platitude; yet a number of modern theories of poetry ignore it and dogmatize as if it were not there. Mr. Graves does not do so; his observa- tions on the function and aim of poetry are always en- lightened and often true; but his practice is tendinj and less to conform to his best theory. In the second section of "Whipperginny" and in Mock Beggar Hall he has no longer the integral approach to the theme which we find in his earlier poetry. He no longer attacks the pro with all his faculties, finding a resolution on the various planes of the mind, as he has said poetry should; he attacks it only wdth his intellect, enlisting the imagination, if at all, as a supernumerary. He does not reveal convictions and intuitions; he treats general ideas which, we feel, have not been assimilated to his poetic nature and are perhaps alien to it. The will to adaptation is in his later work, rather than the living act of adaptation, and all that a will of this kind can give the poet is a compromise, not a recon- ciling vision of life, not a resolution. * This is the last of a series of articles by Mr. Muir, di those younger authors of today who are in process of becoming established. Essays have appeared on D. H. Lawrence, Edith Sitwell, Lytton Strachey, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Stephen Hudson, AJdous Huxley, and Virginia Woolf. And it ih.it Mr. ms to be out in his later po m. His criticism IS very illuminating, both for whal id for what it tells us about himself. 11.' is an out-and-out relativist. What is good poetry to one man, he claims, is bad poetry to another; what this age finds significant a later one will find meaningless. Bad poetry is poetry which does not or clarify our subconscious conflicts; but it may ease or clarify the complexes of another generation, and then it will become good poetry. The theory is consistent, but so most theories of criticism; the important thing is to find out what by means of it the author wishes to prove. For problems of this kind are never resolved; their terms arc only changed from time to time by the action of fresh intel- ligences. In what way has Mr. Graves's candid and uncon- mal intelligence changed them? In two ways chiefly: by casting doubt on the supreme utterances of poetry, for no poetry can be supreme which is good in one age and bad in another; and by maki criterion of poetry very largely a utilitarian one. Nothing could show more clearly Mr. Graves's compromising temper. For when a man becomes convinced that compromise is essential he will in time come to prefer the second-best to the best, or at any rate the good to the surpassing, recognizing that for his purposes the former is the more effective. Moreover com- promise and a utilitarian preoccupation go together, the criterion of every compromise being essentially its useful- ness. Nothing would be gained by controverting Mr. Graves's theories. They are a stimulating addition to critical thought; they emphasize factors which literary criticism almost always ignores, factors at present of the first importance. The question is whether Mr. Graves has emphasized them in the right way. To take an extreme example, even if in certain ages Shakespeare has been a bad poet (not touching their particular conflicts) there is still a vast difference between him, in any age, and a bad poet like Martin Tupper. And it is for differences as important as this that Mr. Graves's critical theory does not provide. The psychological effect of poetry is so important to him that as a theorist he has an eye for very little else. "For the poet," he says, "the writing of poetry accomplishes a certain end, irrespective of whether the poem ever finds another reader but himself; it enables him to be rid of the conflicts between his sub-personalities. And for the reader, the reading of poetry performs a similar service; it acts for him as a physician of his mental disorders." As far as it goes this is no doubt true; but the poet may rid himself of his subconscious conflicts in an infinity of ways, and on various planes, and as important as his re- lease is the manner in which he effects it. For to rid one- self of a conflict is to be in a different state, and the quality of that state is not a matter of indifference. Yet to Mr. Graves sometimes it seems to be indifferent what the state is so long as the conflict has been removed. "Francis Thompson's Sister Songs and Lear's Nonsense Rhymes," he says, "are apparently the same sort of escape from the same sort of conflict; strange that Lear is treated

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218 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 less seriously. And who will say that the foolery in Edward Lear is less worthy of our tragic imagination than the terrible foolery at the crisis of King Lear?" The only thing that can be said in reply to this is that by the foolery in "King Lear" our conflicts are released into an infinitely greater world than they are by Edward Lear's nonsense verses. Although both help to rid us of our conflicts, they move us in completely different ways and with vastly different power. Nonsense verse does give our conflicts a certain relief. It presents us with a lively picture of the utter unintelligibility of our subconscious war. and the resignation to that unintelligibility loosens our tensions for a time. The mood of nonsense and the mood of mystery are alike in so far as they are evoked by things which seem unintelligible; the great difference be- tween them is that while the one is a giving way to mean- inglessness, the other is an attempt to impose meaning upon it. Not even to the curative psychologist concerned oily to release the pressure of a conflict in the subconscious mind can these modes of relief appear of equal importance; to a poet interested in the positive temper of the soul it is quite impossible to see how they can. It is when we come to Mr. Graves's later poetry that we see some of the bad effects of this curiously pragmatic evaluation of the act of poetic expression. The change is decisively marked in "Whipperginny," and the preface to the volume tells us that the author was aware of it. The first part of the book, he says, continues the mood of "Pier Glass," "aggressive and disciplinary, rather than escapist." "But in most of the later pieces," he adds, "will be found evidences of greater detachment in the poet and the appearance of a new series of problems in religion, psychology, and philosophy no less exacting than their predecessors, but, it may be said, of less emotional inten- sity." In this later poetry and in some which Mr. Graves has written since we are conscious that each poem is a theme chosen. We admire the manner in which the poet's mind deals with it; but subject and mind are not fused; and it is not an experience that is registered, but a hypoth- esis. Nor is that the worst, for we are often aware that the poetry is performing a set psychological function. The machinery is too apparent. Certain of the poems in "Whipperginny," The Technique of i ion, for in- stance, and The Bowl ami the Rim, are simply hypothet- ical statements of the general conditions of psychological conflict about which the poet is clarifying his mind. But in resolving our subconscious conflicts poetry does not in- form us of them, as psychoanalysis does; its operation is different, on the various planes of the psyche, and not, as in psychoanalysis, on the one which gives the key to the others: its effect is a harmonizing of the mind, rather than a clarifying of it. When Mr. Graves informs us in his poetry of the subconscious conflicts, therefore, he is forc- ing the natural growth of poetry with his intellect, and forcing it for a utilitarian purpose, that the effects of poetry might be enjoyed. In a process such as this the impulses of the unconscious are given a ready-made shape before they appear; the poet is prepared for them, and therefore against them, in advance; and the result is that they never achieve an organic e~ pression, but only a schematized one. They are categories by the time Mr. Graves handles them, rather than energies. The only way one can mark the difference between Across two counties he can hear, And catch your words before you speak. The woodlouse or the maggot's weak Clamor rings in his sad ear, from "Pier Glass," and Let us live upright, yet with care consider Whether, in living thus, we do not err, from "Whipperginny," is by saying that the first con- tains potentially all that is in the second, and contains as well something more. And when one compares the much earlier In the Wilderness with the recent The Clipped Stater the discrepancy is still greater. In the Wilderness is not one of Mr. Graves's best poems, it is too inconclusive; but the difference between Basilisk, cockatrice, Flocked to his homilies, With mail of dread device, With monstrous barbed slings, With eager dragon eyes; Great rats on leather wings, And poor blind broken things, Foul in their miseries and Then Finity is true Godhead's final test, Nor does it shear the grandeur from Free Being; "I must fulfil myself by self-destruction." The curious phrase renews his conquering zest is definite and striking. It is the difference between a state imagined and a state hypothecated and only dipped in the imagination to be given an intellectual convincing- ness. The first passage has the immediacy of reality, the second has not. The Clipped Stater is a floating fancy thrown off by the inconstant mind; it has no necessity; it may or may not be true. The question is not whether it is poetry. It is a question rather of the relative value of two kinds of work which Mr. Graves has produced and still continues to produce side by side. In literary criticism nothing can be proved; the only thing that one can say is that by poetry like In the Wilderness something is done that by The Clipped Stater is not done at all; that the first is real; the second, not certainly so; that they are consequently of different worth. Th3 interesting thing about Mr. Graves is that with such an effective equipment for compromise he sometimes deserts it and leads an attack on his own defenses. Noth- ing could be more different from the temporizing relativity of the critical books and the stifling compromise of Mock Beggar Hall than an occasional poem like The Rock Below. "Where speedwell grows and violets grow" the poet plucks up the flowers and finds stumps of thorn beneath. These come up and he sets a rosebush where they had been. Love has pleasure in my roses For a summer space. But the roots of the rosebush turn on stone, so he tears it up and far beneath strikes on the rock, "jarring hate- fully." But "up the rock shall start." Now from the deep and frightful pit Shoots forth the spiring phoenix-tree Long despaired in this bleak land, Holds the air with boughs, with bland Fragrance welcome to the bee, With fruits of immortality. The contradiction in Mr. Graves's poetry is fundamental.

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 219 On the one hand we have the consistent relativism of hia later poetry; on the other a determination to dig down until his mind produces "fruits of immortality." Their is the mass of his busy, temporizing, hypothetical verse, verse which seems to say: "This may be true, or it may not"; there are a few poems which leave no room tor the rela- tive or for questions of this kind. Lost Love and A Lover Since Childhood have this incontestable serious- ness; some of the poems at the beginning of "Country Senti- ment" have it in a higher degree than any Mr. Graves has written since. In these, and still more clearly in poems like In the Wilderness and The Kock Below, Mr. Graves shows himself to be an original poet. In his later pseudo-phil- osophical pot-try the thought, while lively and full of idio- syncrasy, is never very original; the supposititious form in which it is advanced makes it appear far more profound than it is in reality. It may be that Mr. (iraves's excur- sion into philosophy will deepen his mind, and that later he will return with fuller powers to the kind of poetry which he seems so inevitably equipped to write. The Agricultural Recovery By LOUIS II. BEAN THE demand for farm relief which rose in the Wheat and Hog Belts in 1923 and in the Corn Belt in 1925 is likely to sweep the Cotton Belt in 1927. Low wheat and hog prices of 1923 produced the McNary-Haugen Bill, defeated by Congress in 1924; the low corn prices of 1925 produced the bills turned down in 1926; and if the present low price of cotton continues — as the prospect of another abundant crop this fall indicates — cotton growers will join their case with that of the Western farmers. Divorced from political passion, what do statistics show? Is agriculture recovering? Is it keeping pace with industry? The usual measure of farm progress or regress is the trend of the prices on the farm for farm products. But prices alone do not take into account the volume and costs of production; the farmer's net income and its exchange value in terms of the things he has to buy are of greater significance. But prices are important and play the dominant role in the farmer's state of mind. Let us study them. In 1919-1920 both agricultural and non-agricultural prices reached approximately parallel post-war peaks (240 per cent of the pre-war level) ; but since then the two groups have followed different courses. By 1921 agricultural prices had dropped from the 1919-1920 level of 240 to 11 G (16 percent above pre-war prices), while non-agricultural prices fell only to 160 (60 per cent above pre-war prices). Dur- ing the severest period of the depression the farmer could get at his local markets only 16 per cent more than the pre- war price for a unit of his product, while producers of in- dustrial commodities received at the wholesale markets 60 per cent more than they did before the war. Today, despite five years of gradual improvement in the average of farm prices, they are still only 39 per cent above pre-war prices, while prices of other products stand 60 per cent above that level, which means that in pre-war terms a dollar's worth of farm products will today buy only 87 cents' worth of city-made goods. While average farm prices have advanced from an index of 116 in 1921 to one of 139 in June, 1926, th has not been shared equally. Some products have made gains and lost them again; others, whose prices have only recently advanced, fear that the gains are only temporary. First came the recovery in the sheep and wool prices in 1922, induced by short supplies. But the l-elatively advan- tageous price-level so stimulated production that their next major movement will inevitably be downward. On the heels of the recovery in wool prices came a quick recovery in cotton prices, following short crops in 1921 and 1922. This recovery was lost after the bumper crop of 1925, and the prospect of another large crop in 1926 means a continued low level. Within the past two years the price of cotton has dropped from 35 cents to 16. Corn and wheat improved in 1924, two years after cotton, prices being stimulated by a short domestic corn crop and a short foreign wheat crop. But the high price of corn (in 1924 above a dollar on the farm, the farmers, of course, expecting the good times to continue) dropped within a year to pre-war levels of 60 cents or less, as a result of the large crop in 1925 and the fact that there were fewer hogs on the farms to be fed. Wheat prices did not emerge from the depression until a world shortage occurred in 1924. The domestic shortage of 1926 enabled wheat growers to obtain satisfactory prices, but a return of both domestic and foreign supplies to normal levels this year has again reduced the price to producers. Hog prices, like those of wheat, were slow to emerge from the depression, but for more than a year and a half they have been profitable to producers. Those hog pro- ducers who, because of low prices, sold out in 1923-1924 de- prived themselves of the profitable prices of 1924-1925; and those who this year, noting the low corn prices, are feeding hogs for market, expecting to obtain in 1927 as high hog prices as prevail today, are also due for a disappoint- ment. If farmers as a group respond to these high prices in their usual way, they will soon market enough hogs to lower prices again. So the general farm price recovery, insufficient as it is, is not only incomplete but in part temporary. As a matter of fact, during the past year the average of farmers' prices dropped from an index of 152 in August, 1925, to 139 in July, 1926. But the story of agricultural recovery is not completely told in schedules of prices. Farmers are less self-sufficient than they used to be, buying from other industries goods and services for both the farm and the farm home, and agricultural progress has to be considered in terms of net income rather than in terms of price. The farm recovery has been greater in terms of gross income than of net; during the past year gross income per farm amounted to 80 per cent of that in 1919-1920, but net income only to 70 per cent — and these incomes were considerably larger than the very low earnings during the years of the severest de- pression. Even with this improvement, the average net

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220 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 income per farm (amounting to $879 in 1925-1926, com- pared with $1,246 in 1919-1920) has not been sufficient for the past six years to give the average farmer a commercial interest return on his depreciated investment and an adequate for his own and his family's labor and management. Costs of production have been relatively inflexible. In 1925, for instance, the agricultural industry as a whole paid in costs for the products and services of other industries nearly 3.1 billion dollars, compared with 3.3 billion in 1919. Taxes in 1925 wer r than in 1919; interest on mort- and other indebtedness only slightly less. The sum total of all costs of production (including taxes, labor, rent, interest on debts, feed, fertilizer, etc.) was only 10 per cent lower in 1925 than in 1919, while gross income was down 20 per cent. This means that a greater portion of the average farmer's gross income is eaten up by costs (55 per cent in 1925, 49 per cent seven years ago) ; and a smaller part is left for his living exp< Lower costs of living have not helped the farmer much. Even when adjusted for the changes in living costs since 1919 for ntry as a wh fanner's net income of S879 in 1925-1926 could buy only about 80 per cent of the goods and services which his income of $1,246 bought in 1919-1920, failing by 20 per cent to maintain his standard of living before the depression. The Present Industrial Prosperity If city dwellers had fared no better than the farmers, the latter would need no special sympathy. But the fact is that the non-farming population for which data are avail- able— those who derive their living from wages and profits of industry — has on the average not only maintained its standards of living of 1919 but has exceeded them. Factory wage earners, who in number and dependents constitute about as large a section of our population as do those engaged in agriculture, have for the past three years enjoyed money wages equal to those earned in 1919-1920, with costs of living lower than before the depression. money wages have enabled factory employees not only to maintain their 1919 buying power but to exceed it by about 16 per cent. The comparison with the similar figures for agriculture is striking: Relative purchasing rower of Net income per Wapes per employed farm family factory worker Per cent Per cent 1C0 100 21 47 103 22 39 101 23 60 112 24 70 115 L924-25 SI 116 SI 116 The buying power of farm incomes fell during the depression below half of the 1919 level, and has since only to 81 per cent; the buying power of those actually employed in factories in no year fell below that of 1919 and during the past three years of virtually full em- ployment has averaged 16 per cent higher, a shift in the distribution of the national income amounting to 30 per cent in favor of those employed in non-agricultural indus- tries and at the expense of the farmer. Corporation incomes, as reported to the United States Treasury Department, have gained even more. The net incomes of corporations (after payment of federal income taxes) may be taken as a measure of the economic welfare of those who derive their incomes from interest and divi- dends on their investments in industrial enterprises. In 1919, for instance, corporations reporting to the Treasury Department showed net incomes, after paying profits and income taxes, amounting to more than six billion dollars. The agricultural industry in that year earned as net income on the farm operators' investment and management 3 billion dollars. By 1923 the corporations had recovered from the depression sufficiently to show a net income of more than 5 billion dollars, roughly 85 per cent of their earnings of 1919; but in the same year the earnings on Mltural capital were only a half billion dollars — roughly 20 per cent of their 1919 earnings. For 1925 cor- poration income-tax returns will undoubtedly show a total net income close to 6 billion dollars.' Agricultural net in- come amounted last year to a little more than a billion dollars. Thus while the earnings of corporate enterprises are about equal to those of the prosperous year 1919, agri- culture has reached only one-third of its 1919 earnings. This large difference must not be taken at face value, in view of the considerable deflation that has taken place in the current values of agricultural investment and the pos- sible increase in corporate investment. The earnings should perhaps be expressed as rates earned on investment. When so expressed for 1923, the only year when compar- able data are available, it appears that the farming indus- try, according to the Department of Agriculture, earned approximately 3.3 per cent on investment, including reward for management, while corporations earned an average of 11.0 per cent.' Why shouldn't the farmers howl? Who's Who in Wisconsin tEVIER ROBINSON Racine, Wisconsin, August 21+ WISCONSIN'S primary election on September 7 is now only two weeks away; the office-seekers are making their final appeals to the voters, who have appeared somewhat unresponsive throughout the campaign. Probably not more than 50 per cent of those qualified to vote will take the trouble to do so. The political atmosphere is filled with accusations, insinuations, and recriminations, cries for lower taxes and demands for fewer State commissions. Chief interest centers in the Blaine-Lenroot Senatorial contest. In past elections the Republican nomination for this office has been equivalent to election. This year prohi- bition, farm relief, the Esch-Cummins Act, and the New- berry Case have been discussed, but the big battle has been on the question of the World Court. Mr. Lenroot, who was the Administration leader during the fight for the World Court, declares he is proud of the stand lie took. Blaine is bitterly attacking Lenroot for his support of the court, which, he declares, is only a scheme of the international bankers to make more secure their large investments in

1 Based or a large number of reports of representative corporations. The monthly review of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for June, 1926. shows profits to have been 30 greater in 1025 than in 1021, when all corporations showed net incomes amounting to 4.5 billion dollars. 2Net income of all corporations for 1021? reported as 5,370 million dollars, interest paid 3. 278, and compensation of officers 2.57G ; total of 11.22 1 on a capital investment of 102 billion dollars at the beginning of 1923, as recently estimated by the Federal Trade Commission.

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 221 Europe and to preserve the ill-gotten pains of the victorious nations. Mr. Lenroot has challenged the Governor to de bate the World Court question and other campaign issue*, but so far Mr. Blaine has refused to accept his challenges. Both Lenroot and Blaine have proved themselves good paigners and have stumped the Stale from Beloit to Su- perior and from La Crosse to Milwaukee. Lenroot's daugh- ter, Mrs. Black, and Mrs. Blaine are taking an active par! in the campaign, and the Blaines are being compared to the P'ergusons of Texas. It is even suggested that Mrs. Blaine writes her husband's speeches, as Jim is said to do for Ma. On the question of prohibition neither Governor Blaine nor Senator Lenroot has taken an open stand. Both have refrained from discussing the question. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon 1 ■ are said to have indorsed Lenroot, who has announced, how- ever, that he approves of a referendum in Wisconsin which would petition Congress to modify the Volstead Act so a* to permit the manufacture and sale of 2.75 per cent beer. Blaine, formerly dry, is supposed to be wet and has received the indorsement of the national vice-president of the Association Against Prohibition. The question of farm relief has played little part in the present campaign. Diversified farming has to a great extent solved the farmers' difficulties in Wisconsin. Crops here are usually good and there are ready markets. Most of the farmers are prosperous and contented. Senator La Toi- lette has been touring the State asking the farmers to re- pudiate Lenroot because he voted for the Esch-Cummins Act, which returned the railroads to their private owners and which, he charges, has taken millions from the State in increased freight rates. The newspapers are fighting Blaine to the limit. Were one to judge the outcome of the Senatorial fight by the tude of the press Blaine stands little show in his battle for Lenroot's seat. With one exception every daily newspaper in Wisconsin is supporting Lenroot. The press contends that taxes have alarmingly increased since Blaine has been Governor. It also asserts that Blaine has created numerous offices as rewards to his political supporters. It is charged that factories are leaving the State because of excessive taxes. The State officials who are backing Governor Blaine are spoken of in the press as the "Madison Ring." If the Governor wins the nomination it will reveal how small an influence the press exerts in determining the politics of Wisconsin. The large manufacturing and business interests in general are opposing the La Follette-Blaine-Ekern ticket. This year several prominent Progressives have deserted the La Follette ranks. Congressman Schafer of Milwaukee is supporting Lenroot. The Secretary of State, Mr. Zim- merman, is seeking the Republican nomination for Governor and is opposing the Blaine-La Follette candidate, Mr. Ekern. The outcome of the election is uncertain, with odds fa- voring the La Follette slate. During his many years in office Robert M. La Follette, Sr., built up a large personal following and, though dead, he exerts a profound influence over the voters. Lenroot is not popular among the farmers and workers. His strength lies in the cities among the busi- ness men and professional classes. He will receive the votes of all those who support the Coolidge Administration. The 50,000 members of the railroad brotherhoods in Wisconsin have announced their support of Blaine. He will also get the major portion of the wet vote, as well as the votes of the large German and Scandinavian population, which tends toward radicalism and which vigorously opposes the World Court. Campaign expenditures are mounting and may reach astonishing proportions I he primary election day, September 7. The Lenroot supporters have been spending most of the money. The La Follette forces have had little to spend and have been forced to take collections to defray expenses of the various campaign meetings. Mil- waukee" is deluged with campaign literature and every effort is going to be made before election day to defeat the La Fol- lette forces. But such efforts will probably be unsuccessful. In the Driftway FROM a young woman, recently graduated from college, comes an addition to the Valentino obituary litera- ture: Apart from the mere; vastness of the popular interest, there seems to be a special quality about the emotion to which the public has been stirred by the passing of this man. It is not a public emotion; it has the poignancy of intimate acquaintance. He was a romantic lover, the em- bodiment of an adolescent dream, but there have been greater lovers who have been less deeply mourned. Val- entino was more real than the heroes of song and story for whom young maidens used to weep, more real even than living figures on the stage. The silver screen brings its heroes closer to the audience than heroes have ever been. It presents its figures in intimate detail. The throngs who flocked to see Valentino in New York and in New Zealand, the shopgirls in factory towns and the undergraduates in college towns knew everything about him but his voice. They knew his physical aspect as though he had been the personal lover of each of them, and that which they knew has suffered dissolution. THIS seems to be a point of view sufficiently interesting to be worth passing on, whether or not it is entirely waterproof. The Drifter has no pet theory in regard to the secret of Valentino's popularity, but he has some doubt of its genuineness and still more of its durability. There is no denying that Valentino was the idol of thousands — yes, millions — of both sexes in their late 'teens and early twen- ties. Yet to the Drifter it seemed that the popularity of Valentino increased vastly the moment he was reported to be ill and still more when word came of his death. Wasn't much of the apparent interest and emotion merely the result of the tremendous blare of publicity that the newspapers created? These agencies for catering to the public taste have learned how to sharpen that taste in order to cater to it. Within recent years they have devoted more and more attention to the details of the death and burial of any widely prominent man. Recall Mr. Bryan and President Harding as instances. * * * * # THUS it seems to the Drifter that in a sensible measure the popularity of Valentino was a sudden and artificial creation; it was a mass or herd attitude rather than an individual one. It was a temporary emotion inspired to no small extent during Valentino's last illness by that tre- mendous publicity engine, the modern newspaper. It re- mains to be seen how long Valentino will be remembered.

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222 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 ' Will his pictures live after him as, say, the phonograph rec- ords of Caruso's voice have survived? ***** NEVERTHELESS, the career and still more the amazing demonstration in connection with the cutting short of that career is something for a historian or a philosopher to ponder over. It shows as no facts or figures can the appalling reach and grip of the motion picture. It is also a reminder that although reason is supposed to be that which distin- guishes man from other animals we are still hardly affected at all by an appeal to it as compared with one to our emo- tions. Charles W. Eliot gave ninety-two years of intellec- tual achievement to his country. Dying almost at the same time as Rudolph Valentino, his career was all but forgotten beside that of the motion-picture actor of thirty-one whose appeal was to the emotions at their strongest — or weakest? — point, the thirst for romance. The Drifter Correspondence How to Have Honest Elections To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The trouble seems to be not with Pennsylvania but with our election system. I suggest that we wipe out the present expensive method of electing officials with booths, bal- lots, committees, counters, checkers, primaries, conventions, etc., and instead have our prominent, successful, and aspiring citi- zens send sealed bids to a central bureau statin.; their offer for the office they desire. This would be a source of income to the state; it is democratic in that all would share in the money whereas now only a relatively few of the voters re anything for their votes; it would put men in office in direct ratio to their capacities. The wealthiest and therefore the most capable would be able to buy the Presidency, Senatorships, etc., while the less well to do and therefore less capable, but still wealthy and capable, would get the jobs of mayor and alderman. Detroit, Michigan, August t Ethan E. Edloff Mexico and the Church To THE Editor of Tin: Nation: Sir: Permit me to register my amazement at the fact that your periodical should publish '! he Mexican Church Goi Strike, appearing in your r August 18. Quite possibly Carleton Beals, being in the benighted land of Mexico, larly in the very midst of the so-called tran- quillity prevailing there, namely, in Mexico City, had not heard of the defamatory tactics used by the Mexican Government in ; to Monsignor ('. Apostolic Delegate. Might not Station, however, have had a little more regard for the an American citizen than to print the odious i' once again? It is very distasteful for people who have broad vision to be forced to wade through old hoary, benighted, bigoted, and oft-refuted slanders in their search for authentic facts regarding events of current interest. I feel that I have to make an a;> for placing the August 18 issue in our reading-room. It is a near insult to the intelligence of our patrons. Henry II. Regnf.t, S.J., Librar'an, St. Louis University SU Lonia, . iugust l-'t To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Mexico no longer wishes to tolerate the tyranny, the landlordism, the educational and political hegemony of the Roman church. One of the objects of the Eucharistic Congress in the United States was to bring pressure to bear on Mexico I through a show of strength and influence. At the time when the patriotic guns at Lexington and Con- cord signaled the dawn of modern democracy, almost all the nations, states, and colonies of the world were blighted by a union of church and state, and as a result persecution born of intolerant dogmatic theology and unreasoning bigotry cursed the world. The history of Christian Europe for hundreds of years constituted one of the most cruel, dark, and bloody pages in the annals of mankind. Whatever dogmatic creed or faith became dominant, persecution of dissenters followed. Mexico is trying to separate the church from the state and do away with religious schools. Where the government is pledged to divorce of church and state, education should be secular or free from all taint of creedal theology. Religious schools tend to fan the flame of narrow sectarian spirit and to keep alive the religious bigotry that has been a source of discord and a menace to the most sacred rights of the individual. Newark, New Jersey, August 1U A. J. Petty To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In The Nation for August 18 Carleton Beals writes about "The Mexican Church on Strike." But it is the Catholic church in Mexico that is on strike — there is no Mexican church any more than there is an American church. New York, August 23 Mulligan MacShane De Valera's Position To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: For more than ten years I have been a constant reader of The Nation, and so far as I have had any news on foreign affairs they have been founded principally on the information gathered from the different distinguished contributors to your paper. Particularly have I followed the news stories of H. W. Nevinson, and while I do not always agree with his opinions or deductions, I did not for a moment doubt his truthfulness. But in his article on Ireland in a recent Nation I read that Mr. De Valera proposed that he and his followers should take the oath of allegiance in order that they should have repre- sentation in the Dail and Senate of the Free State. I cannot Mr. Nevinson can make such a statement after ng Ireland. Mr. De Valera, even the opposition press admits, parted from Miss MacSwiney because of his intention to enter the Fi te Dail and Senate, when the oath of allegiance was abolished. His present campaign is an effort to convince the electors of Ireland that the oath should be abolishi d, and if he succeeds and his followers form a majority of those elected to the Dail, then he will enter without the oath. One other statement of Mr. Nevinson's deserves notice. ys that the learning of Irish would be a burden on the I suppose learning is a burden to most people, but why should Irish burden the Protestants more than the Catholics? As a Protestant I resent the implication of stupidity. St. Paul, Minnesota, August 12 R. Brown Religion and Evolution To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Evolution is the ally, and not the enemy of religion. I believe that the religion of the future will be founded upon science. If no divine revelation had ever reached us, the scientific facts and teachings of evolution would be sufficient to prove the existence of a wise, eternal, and beneficent force (wdiich we call "God"), a constantly working intelligence, moving ever forward and upward, with a definite aim and intention; and that aim and intention was, quite clearly and undeniably, the production of the human race upon the earth. Los Angeles, July 2 Bertrand Shadwell ,

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Books and Art Words for a Young Woman Who Wanted to Die By JAMES RORTY Death falls from the air, unwise the first Crow of the young cockerel, bloody the grass while the scared hawk rises Angry, unsated ; her helpless brood will starve Withered and dry and dead where the cool wind The straw of the nest on the mountain. God is a hunter unsure, why dots death neither hasten nor wait There where the maimed fox crawls in the brambles Moaning to earth? . . . There is not Death enough in the world, men say, we shall judge Life, we shall choose, we have hands, we can wield Pistol and knife and rope, we are free, we have souls, we desire Riches and love and peace, we shall poison the fierce Sane cruelty of life with the mind's Sick fevers; we breathe, eat, sleep, only to botch Being with consciousness, we are the incommensurable Idiots of the universe, creatures of God's decadence, life's Last epilogue. . . . God, what empty echoes ring when man, the denier, steps Falsely from his part, struts, poses and declaims — ah. God what lying trumpets blare His curtain ! First Glance AMERICAN university presses are for the most part feeble affairs, contenting themselves year in and year out with the publication of researches done on the campus by Ph.D.'s who will never be heard of again. It is a pity, for while these presses can hardly hope to lead in the production of a creative literature, they have it in their power to become central distributors of important and attractive information. There are exceptions, of course, in varying degrees — California, "Wisconsin, Chicago, North Carolina, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale coming readily to mind. And it must be said that two of these have recently been active to excellent effect. The Yale Press, aiming at popularity with its "Chroni- cles of America," its moving pictures, and now its "Pag- eant of America," has gained rather than lost in dignity, since the enterprises in question have been ably directed. Three new volumes of the "Pageant" are at hand, and I am more than ever impressed by the possibilities of the scheme — which is to give in pictures and captions under pictures the social history of white men on the American continent. The possibilities are not always realized, for good reasons or for bad. Stanley Thomas Williams, for instance, in compiling the volume called "The American Spirit in Let- ters," suffered from the circumstance that literary history cannot be told in pictures. Portraits of authors notoriously tell little about their books, and even the very best views of their birthplaces tell nothing at all. This is not so true of the minor authors of a faded da . by their 1 in much the same way as the f-. So Mr. ter with Tho Aldrich than i ith Melville, to each of whom ing with Irving in I and, ; rural New England is m que than ratic universe, lie must lavish six pages on Whit- igainst four for Whitman. Many of the i. lustrations harming and valuable, but the history as such is inevitably superficial. Talbot Faulkner Hamlin's "The American Spirit in Architecture" labors, naturally, under no such handicap. Flat reproductions of buildings and monuments may not tell everything, but they tell in an instant more than words could tell in years; and they are necessary. Mr. Hamlin's text, too, is more critical than that of Mr. Williams. With a fine feeling for detail he 3 the forward and backward plunges of architectural taste in America from the first log house, through the colonial generations, the classical revival, the awful seven- ties, and the ambitious nineties, to the last wonderful cre?tion of Bertram Goodhue. Quite as moving a story is to be read in Malcolm Keir's "The Epic of Industry," which, making short work of the simple days before the industrial revolution, comes on down to the bewildering age of coal, oil, electricity, iron, and steel in which we live. Here are the machines we talk so much about and so seldom see. Here is America blindly trying her strength. Here too is something, though not much, of the war between owner and worker in mill and mine. Here, perhaps, is the most famous tale of them all. The University of North Carolina Press, in those volumes of its Social Study Series which are devoted to the Negro, is attempting American history on a totally different scale though with equally rich results. Messrs. Odum and Johnson, who opened the series last year with "The Negro and his Songs," follow now with "Negro Workaday Songs" ($3), a minute inquiry into the blues which beyond count multiply each year in the South as singing Negroes celebrate the wanderings, the loves, the labors, the sins, and the woes of their ancient race. Still another volume, "Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro," by Newbell Niles Puckett C$5), exhaustively explores the world of superstition, bringing back several thousand specific beliefs for the information of anthropologists and the entertainment of lay observers. And more volumes are promised — the well of this subject having no bottom. No series, North or South, deserves better encouragement. Mark Van Doren Two Stages of Historical Science The Historian and Historical Evidence. By Allen Johnson. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2. The Theory of History. By Frederick J. Teggart. Yale Uni- versity Press. $2.50. EVERY type of historian — "respectable" or "new" — is likely to assent to the proposition that he must first have the facts concerning human activity in the past if he is to proceed with either casual narrative or cultural synthesis. Hence all his- torians will welcome the clear introduction to the fundamental assumptions and underlying methods of historical research which has been executed by Professor Johnson. We have had a number of books on phases of this subject by such writers

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224 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 as Droysen, Bernheim, Wolff, Feder, Langlois and Seignobos, George, Fling, Vincent, and Mace, but they have been either too advanced or too specialized to constitute adequate guidance foT the beginner in the academic study of history or for the intelligent general reader who desired to acquaint himself with the criteria involved in assessing the credibility of his- torical works. Professor Johnson has succeeded admirably in providing just such a comprehensive but elementary manual as we have needed. He deals with such subjects as the sources of historical information, the assumptions and methods of historical criticism, and the assessment and exploitation of historical evidence with maturity of judgment, catholicity of viewpoint, and clarity of statement. The most novel, and one of the most valuable, features of the volume is a relatively long chapter on the evolution of historical method. While Professor Johnson has been in his professional career a "respectable" narrative and biographical historian, he has been a thoughtful and tolerant practitioner of his craft and has not been unaware of the progress made in the "new" or synthetic and interpretative history. In the last chapter of the present treatise — that on The Use of Hypotheses — he refers to many suggestive aspects of the new history without indigna- tion, and often with tentative approval. Even the Freudian psychology, as an important phase of the technique of the his- torical biographer, does not floor him. He actually grants that it may have much value when used with scientific and reason- able restraint. Few sober adherents to the gospel of cultural and institutional history could well object to the wisdom em- bodied in the closing paragraph of the book: Historians owe much to the social sciences, no doubt, but the obligation is reciprocal. The social sciences were founded on data furnished by historical research, and they cannot remain indifferent to the critical processes by which that material was obtained. There are cogent rea- sons for believing, moreover, that historians will continue to furnish data which political scientists, anthropologists, economists, and sociologists will need Increasingly. It may well be that historians need a wider point of view — per- haps new points of view — and that they would profit by using the hypotheses suggested by the social sciences; but more than ever they must weigh evidence with meticulous care. The more daring and the more promising the hypotheses, the greater the obligation to tell the truth. Uie whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The professional activities of Professor Teggart have cov- ered the two most widely separated extremes of historical work, namely, the compilation of library catalogues of historical sources and an exposition of historical theory. The latter has been his real love, however, and he has been almost our only important writer on the "pure" theory of history. His first work in this field, entitled "Prolegomena to History," compared the scientific and historical methods, denounced the super- ficiality and irrelevance of the literary historians, indicated the inadequacy of the philosophical and logical approach to his- torical materials, and pointed out the dangers in basing the premises of historical science upon the dogmas of evolutionary biology. The book contained much suggestive material, but was diffuse and discursive, and it showed little contact with con- temporary work toward the improvement of historical thought and writing. The present book is in many ways an expansion and rearrangement of the "Prolegomena." Professor Teggart's second book, "The Processes of History," endeavored to illus- trate the factors and processes of cultural and institutional development. The contentions of the work were sound, but the frcneralizations were of the obvious and self-evident sort and had been well known and generally accepted by most up-to-date historians for a generation. It would have been an admirable work for the conventional historians who are innocent of the theory of the new history, but few of them have ever heard of it, much less read it. The fundamental purpose of Professor Teggart's third book is to provide a science of social change. One of the most per- sistent obstacles to the development of such a science has been the domination of the historical field by the conventional or narrative historian. At the same time, many of the cultural and institutional historians have also failed to construct a true science of social transformation, because they have normally been the victims either of the Comtean dogma of inevitable progress through definite stages of development or of the Darwinian dogma of orderly, uniform, and continuous social and cultural evolution. What is really needed is a truly inductive and empirical study of the actual processes of social change, divorced from adherence to any particular dogma concerning social genesis. This pro- cedure was initiated by Hume and Turgot and rediscovered independently, so we are informed by the author, by Frederick John Teggart in 1918. With the basic theses of the book the reviewer is in entire agreement. He differs only with respect to Professor Teggart's insistence upon their uniqueness and originality and upon his own claim to their discovery, acceptance, and application. They had been the working hypotheses of many progressive histo- rians long before Professor Teggart had written a line on the subject. He apparently insists upon playing a lone hand. Less than twenty pages are devoted to the work of the modern synthetic and interpretative historians, Robinson, Cheyney, and Burr being selected as the examples, and these historians are condemned for not having received the fulness of the vision of the Hume-Turgot-Teggart trinity. Professor Teggart is much like Francis Bacon, who wrote eloquently in support of the scientific method, but produced only his feeble "Sylva Sylvarum," denounced Copernicus and Gilbert, and ignored Bruno, Kepler, Galileo, and Harvey. Harry Elmer Barnes The Time of Woman The Time of Man. By Elizabeth Madox Roberts. The Viking Press. $2.50. pENELOPE waited at home, eternally weaving by day and *■ unraveling by night, keeping her husband's house, protect- ing his interests, setting herself apart for him, sure, strong, faithful. In Miss Roberts's lyric tale of a heroic woman, Pene- lope accompanies her man wherever he must go, strengthens him, protects him, mothers him as well as his children. The story of Ellen Chesser, raised among Kentucky poor whites and remaining one of them, is a story of life lived near the ground, among the rocks, without comfort or permanence. Half gipsy- travelers, picking their way along muddy roads, tenant farmers giving their shares to the owner before they can have a bit for themselves, women worn with child-bearing, men bent with plowing, children scrawny with poor food and cold and insuffi- cient clothing. A sorry lot, and yet, seen through sympathetic eyes, not unlovely. Miss Roberts is slow in getting her story under way, allow- ing herself to drift off into details that are confusing because of their multiplicity. Her child, Ellen, weary with the melan- choly of childhood, yearning to be back with the gipsy woman who could weave fairy tales for her of a little house and a garden and flowers growing and one's own calf and chickens, seems remote from Ellen, the comforter, the home-maker, bear- ing her children without flinching or weakness. But if there is a break between the first third of the novel and the rest, the end rises to a dramatic force that is wholly admirable. Ellen and her husband have at last found a place that suits them, they see clearly the possibility that they may own their little farm; and to make a speedy end to this dreaming, the neighbors come in to lynch Jasper for a crime that he did not commit, the echo of one that he was once accused of committing. It is Ellen, his wife, who saves him from the hands of the mob, Ellen by her sharp tongue, by her fearlessness, by her standing firm and refusing to give an inch of ground. And it is Ellen, when the mob has ridden away, who lifts him up, who washes his wounds,

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Sept. 8, 1926] Tli. tion who cares for him the days that he must lie in !• who protects him from the curious eyes of his children. It is Ellon who goes wjtn hjm, children and all, riding out under the moon to find another dwelling place. The feel of the earth, the smell of animals, the sound wind blowing, the counties of the farm and the fields are obedient to Miss Roberts's will. She hi extraordinary ear: "The rocks fell where she hud them with a faint, fiat sound . . . the milk began to How into the pail a high thin crying sound that became low and dull as the liquid beat upon the foam. . . ." And her eye is no less harp. She must believe that she ought to write less than she heai sees to make her reader hear and see more. Hut this is a fault in the right direction. If she is occasionally confused and ver- bose, she can also make her young heroine say: "I'm old. I'm so old I'm about done with liven. . . . I'm old and old and old. I've been in life a lontr. long time. . . ." Thus youth speaks at the age of sixteen, if not always in such poetic language. "And the house fixed up, the shutters mended and the porch don't leak. To sit on a Saturday when the work is done. A vine up over the chimney. . . ." This is Ellen, on the night before her marriage. "He knowed you best. Jasper, best of all. He knowed Hen and Nannie and Joe and Dick, but he knowed you the best and liked you first." Ellen, with her dead baby on her knees. A book that is somehow realistic although written in poetic language, that is beautiful though it deals with dirt and poverty and ugliness. A saga of the heroic woman, living near the earth. Dorothy Graffe Whither Mr. Beebe ? The Arcturus Adventure. By William Beebe. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $6. ' IKE "Galapagos" "The A returns Adventure" is ex ^— ^ reading. The story of a voyage through the Sargasso Sea, of a volcano pouring lava into a boiling sea, of hours spent un- der water in a diver's helmet watching sharks feed about a scientist's bare legs, of dredging in the Hudson's deep-sea gorge — greater than the Grand Canyon, wilder than the South Pole, and only a hundred miles from the Woolworth Building — could hardly not be exciting; and the man who planned these adven- tures can hardly not be interesting. Yet William Beebe is in a little danger of being spoiled. He has learned that he is an interesting man who does exciting things; and the poison of self-consciousness threatens to make of him a showman exhibiting himself. Now, there is nothing more difficult for a scientist to do than to write about his work for the general public, and little that is more important. The fraternity of research men — most of whom seem unable to express themselves in simple, comprehensible English — sneers a unanimous sneer at the "popularizer." He is regarded as akin to the doctor who sins the sin of advertising. It isn't clubby. And the, result too often is that the public is left to pick its crumbs of science from the newspaper headlines. Will- iam Beebe long ago took the risk of crossing the frontier that separates the scientist from the artist in words. His fir forts in literature— "The Log of the Sun" (1906), foi — were ghastly — full of quotations from the poets and vations about the hand of God in nature. But much i writing that came out of his Guiana laboratory broke from the dead claws of literary tradition and had the vivid quality which only close observation of intensely lived experience can give. His gift is reporting, not philosophizing. In "Gala- pagos," a glorious story of a glowing experience, he arrived. In "The Arcturus Adventure" he seems desperately conscious of that arrival. Burroughs in his earlier years, Muir, Thoreau wrote in response to an inner creative, necessity — not because editors and publishers had told them their experience would make salable rcadiie. of his Maine adventure, Muir' the high e a dire, simplicity that maintain them as livii has ha.! - advent in any of , he has a kei r intensive- living which even Muir could hardly rival; but sometimes he in a dress suit. . . - to a cul- tured audience which has paid $"> a head to look at him. It isn't g ugh. It isn't -!i for William I who remains one of the rare human scient ible of writing for laymen. vis S. (iANNETT Swan Song: .4 Mirror to France. By Ford Madox Ford. A. a»d C. Boni. $2.50. ented to you a picture more tl anything of how to ho happy — of people intensely indi- vidualistic who intend to remain intensely individualistic; of small shopkeepers who intend to remain and only to deal with small shopkeepers; of people with adequ means of living who intend to retain adequate means of living hut to leave It at that; of a people of som" culture who get enough pleasure out of their culture to remain a people e ulture; of a people whose peasant fami- work immensely hard in order that one member of the family may practice an art or indulge in abstract thought; and of a people less represented by itu govern- ments than any other people that ever was. 'T^HIS book then is an impressionistic account of a love affair * carried on with a whole people. As the author states, its importance is greater than is immediately apparent; but unfortunately that importance lies in a different direction from the one he would have us believe. For with all the sturdy Toryism that insists on transforming the loved object that passes into a sempiternal reality, Mr. Ford cannot convince us, ingratiating though his argument may be, that his France where flourish "chivalric generosity, frugality, pure thought, and the arts" is not now subject to corrosion by the white- tiled bathroom civilization. What Mr. Ford terms the "real French" may be very imperfectly represented by their govern- ments, but, like those who touch pitch, they must be inevitably defiled by the merest contact with a bureaucracy which since the armistice has steeped France in the mire of two wars and which refuses to forget its national hatreds when other coun- tries have relinquished theirs in sheer fatigue. Mr. Ford's enthusiasms, erracious, supply recorded, make the heart ache for a vanishing glory; and all his forensic vigor has but a sum- matory and historical value. To him it is a hymn of joy that he sings; but to those who know that the most tenaciously rooted trees are subject to blight and dry rot, it has the forlorn ring of a requiem. Clifton P. FADIMAN Inside Looking On Reading* in Trade Unionism. By David J. Saposs. With the Collaboration of Bertha Tigay Saposs. George H. Doran Company. $2. Left Winy Unionism-. By David J. Saposs. International Pub- lishers. $1.60. XT 0 one is better fitted to throw light into the corners of so- ■'■ ' cial development than one who is at once participant in and analyst of the movement he interprets. Few social institutions are fortunate enough to possess within their ranks men who can remain active on the inside even as they stand off and look on. The American labor movement possesses such a scientist- member in Mr. Saposs. His rich and varied experience as worker, student, and teacher is apparent in these two volumes. Long years of field work, numerous interviews with trade-union members and leaders, intimate observation of union activities,

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226 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 minute study of documentary sources, obviously lie behind them. Obviously, too, they are first products of a mill crowded with the grist for further production. Perhaps that is why even the beginnings which they constitute present so rounded a pic- ture of one phase of the life going on within the labor move- ment of the United States. Taken singly they yield an important insight into trade- union life; taken together they contribute in addition an inti- mate understanding of a characteristic and continuing chapter an labor development. For many years now the American Federation of Labor has represented majority union- ism in the United States. Minority unions came and went — the I. W. W., the Workers' International Industrial Union, . dual organizations; the n re- mained. Naturally it became a center of attention, praise, and hot attack. ^ because of its preoccupation with the affairs just wl tion stood for. arks flying from heated controversy but feebly disputants; the praise of partisans and the detrac were alike unreliable; very few had the time or kn 'her accurately from the threads ial journals and publications the pattern of its Such a service as that performed by these g been t Mr. Sa is made majority unionism in the United rig from the chartered a! journal-, resolutions, convention pi Fers the materials for the fir thentic of L. by itself. Here officials of the i their philosophy — their ideas on . on collective bargaining, on organ- ization techniqi u ■■' ons, political action on every y. Many will be surprised to find tain as alism as they do. Hut there is iterial for a self-portrait. They also make an I introduction to Mr. Saposs's study of lionism." thing that the radical left-wingers are fight- out, they have born fighting it for many radicals sought a foothold in the Arnor- ican I; fter the Civil War. The Socialists tried tried; today the Communists are its '1 tried to win the fed ration to te labor parties, to the advocacy developed varying methods of battle; war among themselves over the and "boring from within." Mr. S; in reality an attempt to appraise the a| methods in the American labor move- to believe that the explanation of their with the radicals themselves. In Europe far more impression; large ally in its huge, trustified area:-, still remain n d up? To discover the answer, Mr. Saposs presents a thorough ling methods of radical attack upon the American Federation of Labor. "Boring from within" has been a time-hot' thod of reform. The Socialists tried it before ed. Today their old-time militancy has dis- ii ;m anxiety to work with the existing union official- dom: the cloak of their militancy has passed on to the Com- munists. Those new radicals have .at' mpted sturdily, accord- ing to Mr. Saposs, to wrest the labor movement from the "dead- ening influence of an old and fossilized leadership." M^. Saposs analyzes boring from within into its two dominant types: the one that relics on propaganda and the one that relies on mili- tancy. The Communists, embracing militancy, have discovered its limitations. They have been effectively driven from many of the more important unions, expelled, isolated, forced to work under cover. Dual unionism may thus be given its trial in time, willy-nilly. Such an analysis cannot but prove suggestive to practical unionists and also to students of labor. One could wish, how- ever, that Mr. Saposs's analysis of left-wing unionism had been a little fuller, a little more rounded. Surely it may be asked what part American conditions played in the slow prog- ress of labor radicalism; what influence the disappearance of the frontier, the triumph of large-scale industry and mass produc- tion, the cessation of immigration from Europe, the new "welfare" tactics of employers, the spread of the "company- union" movement — what influence such forces will have on the future of American labor radicalism. Perhaps Mr. Saposs will take up some of these pressing and unanswered questions in his next. Sylvia Kopald AuJd Lantf Syne The Worship of Nature. Hy Sir James George Frazer! Volume I. The Macniillan Company. $4. \ /"OLUME I of Sir James's Gifford Lectures for 1924 and 1925, " to be followed, no doubt, by volume II and, not improbably, by volume III; the whole thing in years to come to be con- densed into an abridged edition— -a portly tome of some seven or eight hundred pages. The tiling is almost cosmic in its proportions and regularity. I remember the late Joseph Jacobs was wont to review encyclopedias. Men of his talents and inclinations should be reviewing Frazer. They would be kept busy. Hut one might as well give an abstract of a dictionary! The same length: 572 closely printed pages! The same elaborate, quaintly old- fashioned footnotes, with no abbreviations or ih ids. The same amazing erudil language or author or sheet, however afe from Sir James's curiosity. The same geographical survey method: the worship of the sky — in gen- eral, among the Vedic Indian:;, among the ancient Iranians, , Romans, Babylonians, Assyrians, in China, Korea, and so on and on ad infinitum, with the earth as a limit. And also the same loy perfection of diction, grammatically impec- cable, sweetened with sentimentality, mortally boring in the d balance of its cadences. And yet, some years ago, the news of a fresh volume from Frazer's pen used to kindle my curiosity and arouse expecta- tions of things to come. For, in those days, when Frazer had spoken Andrew Lang also spoke, lie had a counter-argument for each one of Frazer's arguments, a quotation to balance (and usually contradict) each one of his quotations, an anti- dote for each one of his theories, .and then a better one of his own! And with what grace did that romantic mystery demolish what his rival had built up with such consume: factual equipment! I'' razor wrote "The Magic Art" (first, two harbingers of the Golden Hough lib \ndrew Lang an- I with "The Making of Religion" and l Reli- i." Frazer pci -1 his early essays on — Lang was right, there with "Social Origins" .and "The Secret Totem." Frazer, rising to the occasion, bestowed unon us his "Totemism and Exogamy" (in four volumes) — and Lang vered in an encyclopedia article, the article on "Totemism" in the 11th edition of the Britannica (the one in the 9th edition was Frazer's). It was a curious combat this. Frazer used bricks, Lang dynamite. With infinite patience Frazer heaped his bricks brought from all corners of the globe into skyscraning Babels, only to have them reduced to ruins by a well-aimed thrust. Andrew Lan<' is dead, Frazer — now Sir James — still produces hecatombs of books. But my curiosity is no longer kindled nor is there anticipation of things about to happen. No Frazer should outlive his Andrew Lang. Alexander Goldenweiser

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 227 Books in Brief Concerning Parents. A Symposium on Present Day Parenthood. The New Republic, Inc. $1. This handy paper-covered volume contains the addresses made at the Conference on Modern Parenthood held last fall by the Child Study Association of America. The relations of parents and children in the light of modern psychology are dis- cussed by Dr. Beatrice Hinkle, Dr. Elton G. Mayo, Leta Holl- ingsworth, and a score of others. Their almost entire una- nimity— only one essay in the volume being pitched in the old moralistic key — is a tribute to the authority which scientific conceptions have gained in this field. The Plague Pamphlets of Thomas Dekker. Edited by F. P. Wilson. Oxford University Press. $3. The fame of Thomas Dekker's pamphlets describing the rogues and cut-purses, gallants and gulls of early Stuart Lon- don has somewhat obscured the excellences of another series of pamphlets from the same practiced pen. Mr. Wilson's edition gathers into one compact and admirably printed little volume six tracts inspired by the terrible epidemics of bubonic plague in London in 1603 and 1625. Of these six pieces only three have previously been reprinted and only two have been included among Dekker's works. These two are "The Won- derful Years" and "A Rod for Run-awayes." A third piece, "The Meeting of Gallants," has been printed before, though without ascription to any author. Mr. Wilson gives evidence for attributing it to Dekker, but admits that it may be by that "T. M." who wrote "The Blacke Book," and who may well have been Thomas Middleton. The remaining three pamphlets are here reprinted for the first time. Of these "Newes from Graves-end" is by far the most interesting. That it is by Dekker is hardly open to question in view of the evidence of thought and style summarized by Mr. Wilson. In eloquence and vividness its prose matches the best of Dekker's acknowledged work and some of the verse is worthy of his reputation as a lyric poet. "London Looke Backe" and "The Blacke Rod" are the slightest of these productions and in them the instinct to exhort and to edify is more powerful than the desire, so strong in Dekker's earlier years, to depict actual conditions faithfully and realistically. Nevertheless the series of "Plague Pamphlets" would not have been complete without these pieces; and that they are by Dekker seems certain. Social Cleavages in Texas. A Study of the Proposed Division of the State. By Weston J. McConnell. Columbia University Press. $3. Dr. McConnell has made an important, although admittedly only a restricted, contribution to a subject which has received all too little attention from American historians, that, namely, of regional political geography and its social reactions. It will be recalled that the joint resolution of Congress under which Texas was admitted to the Union provided, among other things, that not exceeding four States "of convenient size," in addition to the State of Texas, might be formed "out of the territory thereof" and entitled to admission in accordance with the terms of the federal Constitution. Although the country at large apnears to have taken little note of it, not a decnde has passed since Texas was received in which a more or less energetic agitation of the nuestion of division has not been carried on, and Dr. McConnell is of the opinion that in snite of the failure to use the permission which Congress extended, the provision of the joint resolution is still constitutionally valid and may be availed of whenever the Deople of the Stnte so desire. The reasons for the repeated ngitntion of the subject are to be found, as Dr. McConnell shows, in the vast and unwieldy size of the present State, the long distances, in some cases more than 600 miles, which must be traveled to reach the capital, the marked physiographieal differences which the area of the State presents, the diverse character of the population, sharp clashing of eco- nomic and political interests both during and after the slavery period, and pronounced irritation over sectional influences in State legislation. In the face of such striking contrasts State government seems to have an almost impossible problem, and Dr. McConnell's careful study leaves the impression that the demand for division will continue and that a cutting up of the present area into States which shall recognize the inherent physical and social diversity is ultimately to be expected. State Rights in the Confederacy. By Frank Lawrence Owsley. The University of Chicago Press. $2.50. Professor Owsley is not the first to suggest that the col- lapse of the Confederacy was due to internal rather than external causes, but no one has pointed out so convincingly the part which a practical application of the State rights doctrine played in the downfall. Instead of supporting loyally the Con- federate Government, the States appear to have systematically obstructed it, and the obstruction was its undoing. A study of the records shows that the States weakened the Confederate armies by maintaining troops of their own, withdrawing thou- sands of men and great quantities of arms from Confederate service for use in State defense, insisting upon exercising control over the troops in various ways after they had left the State, and impeding the impressment of supplies until the impress- ment system broke down. "North Carolina had forty cotton mills, and did not allow the Confederate Government a yard of cloth from them for any except North Carolina troops during the entire war." The same policy of obstruction was extended to the blockade, conscription, and the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus which Professor Owsley regards as necessary. The book, which is thoroughly documented, is one to be reckoned with by whoever shall next undertake to write a history of the Civil War on its political or economic side. Fundamental Thoughts in Economics. By Gustav Cassel. Har- court, Brace and Company. $1.50. Four lectures, delivered at the University of London, in which Professor Cassel sought to embody the significant ele- ments of his contributions to economic theory. They are marked by clarity of exposition and marred by an unnecessary dogmatism. The Southern. Plantation Overseer as Revealed in His Letters. By John Spencer Bassett. Smith College Press. The plantation overseer has been presented to the Ameri- can imagination chiefly as the inevitable villajn in the romances of the ante-bellum South. Indicted by friend and . foe of this social order — witness Mrs. Stowe and Mr. Page — for fiendish- ness of personal conduct, he has been charged also with mis- management and swindling which contributed to the precarious- ness of agricultural effort under the slavery regime. In the present volume facts are brought out which rob the overseer of certain dramatic values but reestablish him as a member of the human family. Professor Bassett bases his study upon a single estate the Mississippi plantation of James K. Polk, be- tween 1833 and 1858. With notable skill in weaving parts into the whole he has used a series of letters, written by overseers or concerning overseers, to construct a complete plantation his- tory. Primary emnhasis is upon the half-dozen officials who in this quarter of a century supervised Polk's plantation business. The individual letters are edited with illuminating comment and excellent chapters of introduction and of summary extend to the general slave-holding area the inferences drawn from the single plantation. The service of the book is larger than to delineate a fairly conspicuous figure of the plantation economy. The letters, together with the author's interpretation, throw frequent incidental gleams upon such aspects of the life of the period as the economic structure, the problems of slave control, and the social psychology of both races. No student of the plantation epoch can neglect this comprehensive and lucid study.

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228 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 Art Words of Cheer for Worms SECRET societies, as every one knows, are institutions exist- ing essentially for the purpose of keeping people out of them. And the professions, with their dark lore and dazzling words, have, from without as from within, much the same glamor of esotericity. Wherefore the poor layman, convicted and convinced of unworth by his inability to understand and still more to speak the language of the elect, penitently strives to atone for the sin of existing at all by practicing a worm-like humility. He feasts on contempt, fattens on insult, and glories but in passing these on to others less wormy as yet than himself. But the limit of what even the wormiest of worms will stand has been pass-d by some of the high priests of modern art. Laymen, standing out of the tall grass of technical diffi- cilties in which the painter has to work, and free also from the critic's debauching need of writing oftener and faster than he can possibly think, arc here and there beginning to suspect that just because of this they themselves are not less well but better placed than painter and critic to judge of the aesthetic worth of works of art. For the professionals, praise too praises but the painter's success in a difficult stunt and obvi- ously success in this sense need nowise carry with it aesthetic worth. The danger of thus mistaking issues may be illustrated by the rediscovery in modern times of the peculiar aesthetic worth of "form," particularly in the sense of volume, and of com- position of volumes in depth. Realization of the beauty of form in space has given us numberless bowls of apples and acres of bulging buttocks and billowing breasts — in which we f'nd plastic form and composition ad nauseam, but, alas, often also abound- ing and wanton ugliness of line, of surface textures, of color, and of subject-matter. But to say this is to wave the red rag, and at once comes the bull! Subject-matter, we are told, belongs to the "anec- dotage" of painting, and our criticism of line and texture is damned as the sign of a cheap and vulgar love of prettiness. If the demand for beauty is admitted at all, we are told at any rate that beauty springs purely from form; that beyond question the form is in the buttocks; and that if we do not see the beauty it is either because we poor worms are yet form-blind or else because ours is still that low level of culture at which the nude is but the naked. And if, perhaps, we happen never to have heard of "form" and of "composition"; or if, having heard of them, we are yet guiltily conscious that our incapacity to discern them and their coy charms may all una- wares have caused us to cut them dead when we meet them — if that is indeed our inner case, we then wiggle a little under the lash and feel duly abashed; and the next time we cling virtuously to the calming catchwords and show what good little wormlets we have got to be. But, on the other hand, it is also just possible that we may be quite aesthetically vertebrate. Fnrmgefuhl may long have been our own pet form of aesthetic spasm, and we may be well able to appreciate the composition of a picture without being personally conducted through it and having our noses rubbed upon the formally fragrant spots. If this be our case, laymen though we be so far as goes the handling of phrases and of brush, we shall tell our self-appointed critic that if we are not so excited about form as he is it is only because we are not in respect of it quite so nouveau rirhe as himself nor aesthetically so easily satisfied; and that when he proclaims form to be the sole source of aesth tic worth he makes of his own crippled gifts or narrow taste a flag and wigw: the world tbe fact that he suffers from aesthetic homicpi.- whother he knows it or not, forms as representation make to beauty a contribution quite distinct in kind from that which they make as composition; and therefore, if they are repre- sentative at all, forms cannot without disaster be used in art as if they were abstract. It is possible, of course, either out of inborn cussedness or under the misguidance of professional amateur-theorists, to train oneself to unconsciousness of the aesthetic values that spring from the nature of the represented objects, the values, namely, called by Mr. Santayana the "expression" of the ob- jects. But such perverse training no more conduces to the fullest appreciation of the beauty of a work than would holding one's nose to the fullest appreciation of the flavor of one's food. We may further insist that beside form, color, and "expression" the texture of surfaces is yet another factor of beauty. And we may thus have occasion to chide our friend for having f perhaps, to paint the flesh that he pictures, but instead, by means of the figure, merely insinuated that flesh rather than plaster or putty was what he meant — as wanton a case of the turning of painting to the telling of a story as can well be found. So ashamed have some painters and critics become of the blindness of other times to the aesthetic importance of form that they have unawares fallen into what the psychoanalysts call overcorrection, and are now unable to find beauty in any- thing but form. And this was the easier because this matter of the perception of form i-eally furnishes an ideal chance naively to cultivate the thrilling belief that one belongs to the narrow circle of the enlightened. For truly, of the various factors of beauty, form is the most difficult to discern, and if one has once learned to perceive and prize one such thing that the many do not see, the temptation cannot then be withstood to believe the many all wholly blind and oneself omnivident. C. J. Ducasse □ CONFERENCE □ How Shall We Wage Peace? A Conference to Discuss Methods of Fellowship Action at the Hotel Plimpton, Watch Hill, R. I. September 9, 10, 11, 12, 1926 The aim of the Conference is to pool the ex- perience of those who are working for a friendly coordinated society and to develop an effective technique of action. Four groups will consider ways of working: I Through Writing, Pamphlets, etc.; II Through Education; III Through Personal Action in Situ- ations of Conflict ; IV Through Established Organizations. Among those who will act as leaders are Bruno Lasker, John Xevin Sayre, Norman Thomas, Wilbur K. Thomas, Maud Richards, Roger Bald- win, Agnes Pollock Cooper, Amy Woods, Dr. G. Normil Sylvain, Thomas Q. Harrison, fames Meyers, S. M. Keeney, John K. Vorhis, George L. Collins, Paul Tones. Conference Fee .$2.00 Board and Room $4.00 per day To get the full program and to make reserva- tions write to THE FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION 383 Bible House, Astor Plac- New York City

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International Relations Section South Tyrol Again By L. 0. N. IT is said that the peace treaties have created six Alsace- Lorraines in Europe. None of these, however, has be- come such a grave menace to the peace of the world as South Tyrol, now under the heel of a government which does not appear to care an iota what the world thinks about it. South Tyrol, a country inhabited, according to the recent official Italian census, 95 per cent by Germans and 5 per cent by Italians, has no other help left but public opinion. And the latter is weak indeed in present-day Europe. The conditions under which the South Tyrolese have lived since the establishment of the Fascist dictatorship are too well known to render it necessary to enumerate them all. Yet some features of Italy's policy toward its new and "re- deemed" province are worth recalling. A petition which all the Tyrolese and the Ladinian communities of the annexed province sent as :i last desperate effort in February, 1919, to Wdodrow Wilson, the man chiefly responsible for the hand- ing over of South Tyrol to its most bitter enemy, gives the background for the present situation: And now our home with its thousand-year-old history and civilization, our people with their inbred love of free- dom must become Italian? A cry of pain sounds through the whole land at the thought. It cannot, it must not be that the name of South Tyrol shall be wiped out of history after a brilliant past of a thousand years, and that the free sons of this mountain country shall be forced under a foreign yoke, robbed of their language, their art, and their civilization. In this decisive hour for us, the whole people turns to you, Mr. President, asking you to be the protector of our people. You coined the great phrase "self-determination of the peoples." You proclaimed world reconciliation. Do not allow more than 200,000 people to be deprived of their national rights. You, as an American, as a follower of your hero of liberty, George Washington, will understand that liberty is the highest possession of a people and that a free people prefer to perish than to suffer the shame of bondage. For the Italians, South Tyrol is but a tract of land. For us, it is our home. This plea is carried over ice-covered mountains ~0a. Be the just judge for our nationality and our country. Give liberty to South Tyrol as you gave it to others, and the people of South Tyrol will honor your name from genera- tion to generation as the savior of their home. Wilson never replied to this SOS. Six months later the Austrian Government sent a note to the Allied Powers, who were then meeting in Paris, in which it made a last formal protest against cutting South Tyrol off from its other half. In their reply the Powers said : The Allied and Associated Powers are of the opinion that the frontier between Italy and Austria as it was pre- sented to the Austrian delegation in the conditions of peace does not allow of any alteration. It is clearly to be seen from the declarations made by the Italian Premier in the Parliament at Rome that the Italian Government intends to follow a very liberal policy in its relations with its new subjects of German race as regards language, cultural and economic interests. How Italy kept her vow is now known. It is sufficient to quote Signor Mussolini himself: I saw the danger in South Tyrol; everything had a German character there, officials, teachers, the clergy, the post office, and the railways. Only German was spoken. I have now changed things: I have introduced a zone thirty kilometers wide along the Austrian frontier where people are allowed to settle only by special permission. The Italian language is compulsory in the whole province; all post office officials and railway employees are Italians; Italian families are established everywhere; we intend to send 1,000 fami- lies of former soldiers into the land to colonize it. The coun- try must become Italian. Mussolini has succeeded, at least externally, in his policy. He has had the use of the name of the country strictly forbidden. The name comes from the castle Tyrol, which, awkwardly enough for Mussolini, lies in South Tyrol itself, and was even used by Dante in his Inferno. All the South Tyrolese dailies have been suppressed, all the Tyrolese schools and kindergartens have been closed, and the teaching of the native language, even in private, is prohibited. (And this while a royal decree of January 31, 1924, permits the erection of schools and the teaching of Arabic in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, two Italian colonies in Africa.) Italian is the only language that may be used in the law courts. In the churches even prayers must be made only in Italian, although the people in general do not speak this language. Far more serious is the effect of the Italian school law. The results of Italian education, which is notorious for its low standards, are pitiful. According to official Italian sta- tistics (published in the Corriere della Sera of February 12, 1926) the population of Sardinia is 49 per cent illiterate. In reality the percentage of illiteracy is far higher in some parts of Italy. South Tyrol, on the other hand, had practically no illiterates before the war. But the situation has changed. In 1926, although it was still at the head of the Italian provinces, South Tyrol was 2 per cent illiterate already and there is little doubt that the figure will rise rapidly. The Italian teachers, who in general have little education themselves, cannot make themselves understood by the Tyrolese children. A number of children are taught in so-called "catacomb" schools, in back rooms and other hidden places, but successful education is impossible under such conditions. Another of the recent laws for South Tyrol concerns family names, which can be changed at the discretion of the authorities to Italian names — re-Italianized, as Mussolini calls it. This law is the first of its kind in history. All efforts to change the present regime in South Tyrol have so far failed. In his recent speech on South Tyrol Mussolini boasted: I declare with absolute certainty that the Italian policy in South Tyrol will not be altered by a hair's breadth. With cold calculation, according to plan and in Fascist style, we shall put our legislation into effect in South Tyrol. We will make this province Italian. In the same speech he said that the Germans in South Tyrol represent no national minority, but an ethnic relic! The situation is constantly aggravated by acts of provo- cation on the part of the new governors. In July the King of Italy was in Bozen, the heart of German South Tyrol, to erect a monument to a certain Cesare Battisti. This man was born in Trient (now Trento) and never had any- thing to do with Bozen. He was prosecuted in what was then Austria for criminal fraud. During the war he

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230 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 deserted in the firing line and was captured later and shot und : martial law. Although his wife and son protested against the exploitation of his memory for political pur- poses, the Italian authorities are erecting a monument to him on the foundation where a war memorial to the Tyro- lese soldiers who fell in the war had already been begun. Tyrolese school children were forced to collect money for the monument and 100,000 lire were taken from the city funds of Bozen. The future of South Tyrol is dark, but whatever changes Fascism may effect there, it must be remembered that while laws change, nations live eternally. The present risorgi- mento of Italy, admirable as it may look to the outsider and admirable as it is in one way, will never legitimatize the possession of South Tyrol. Today South Tyrol is the cancer of Europe, and if one were to name now the probable causes of the next war the Tyrolese situation would take a chief p^ace among them. Abyssinia Appeals to the League SINCE Abyssinia became a member of the League of Nations, she has remained undisturbed in her inland state, surrounded by British, French, and Italian territories. Recently she received notes from Great Britain and Italy, announcing that they had decided to take certain conces- sions in her territory. Great Britain has long desired to control the waters of the Blue Nile for the irrigation of her Sudan cotton fields by a dam at the headwaters of the river, which happened to be Lake Tsana in Abyssinia. In return Italy would be permitted to build a railway across Abyssinia connecting her territories of Eritrea and Somaliland. This they had arranged between them, without consulting Abys- sinia. The Abyssinian Government turned to the League, with the note reprinted below from the Manchester Guardian Weekly for August 6. Our Government recently received from the British and Italian Governments identical notes informing it that these Governments had arrived at an agreement to support each other with i view of obtaining a concession for the British Govern ment to undertake the conservancy of waters of our Lake Tsana and for the Italian Government to construct a railway through our empire. We have been profoundly moved by the conclusion of this agreement, arrived at without our being consulted or informed, and by the action of the two Governments in sending us a joint notification. In the first place, on our admission to the League we were told that all nations were to be on a footing of equality within the League, and that their independence was to be universally respected, since the purpose of the League is to establish and maintain peace among men in accordance with the will of God. We were not told that certain members of the League might make a separate agreement to impose their views on another member even if the latter considered those views incompatible with its national interests. Secondly, one of the subjects cov- ered by the agreement had already been discussed between the British Government and our own, and the fact that no con- clusion had yet been reached was due to reasons of whose nature and importance we were fully aware. We had, however, never given any definite reply. We cannot help thinking, therefore, that in agreeing to sup- port each other in these matters, and in giving us joint notifica- tion of that agreement, the two Governments are endeavoring to exert pressure on us in order to induce us to comply with their demands prematurely, without leaving any time for reflection or consideration for our people's needs. The people of Abyssinia are anxious to do right, and we have every intention of guiding them along the path of im- provement and progress, but throughout their history they have seldom met with foreigners who did not desire to possess them- selves of Abyssinian territory and to destroy their independence. With God's help, and thanks to the courage of our soldiers, we have always — come what might — stood proud and free upon our native mountains. For this reason prudence is needed when we have to convince our people that foreigners who wish to establish themselves for economic reasons in our country or on the frontiers between it and their possessions are genuinely innocent of concealed political aims, and we doubt whether agreements and joint representations such as those now in question are the best means of instilling that conviction. Nor must it be forgotten that we have only recently been introduced to modern civilization and that our history, glorious though it be, has not prepared us for ready adjustment to con- ditions which are often quite beyond the range of our experience. Nature herself has never gone forward by sudden bounds, and no country has been metamorphosed in a night. With our well- known eagerness for progress, given time and the friendly advice of countries whose geographical position has enabled them to outdistance us in the race, we shall be able to secure gradual but continual improvements, which will make Abys- sinia great in the future as she has been throughout the past, but if we try to go too fast accidents may happen. We should like to hear from members of the League whether they think it right that means of pressure should be exerted upon us which they themselves would doubtless never accept. We have the honor to bring to the notice of all states members of the League correspondence which we received in order that they may decide whether that correspondence is compatible with the independence of our country, inasmuch as it includes a stipulation that part of our empire is to be allotted to the economic influence of a given Power. We can- not but realize that economic influence and political influence are very closely bound up together, and it is our duty to protest most strongly against an agreement which, in our view, con- flicts with the essential principles of the League of Nations. The British reply, which was read in Parliament by Sir Austen Chamberlain, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, is also reprinted from the Manchester Guardian Weekly. There is nothing in the Anglo Italian notes to suggest coercion or the exercise of pressure on the Abyssinian Govern- ment. Sir Austen Chamberlain has stated in Parliament that the agreement was certainly not to be used and could not be used for the purpose of coercing the Abyssinian Government. He believed the agreement to be in the interests of all three parties, but added that, of course, the Abyssinian Government had a perfect right to judge of what was in the interests of Abyssinia. His Majesty's Charge d'Affaires was instructed by telegram on July 14 to bring this statement to the knowledge of Ras Tafari. As to the suggestion that the British and Italian Governments are trying to force the Abyssinian Government to yield to their requests in a hurry and without being afforded time for reflection and study of the requirements of the Abys- sinian people, I am to point out that in notes exchanged between the British Minister at Addis Ababa and the Abyssinian Gov- ernment on March 18, 1902, the Emperor Menelik confirmed an oral undertaking given some days previously. Since the date of this undertaking, which shows that twenty-four years ago the Emperor Menelik contemplated the construction by the British Government of a barrage at Tsana, His Majesty's Government on several occasions made specific proposals in regard to this work, the full effect of which it is now possible to foretell as the result of detailed observations which have been carried out by scientific missions dispatched to the lake with the consent and assistance of the Abyssinian Government. In these circumstances his Majesty's Government feel that they cannot fairly be charged with proceeding, in regard to

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Sept. 8, 1926] The Nation 231 Lake Tsana, with undue precipitancy. In > ci nc u graph of their protest the Abyssinian Government inquire wheth*^ ; jfi* HEADACHE GENERAL DRUG CO. 94 N. Moore Street, New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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232 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3192 Telephoning over a ray of light building on the Telephone "Principle F i f t Y v e a r s ago A 1 e x a n d e r Graham Bell discovered the prin- ciple of the telephone. His first telephone employed wire as the connecting path over which words passed. Four years later he used a beam of light instead of wire to carry speech between telephone instruments. Today, both wire and wireless telephony arc employed on every hand in the service of the nation. Wire telephony, with its thousands ofcentral offices, its complex switchboards and millions of miles of wire, envelops the country, carrying for the American people 70,000,000 conversations every day. Wireless telephony is broad- casting entertainment anil carry- ing important information to the remotest regions. But new applications of the telephone principle are still being found. In the loud speaker, in the deaf set, the electrical stethoscope, the improved phonograph, the telephone principle has been adaptetl by the Bell Telephone Laboratories to the uses of the physician, the public speaker and the musician. The scientific research and engineering skill, which enable America to lead the world in telephone service, arc- also bringing forth from the tele- phone principle other device great useful American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Associated Companies IN ITS SEMI-CENTENNIAL YEAR THE BELL SYSTEM LOOKS FOR- WARD TO CONTINUED PROGRESS IN TELEPHONE COMMUNICATION KKAL ESTATE WE have 800 acres of the I Northv Florid; table for Grapes, Pears. Peaches, Plums, Blueben and other fruit . ; also vegetables. Afl four years this should pay 100% profit Land adjoining is selling for $125.00 an acre. Will sell one-half interest for $25,000.00 Will in ock for any amount, you wish to invest until all is sold. In five years' time it should be worth $1,000.00 For references and full particulars address owner, H. S. STOVALL, 2-11 W. 10',-th St., N. Y. City. und Trip, New York to Lake George, $1238 Address I W'ERN, Warrensburg, N. Y., or Phone Wisconsin 3754-2164 . Barish Moe Nudell INDIAN HEAD CAMP ECHO $28.50 p*r weak Daily rsto $5.00 LAKE Adults »nly Land and Water Sports. Sal* Baaak WATCH FOR THE INOIAK SIGN WONDER CAMP OF THE ADfRONDACKS P. O. Box 114, Warrt'iobnrg, M. T. N. Y. Central to Lake George or Day or Night Boat to Albany and train to Lake Georgs. In- dian Head car will await you. Send for booklet. City address : R. Helfant, 885 Brook Avenus, Bronx N. Y Tel. Metros* 1821 THE STUDENTS' CAMP OLIVEREA, VIA BIG INDIAN, N. Y. In the heart of the Catsk'lh Situated in a beautiful mountain hollow. Bath- in", tennis, hikes and sports. A fine place for Labor Day week-end. At present there are a group of twenty young men and women here: teachers, students, musicians and writers. For those desiring intimau? contact with nature as well as congeniul. intelligent associates. $20 per week ; Vegetarian meals. Camp is reached by Hudson River Day Line to Kingston, changing for tram to Big Indian. Send reserra- Walter Siegmeister. THE LdLrOJD, Bellport, L. I. .rent South Bay. Open June 2Jd Cool. Comfortable, Charming. Regular guests and week-end parties. Your Fall Problems If you want to rent a house or an apartment or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section of The Nation, read by honest landlords and de- sirable tenants. Rates on application. Special three- time rate. Dept. F. P., The i \ a ! 1 0 il . writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1926 No. 3193 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 233 EDITORIALS: Germany Enters the League 286 Cleaning House Among the Miners Dunning China Who What T 238 MODERN TRAFFFIC. Bv Hondrik Willem van Loon 239 •1 HKLIEVE IN FREE SPEECH. BUT—". By Harbor Allen 240 BARON BANANA IN PUERTO BARRIOS. By Carleton Beals i LAND OF THE FREE. By Arthur Gleason IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 246 CORRESPONDENCE 217 BOOKS AND DRAMA: Comparative Religions. By Owen Monrs 218 \ Challenge to Liberalism. By Louis Fischer 249 \ Misunderstood Man. By Raymond A. Preston 249 A Neighbor's Novel. By Mary Ross 249 Peter ami Caesar. By James Fuchs 250 The Dangerous Queen. By Keith Hutchison 250 An Immigration Source-Book. By Jane Perry Clark Books in Brief Drama: Potemkin. By Ernestine Evans 252 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : Whore Slavery Still Rules 253 No Money for Peking ! OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Associate Editors Ehitor LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Epitor Literary Epitor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Epitors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOM VS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico; to Canada, $5.50: and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation. New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1. England. PROSPERITY? YES! The Internal Revenue Bureau produces fabulous figures of growing wealth. But, unfortunately for prosperity as a campaign slogan, it is prosperity for the few. Some 400,000 corporations made returns; 1,200 of these record profits of more than $5,- 000,000 in 1926 — more profit than all the other 398,000 put together. One little group of 168 corporations made more than $13,500,000 each in the last fiscal year. The Alumi- num Company of America is not named, but doubtless it is one of the 168. No wonder Mr. Mellon and Mr. Insull and other directors of the 168 are willing and able to write out checks for mere tens of thousands wherever a Coolidge- prosperity candidate is threatened with defeat. No wonder Calvin is satisfied, and the Presidential spokesman an- nounces that he will not ask Congress to place any curb on the trusts. America is the richest country in the world, with bigger and better billionaires than ever in its history; why shouldn't we be proud of them and proud to let them rule us? THE DISCUSSIONS AT GENEVA, as we go to press, indicate an extraordinary and unexpected desire to conciliate the United States and obtain its adhesion to the World Court in spite of reservations on our part which are in effect amendments. Such objection as has been publicly voiced against our reservations has come mainly from the lesser nations. The representatives of the larger countries have been making every effort to devise a method whereby the United States may be taken in, reservations and all, before our Senate lias a chance to debate the question again and perhaps decline to enter the World Court on any basis. It remains to be seen, of course, whether this country will make any important use of the tribunal. While our present, attitude toward foreign affairs persists, the chances are in the negative. Whereas we once led the world in the effort to settle international disputes through arbitration, we have latterly adopted a policy of laying down the law and demanding compliance. The field of most of our present and prospective disputes is Latin America, but we want no international arbitration there. Instead we stand upon an utter misinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine (which was intended to safeguard the independence of small nations) and assert our "right" to rule the roost. NEWTON BAKER evidently does not plan an immediate return to political life. Otherwise he would not have blurted out the various uncomfortably true things which he had to say about the inter-Allied debts. Mr. Coolidge's Spokesman naturally seized upon the statement with gusto, and expressed the hope that the Democrats would make debt-cancelation an issue in the campaign. They will hardly make so colossal a blunder; but those of us who are not seeking political office may continue to point out that the Administration debt-policy is one of the most magnificent exhibits of the modern technique of kidding the people which it has ever been our privilege to witness. The debt agreements were negotiated under a Congressional resolu- tion which required the commission to demand payment in full, and on their faces carry payment of the principal, though with interest rates so low as to amount to heavy cancelation. Congress was fooled into ratifying them upon this illusory form of accounting; but no sooner had Con- gress signed on the dotted line than the Administration officials began bombarding the newspapers with new ac- count-sheets, demonstrating that we were not really squeez- ing the European nations at all but were extremely gener- ous. In fact, though we have scaled down the tables, we are still asking all the European countries to pledge their future taxpayers for sixty-two years in order to pay these debts. o NLYr ONE THING seems quite certain," Mr. Baker says. "The generation in Germany which did not cause the war will not mortgage itself and its children for two-thirds of a century." Bankers, at least, are beginning to realize the idiocy of the Versailles program and the exaggerated hopes of even the Dawes revision. But, Mr. Baker says, America is applying the "same fallacious and disastrous methods to our Allies." We are asking them to pledge future generations to pay our war-time loans. The British settlement he regards as a "magnificent disas- ter" because it set a precedent which less firmly bulwarked countries can never follow. And he thinks the time ripe for a general reconsideration, in which we should cancel the Allied debts to us, they cancel their war debts to one another, and in turn "release some part of the burdens im- posed upon Germany." In time the world will probably

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234 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 come to something like that; Mr. Mellon and Mr. Hoover doubtless have it in the backs of their heads and doubtless have let their European friends know it ; but no man out to get votes in this fall's election is likely to dare talk such common sense. Neither Democrats nor Republicans like to face the fact that the war was a colossal failure, and that neither the money spent in it nor the lives lost in it can ever be recovered. Even the ideals are reported missing. AS YOU LIKE IT" is the motto of the political dopesters in commenting on the results of the Cali- fornia primaries. If you like Hiram Johnson and detest the World Court you observe that his candidate won the nomination for Governor, which carries control of the State organization, and that the candidate whom he sup- ported for the Senatorial list, together with the independent Dry who was also anti-court, polled more votes than Sena- tor Shortridge, the pro-Coolidge, pro-court aspirant. On the other hand, if you like the Court and Mr. Coolidge, and hate Hiram, you can point out — and do — that Senator Shortridge did win. despite the ferocious attacks made upon him by the doughty junior Senator. The fact is that the primary showed Hiram Johnson regaining some of his lost grip. The defeat of Judge Busiek, the Sacramento injunction-judge, is another hopeful sign. The Democratic primary results were as open to mixed interpretations. Mr. McAdoo and his friends charged that Mr. Dockweiler, can- didate for the Senatorial nomination, and Mr. Wardell, for the gubernatorial race, were Smith men, of a plot to deliver California into the hands of Tam- many Hall. Well, Mr. Dockweiler lost by a narrow margin, and, by an even smaller margin, Mr. Wardell won. And what does that prove? Chiefly, it seems to us, that Mr. doo, while he can probably have California's vote al the 1928 convention, does not rule the faithful of his home State with too sure a rod, and that the fabulous popularity of "Al" in Eastern cities is spreading to the West. THE PASSION FOR PEACE has made itself heard again, this time in a manifesto which denounces com- pulsory military service and asks the League of Nations to abolish the practice in all countries "as a first step to- ward true disarmament." It is signed by illustrious names from many countries and many fields of achievement — there are British Labor men like Philip Snowden and Arthur Ponsonby, scientists like Einstein, philosophers like Bertrand Russell. Remain Rolland and H. G. Wells; I here are German military men who have seen a new light; there are Gandhi of India and Unamuno of Spain and \ Margueritte of France — liberals of every description, but few in a position of political power. Which proves that the lovers of peace are still lovers of peace, and that the rest of the world is not much changed. !n this country the manifesto partakes of the academic, since we are emphat- ically not League members. But, although we do not have compulsory military service in time of peace, we still have what is as bad, compulsory military training in many of our colleges and public high schools. Against that American peace-lovers must fight their principal battle. CANTON'S RUSSIAN-TRAINED SOLDIERS have swept rapidly northward to the Yangtze River in Central China, attacking Wu Pei-fu, loiur the Bri American favorite, in his headquarters at Wuchang. Thus China stages another of its kaleidoscopic upsets. At the moment when Chang Tso-lin, Japan's friend, has succeeded in persuading Moscow to recall its too effective ambassa- dor, Karakhan, and immediately after the northern Na- tionalist army had retreated from its stronghold in the Nankow Pass, the tide turns in the middle west of China. The "Reds," a year ago masters only of Canton (which, to be sure, has the population of Great Britain), now con- trol half of the continent-nation. With Wuchang, too, goes control of the great Hanyang arsenal. Success in China always brings new foes in its wake ; and most military shifts are as fleeting as a thunderstorm; sometimes, however, they express a popular feeling that outweighs money and munitions. Wu and Chang "lost face" because of their foreign support; Canton has gained because its armies fought for a nationalist idea rather than for a general's reputation. Significantly the British have landed marines in Canton just when Canton's armies are pressing Wu Pei-fu. IFFERENCES IN THE RANKS of the Russian Communist Party are no menace to the stability of the Bolshevik Government, but they reflect a significant stage in the development of the revolution. It would be over- simplication yet almost true to say that the Kamenev- Zinoviev-Trotzky Opposition wishes at all costs to indus- trialize the country quickly, whereas the Stalin Adminis- tration, although agreeing that a larger and stronger prole- tariat is the best safeguard of the revolution, argues that the peasant is already paying enough in the form of higher prices for manufactured goods, and cannot be forced to carry any more of the expense of the proletariat's tuition. The fact is that industry is advancing very rapidly and pro- duction is increasing. Last year alone 400,000 new workers were absorbed by industry. But even so this progress has not kept, pace with the prosperity of the villages. The pur- chasing power of the mujik is probably twice as high this year as last. Harvests have been good and the coming crop may be the best in years. Bread prices in Russia, however, are higher than those of the world market, and the govern- ment, which is the sole exporter, therefore cannot afford to buy up the village's surplus. The peasant, furthermore, wants goods in exchange for his grain, but the city cannot supply him with as large a volume of factory products as he could buy. To import the goods deficit would interfere with home industrialization, and might, if grain exports were limited because of price variations, cause inflation. THE STALIN MAJORITY is attempting to cut the Gor- dian knot by slashing city prices and introducing a rigid regime of economy in the state and industrial appa- ratus. Such measures are calculated to yield cheaper goods to the village and thus to placate the peasant. But they threaten to rob the proletariat of some of the benefits which the revolution brought it. This is the vicious circle which may not be overcome for years. In a country where the proletariat is in power but where the peasantry is the basis of the entire economy there must be an incessant tug of war. The present Opposition would make small concessions to the peasantry. The Administration feels that the situa- tion demands larger concessions. During the next few years policy will probably depend on almost seasonal con- ditions, on the nature of the harvest, on the level of prices in Russia and abroad, on the credits Moscow can obtain, on the

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation 235 increase in individual working-class productivity. If, as is predicted, the autumn brings Trotzky his chance to acquire greater weight in the party counsels, this may lead to a slight shift of policy; but Stalin, Rykov, and Bucharin are too strongly entrenched to be removed, nor is it likely that economic developments will permit any radical departure from their policy. THE BRITISH COAL MINERS have been slowly beaten to the ground by superior economic force. In the approaching negotiations in London they face the probability of reduced wages and lengthened hours with a complete abandonment of their reorganization program. In fact, they have authorized their leaders to settle for anything so long as a national agreement is secured, and it is not certain that the coal-owners will concede this much. The Government cannot or will not compel the coal-owners to yield an inch. Meanwhile the miners' re- sistance is breaking and 30,000 have gone back to work in the Midlands. This is an ominous sign in any British strike. The Tory die-hards are gleeful, feeling that they are teaching "those Reds" a lesson. Fortunately the rest of the British people are learning the lesson too and Labor continues to gain in the bye-elections. THE PRINCE OF WALES is first-page copy— when he falls off a horse, flies to Paris, goes swimming, or dances with a pretty girl. But when the heir to the Brit- ish throne contributes to the relief of miners' wives and children and boldly state^ his opposition to a decision-by- starvation the fact does not seem to be big news. When Ellen Wilkinson, M.P., mentioned it in the course of a plea for help for the miners her American audiences simply disbelieved her. The item, concealed under a headline reading Continues Grip on British Coal in the New York Times of May 30, escaped even the editors of The Nation. The Prince sent the Somersetshire Coalfields Distress Com- mittee £10, with a note saying that His Royal Highness necessarily cannot take sides in any dispute, but we all owe a debt to the miners in the past, and everyone must feel sympathy for the wives and children in their hour of distress. Besides, it would not be a satisfactory end to any dispute that one side should be forced to give in on account of the suffering of their dependents. Will the Prince's American admirers, who followed him into the shops to buy socks and neckties just like his, copy him in this? ANOTHER EXPLOSION OF LABOR discontent in the textile industry started in the large Manville-Jenckes mill, north of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, when the loom- fixers of the United Textile Workers went on strike because the company employed certain non-union loom-fixers. The strike spread like a prairie fire. Twelve hundred workers at Woonsocket, employed by the same company, walked out in svmpathy. At Manville where the strike started a report was spread that strike-breakers were coming in armored cars. Strikers gathered in a mob, smashed a thousand win- dows, and tried to burn the mill. State police, deputy sheriffs, and militia arrived with two machine guns and poison gas; they fought a pitched battle with the strikers and their sympathizers in which five persons were wounded. The strike was settled by a compromise through the inter- vention of Governor Pothier. The loom-fixer most objected to was given other employment in the mill. The methods of these Rhode Island strikers were deplorable but their strike had one remarkable feature. It was entirely a strike for the union; no wage question was involved. Such loyalty to the United Textile Workers is a hopeful sign in an industry which needs organization more than any othi RICKSHAS ARE GOING OUT in Japan— the motor is coming in. Ten years ago in Japan 118,904 of these two-wheeled, man-power gigs were licensed; today fewer than 85,000. In Osaka, the greatest industrial city, the number has been almost cut in half. Horse-drawn carts just hold their own; but the motor vehicle is coming with a rush. Ten years ago there were 24 motor trucks in all Japan, today there are more than 6,000; the number of pleasure cars has leaped from 681 to 15,000. Inter-city buses have already appeared on Japanese roads. Thus the Orient sweeps into the mechanical age. It was only fifty years ago that the first ricksha appeared, its jog-trot speed destined to drive out the slow walk of the sedan chairs, kago, and norimona; now a running man is already too slow. THE GIGANTIC NOVEL in at least two volumes with which Mr. Wells has been threatening England ap- pears, upon the publication of its first part, to have made a sensation among London readers. This is not merely, we hear, because "The World of William Clissold" mentions a number of living persons by name — Bernard Shaw, Conan Doyle, Dean Inge, Sydney Webb, and Lord Balfour — but because Mr. Wells has packed into the book his whole phi- losophy as it now stands. How it will stand months hence another novel may be required to show. At any rate here is the spectacle of one of the most restless of modern minds pouring itself into one more huge mold. It is a sign, per- haps, of the times that no mold lasts very long; it certainly is a sign of Mr. Wells that he must redefine almost every year his concept of revolution. He has lost, it seems, a great deal of his faith in the multitude; his emphasis now is upon the few who are capable of bringing about a revolu- tion rather than upon the many who will simply stand along- side and perhaps join in the loud crying. His asperity has grown; his capacity for hatred has come to flower. And still he wants his revolution. The definition of it which we shall find in the novel when it comes to America should be interesting. EMILY HOBHOUSE is dead. Her relation to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 was that of Florence Nightingale to the Crimean War. South Africa will never forget her work in the concentration camps, where Boer women and children, driven thither after their homes had been burned and their provisions looted, died like flies. In Brandfort the monthly death-rate for children multi- plied by twelve reached the ghastly figure of 1,918 per 1,000, and in Bloemfontein the monthly death-rate for women similarly multiplied produced an annual figure of 1,554 per 1,000. Miss Hobhouse did what she could to remedy conditions, faced the wrath of a war-drunken England, and dared to publish the facts. There are farms in the Transvaal, in the northern Cape Colony, and in the Orange Free State where the mention of her name is still accompanied by a reverent raising of the hat.

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236 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 Germany Enters the League EIGHT years after the Armistice Germany has at last gone through the formal ceremony of readoption into the family of nations. She has been admitted to permanent membership in the Council of the League of Nations, along with Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. By that act she. who was forced by browbeating ultimatums to sign the false Peace of Versailles and the subsequent series of im- possible agreements, is recognized as an equal by the Great Powers of the world. Europe and the League grow in moral stature as a result. Diplomacy had to turn somersaults and diplomats to pen miracles of compromise clauses in order to achieve this result, and the details of the process of admission were still unsettled when this issue of The Nation went to press. Apparently the total membership of the Council is to be increased from eleven to fourteen. Five seats will be per- manently assigned to the "Great Powers"; the other nine members will be elected in batches of three, for three-year terms; three — and only three — of the nine may, by a two- thirds vote of the Assembly, be declared eligible for re- election. The scheme was to provide reeligibility as a sop f'<r Brazil, Spain, and Poland, the three hold-up nations which in March dissolved the pleasant haze of the "Locarno spirit" by demanding permanent seats or nothing. Brazil, however, sulkily retired from the League after the March fiasco, and Spain in early September withdrew he ■ delegates from Geneva following the failure of her spectacular at- tempt to blackmail France and England into giving her a free hand in Tangier in return for good behavior in the League. I What effect Spain's even more recent dabbling in military revolution will have on her international for- tunes remains to be seen.) These two may, as a result of their diplomatic pettishness, lose even their semi-perma- nent seats. Austen Chamberlain, British Foreign Minister, and Aristide Briand. French Foreign Minister, although largely responsible for the failures of March, deserve high praise — along with Lord Robert Cecil, who "found the formula" — for standing firm through the midsummer and rescuing the tossing craft of the League. Had Germany not been ad- mitted on fair terms in this recent attempt the League might as well have dissolved. These two men, representing the greatest Powers of the old world, had it. in their hands to crush the League or keep it. In the end, they kept it. They risked the secession of three nations, two of them closely allied to their own countries, but they kept the League. Yet in so doing, they revealed again the fragile nature of this over-praised and over-feared world-stale. The fateful decisions were not made in the council-halls of Geneva, but in the tete-a-tetes of the foreign ministers of France and England. The revelation is significant; it should not be forgotten. There were hints, before the League sessions, of a Mediterranean block, which was to threaten Franco-British hegemony. But Mussolini, while tie can bluster safely at home, lacks allies abroad, and his imperial ambitions have no lure for Spain. The much-heralded Italian-Spanish treaty was forgotten the moment Spain suggested that Tan- gier, where Italy has a shadowy claim, be made exclusively Spanish. Will Germany, as a permanent member of the League Council, provide the balance-wheel which Europe needs and offset Franco-British hegemony? That, too, remains to be seen, and one of the most interesting tests will come in the work of the Mandates Commission. In European affairs the League has functioned with a measure of success. It abdicated in Vilna, twirled its thumbs in the Sarre, and stultified itself at Corfu, but in a dozen minor disputes it has provided a machinery of reconciliation, and it has been a serviceable clearing-house of miscellaneous information. Its conception, however, was more grandiose. It was to be the carrier of the world's conscience. It was to provide machinery by which the back- ward people of the earth — in particular, the inhabitants of the former German and Turkish colonies— could be led gently into the sweetness and light of modern civilization. Now, there were a few small nations which took that ideal seriously. And the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League has, in fact, provided a sounding-board for colonial protestants — patriots, we called them in 1776 — which did not previously exist. But the rules of the game made the sounding-board feeble. Protests could be received from anybody, but they must be transmitted to the mandataries, the objects of the protest, for comment before report was made; the protestants could not be heard in person; and as a result, the protest was always smothered. In the midst of the hullabaloo* about Spain and Poland and Brazil and Germany the Permanent Mandates Commis- sion came forward with a modest request. It did not get much space in the papers, but, in view of the fact that the French, as agents of the League's good-will, have been massacring Syrian men, women, and children for months, it deserved it. The Permanent Mandates Commission asked that it be permitted to hear witnesses in person. Austen Chamberlain frowned at it through his monocle, and said "No." Aristide Briand smiled and said "No." Bel- gium and South Africa, which also administer former Ger- man colonies as mandataries, also said "No." Japan dis- creetly did not speak. But therein was revealed the essen- tial, fundamental canker in the League's soul. It was born as an ideal perverted to serve Versailles imperialism and it has never recovered from that stigma. The little nations of Europe have valiantly striven to convert it toward the ideal, the admission of Germany marks an appreciable step in that direction; but the canker remains. What the League does about its Mandates Commission, then, will indicate the direction of its evolution. Will it turn backward and make of itself a comfortable machine by which the Great Powers of Western Europe regulate Europe and their imperial world? Or will the pressure of the war- time neutrals, which have been the real heroes of every session of the League, make of this mandate system a real improvement over the ancient brutalities of colonial administration? In two other respects the League marks its own pro- vincialism. It is an organ of the Western World, and the representation accorded Asia is trifling. China, which in- cludes a quarter of the human race, was not accorded the courtesy, in the scramble for seats, that was granted Poland. And, most important of all, the League still, and of its own will, excludes Soviet Russia.

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation ^:!7 Dunning China CHINA has virtually no government at all, and has difficulty in financing what little government she has. The near-Government of Peking, casting about for possi- ble sources of revenue, recently noted that the so-called Ninth Year Domestic Loan would be extinguished in 1927, and that consequently the interest hitherto paid on it each year out of the customs receipts would be available as security for a new loan. Accordingly arrangements \ made to float such a new loan with Chinese bankers, and there were great rejoicings in the bosoms of the teachers and other civil servants who have long gone without salaries. Enter Uncle Sam! On August 25 the United States Minister, Mr. MacMurray, acting as a sort of errand-boy for the international bankers of the entire world (the British and French and other governments let him take the odium by delivering his note first, then followed with similar missives), informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that he had learned of the loan proposals, adding that in these circumstances the Legation finds it necessary to remind the Chinese authorities once again of the unfulfilled liabilities in respect of the arrears of service of the Chinese govern- mental obligations due to American citizens and companies. The list is long and should be well known. It includes the Hukuang Railway loan; also loans made by the Continen- tal Trust and Savings Bank, the Pacific Development Corporation, the Riggs National Bank, and Munsey Trust Company. Other accounts which are entirely in arrears are also due to the following American creditors: American Inter- national Corporation; American Locomotive Company; American Metals Company; American Trading Company; Anderson, Mayer and Co., Ltd.; Ault and Wiborg China Co.; Baldwin Locomotive Works; China- America Trading Co.; China Electric Co.; Fearon, Daniel and Co.; Fowler and Co.; W. W. Fraser and Co.; General American Car Co.; Robert Dollar Co.; United States Steel Products Co.; Wilkinson and Co. After stating that compensation is also due many other American firms for looting outrages committed by military and bandits, Mr. MacMurray continued: The Legation would also remind the Chinese authori- ties that under the terms of the agreements for many of the American obligations the Chinese Government en- gaged, in the event of a pledge becoming ineffective, to provide from other sources the sums necessary for pay- ment of principal and interest. The Legation must there- fore point out to the Chinese authorities that these debts to American citizens and organizations are thus entitled to an automatic priority over debts subsequently contracted respecting the use of any customs surplus funds which may become available as a result of the retirement of loans hitherto secured on customs revenues. What does this verbiage mean? It means that the United States is informing the faltering Chinese Govern- ment that as fast as it discovers any possible new sources of revenue with which to support its feeble existence the American Government, associated with the governments of the other creditor nations, will insist that it turn over those resources to pay the debts owed to the firm of J. P. Morgan and Co., holders of Hukuang bonds, the American International Corporation, and the rest of the long list. It amounts to saying to China: Let your teachers starve, close your schools, abandon your attempts at flood control; let your ancient palaces and temples rot for lack of euro; close your law courts and abandon your prisons; give up your embassies and ministries in foreign countries all the revenue which i be squeezed out of your country is due to us, and you must pay us first.before you indulge in thee luxuries. You have signed the bonds, and we demand the letter of the law. The Chinese are past masters of diplomatic evasion, and they will not reply defiantly, but it is hardly possible that they will accept such a humiliating doctrine. The loans may all have been valid loans, made in good faith, but in this chaotic period of gestation in which a new China is being born many foreign loans will have to go, for a time at least, unpaid. No Chinese Government can accept the Powers' demands. Either the Powers, America leading, have made fools of themselves once again by de- manding what they know they will not get, or they must enforce their demands with their gunboats. Since the cus- toms are collected under foreign supervision, in the coast ports, it is still possible for the foreign Powers to main- tain control of these essential revenues. But for how long? Can anyone, recalling that Canton has boycotted British goods now for more than a year, recalling the Boxer out- break of violent anti-foreignism in 1900 and the sudden outburst of nationalist passion in the summer of 1925, think that the Powers can in the long run succeed in such a policy? Cleaning House Among the Miners FRANK FARRINGTON, for twelve years president of the Illinois district of the United Mine Workers, has gone over to the employers. Exposed by President John L. Lewis of the union, he was suspended from office for sign- ing a contract to become "labor counsel" for Illinois's largest coal company at a salary of $25,000 a year. When the ex- posure came Farrington was in Europe, sent by the Ameri- can Federation of Labor to unveil a memorial room to Samuel Gompers at Geneva and to act as delegate at the British Trades Union Congress. Thus passes from the labor world a picturesque and all-too-typical figure. Frank Farrington started life in an Illinois coal mine at the age of nine and never went to school. He was a bold fighter, a shrewd political manipulator, a powerful orator — and he was for sale. Purity in labor leadership would be surprising in the State of Herrin and Frank Smith; Farrington played the Illinois game in the Illinois manner. He rewarded his friends and crushed his enemies, if not by fair means then by foul. His lieutenants were notoriously crooked. Elec- tions were bought and sold, fake ballots were manufactured, expense accounts became a scandal. The left wing of the union under Communist influence was not spotless and cer- tainly not always wise, but its case against the union ma- chine was excellent. The fight between the union factions culminated in the case of the Zeigler miners. Zeigler is a little mining town in the south of Illinois ten miles from Herrin, an imperfect blending of Klansmen, Lithuanians, Poles, bootleggers, gun-toters, and representa- tives of the absentee mine-owners. It is the center of some of the world's largest mines. Behind the clouded windows of half-a-hundred empty stores booze is sold as brazenly as

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238 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 in New Jersey — and girls are upstairs. Elections are mar- vels of financial mathematics; everything is allowable so long as the "squeeze" of 25 per cent is forthcoming. The story of the organization of the miners in this district has been an epic of machine guns. Zeigler has been a center of anti-Farrington strength. Headed by Henry Corbishley, the left wing captured the union local, elected Corbishley local president, and would have elected him sub-district president in an honest elec- tion. The quarrel within the union came to a head when a Farrington official, D. B. Cobb, appeared at a Zeigler meeting and announced the removal of the local officers for calling a "wild-cat strike." Technically Cobb was right, but in the eyes of the Zeigler miners he was a usurper kept in power by the Farrington machine. The meeting was adjourned in an uproar and a free-for-all fight resulted in the death of one left-wing miner and the beating up of Cobb. The whole strength of the Farrington machine was immediately thrown behind the prosecution of the rebels. No one was indicted for killing the left-wing miner, but twenty miners, mostly of foreign birth, were rounded up and accused of pummeling Cobb. Eight of them were con- victed by an all-American farmer jury, and seven, including Corbishley, are now under sentence of from one to fourteen years in the Illinois penitentiary for assault with intent to murder. Their appeal comes before the Illinois Supremo Court in November — if they can raise the necessary funds. While some of these left-wing miners are probably guilty of assault, the case against their leaders has all the earmarks o[ a frame-up. Behind the Farrington scandal and the Zeigler prosecu- tion are certain ugly questions that miners in all parts of the country are asking. How did John L. Lewis get pos- session of the contract between Farrington and the Peabody Coal Company which resulted in the ousting of Farrington? Did the mine-owners buy up Farrington and then expose him in order to get rid of him? If so, why? Can it be that they prefer Lewis to Farrington in the coming fight in the coal fields? Certainly Farrington is not worth $25,000 to any coal company as a "labor counsel." And a comparison of the administrative record of Farrington and Lewis is in favor of Farrington. Farrington at least kept his district solidly unionized and he was effective in winning wage in- creases for the miners. The Illinois Miner under the di- rection of Oscar Ameringer has been an exceptionally good labor weekly, but it is now in danger of destruction by Lewis because it has occasionally criticized him. Lewis's record as international president has been marked by badly conducted strikes, the complete destruction of the union in West Virginia and Kentucky, and indifference to the nationalization program. The national membership has fallen below 300,000, and many of the districts are shadow organizations. It is not surprising that some of the mine- owners want Lewis reelected and want his candidate Sneed to replace Farrington. The approaching crisis of April, 1927, when the Jack- sonville agreement, which established the present union scale in the union soft-coal field , expires, will demand a cleaner and finer leadership than the present administration of the United Mine Workers has shown. There is need of plain speaking by all those who honor the mine workers and believe in their union. The non-union coal fields are ex- panding; the operators will welcome a strike; trumpet- tongued platitudes will not save the situation. The only hope seems to lie in the fight of John Brophy, president of District No. 2 of the union, for Lewis's position. His pro- gressive platform and his personal integrity are worthy of the brave men who made the miners' union great. He is determined to clean house in the union. Who's What? NE hardly looks for either wit or style in "Who's Who." Even though the notices are generally written by the subject himself they are usually as impersonal as a tombstone. Mr. A. A. Milne is no less grave than Dean Inge himself. Max Beerbohm as devoid of wit as a London Lord Mayor. Moreover the most famous are not necessarily the most communicative. Your American, accustomed to meas- ure fame by inches of free publicity, is rather inclined to detail his distinctions at full length, so that Nicholas Mur- ray Butler, for example, informs an eager world just when and where he received each of the twenty-four honorary degrees whose symbols decorate his name and gives accurate information besides concerning the eight decorations he is entitled to wear and the fifteen societies of which he is a member. Your Britisher, on the other hand, led by an instinct of reserve which inclines him to regard all biog- raphy as essentially indecent, is likely to stop with the titles of his works and a few dates. In general, "Who's Who" is not exciting reading. There are signs, however, that the younger generation is going to change all that. Perhaps Shaw started it when he inserted "Recreations: anything but sport," and cer- tainly he was followed by Ezra Pound who put "the public taste" in the same place. It remained, however, for the exuberant young Sitwells to go further in this as in vari- ous other directions than anyone else. Apparently they inherited the tendency from their father, Sir George, who dare- to boast in a socialistic age that he "owns about 6,000 acres" and records "captured a spirit at the headquarters of the Spiritualists, London. 1880." Edith and Sache- verell are still more chatty. Under "Education" the former records "in early youth took an intense dislike to sim- plicity, morris dancing, a sense of humor, and every form of sport except reviewer-baiting; and has continued these distastes ever since." The latter, after mentioning that he attended both Eton and Oxford, adds with unobtrusive bit- terness "mainly self-educated" and then continues : Has traveled extensively in search of civilization; vis- ited Fiume to see D'Annunzio, Dec, 1920; in early life avoided games and sought work; now tends more and more to avoid work and seek recreation; has intense interest in the arts. Recreations: catching that rara avis the Lon- don motor-omnibus, listening-in, and Mr. J. C. Squire. Telegraphic Address: Sitwellismus, London. Incidentally, neither gives the date of his birth, although Sacheverell permits himself to confide coyly that he was born "towards 1900." What grave compilers think of such flippancy we are not prepared to say — we are not even sure they know a joke when they see it — but we are inclined to suspect that a hatred for Mr. Squire is more significant than President Butler's possession of a "Grand Cross, Order of St. Sava, 1st Class (Serbia)." Why should "Who's Who" not become lebrities Self Revealed"?

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Sept. 1" Tlir Nation 239 ^S^buz.O liiiSHu. (^-tyg-e>-- Modern Traffic

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240 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 'I Believe in Free Speech, But- j ? By HARBOR ALLEN IN the name of American traditions no State outside of California is today doing- more to suppress American traditions than is Massachusetts. Ex-Mayor Curley of Boston began the pastime of suppression by closing Ku Klux Klan halls on the pretext that fire, health, or building- regulations had not been complied with. Brockton took the next step by arresting Anthony Bimba, a Lithuanian ei from Brooklyn, on charges of sedition and blasphemy. The latter charge, based on a Puritan law 229 years old, sent reporters scurrying to Brockton for feature stories and -iut Anthony Bimba on the front page of metropolitan dailies. On the eve of Bimba's trial in February, a meeting of protest was planned in Boston. The Mayor ordered that no licensed hall in the city be permitted to open its doors to a meeting in sympathy with. Bimba. Hall owners who defied his edict were threatened with revocation of licenses. A few days later Scott Nearing was forbidden to speak on the recognition of Russia because City Hall officials feared "the gathering mignt develop into a meeting of Bimba sympathizers." A group of prominent citizens, annoyed by the con- tinuance under Mayor Nichols of a policy instituted by Mayor Curley. protested in a vigorous letter against inter- ference with constitutional rights: Within the past few years a practice has grown up among city officials of preventing proposed public mornings in Boston, which, because of their supposed purpose or their sponsors, have not met with official approval. . . . We had assumed that when you became mayor this arbitrary interference with free speech and free assemblage would cease. We have therefore been surprised and disturbed that, during your recent absence hi New York City, other cases of interference with public meetings have occurred. None of us who present this matter to you are doing so because of any special interest in common with those who have been injured by action of the city. We are, how- ever, greatly interested in the maintenance of our < tutional rights of free speech and we are deeply concerned over the arbitrary actions of city officials. ... To prevent meetings by such methods as threatening hall owners or by deliberately hunting for technical violations of the building code, is neither fair nor straightforward and does great injury to the reputation of the city. We appeal to you as mayor of Boston to place yourself on record as opposed to any further interference by city officials with the right of free speech and free assemblage. The signers wailed ;; month in vain for a letter from the Mayor. One of them illy called at the City Hall and was told that the Mayor would "shortly reply." Mean- while, grown impatient, the American Civil Liberties Union and a committee of citizens rented an auditorium and planned, in defiance of the officials, to hold a free-speech test meeting on May 17, inviting Bimba as one of the speakers. A Constitutional Rights Committee was appointed and applied to the Old South Association for the use of the historic church as the scene of another protest. In the midst of this deliberation came the Mayor's long belated reply. And what did the Mayor say? "I believe in free speech, but — " The Mayor hardly considered the Old South Meet- ing Hall a nice place in which to "start a row." In short, he declared that he would continue the policy of ex-Mayor Curley. Despite this dictum, however, the Old South Meeting House Association decided to hold a free-speech meeting of its own. Dean Roscoe Pound of the Harvard Law School, Dr. Samuel M. Crothers, and others spoke, and all of them gave the Mayor his due. "Bulldozer," "a worse tyrant than George III," "George III never dared tell people where they could meet and what they could say," "administrative law- lessness"; these were phrases hurled at the Mayor and his actions. Though some of the dust in Boston has been laid by this refreshing shower, the question of free speech is not yet solved. Mayor Nichols still holds the City Hall for- tresses and the threat of revoked licenses still hovers over the heads of unwary hall-owners. Three young Portuguese in Fall River have meanwhile become the center of another free-speech controversy. Diamintino Texeira, Antonio Perreira, and Antonio da Costa are philosophical anarchists. In a Portuguese periodical, circulated among the Portuguese workers of Fall River, they have been attacking the corruption of the church and the state. Arrested on the complaint of more orthodox compatriots of the community, they were charged first with blasphemy and sedition, later with violating the Volstead Act. Both charges failed to hold water, and the three men were turned over to immigration officials. They are now, according to Fall River papers, awaiting deportation "for publishing a radical magazine." To protest this bit of high-handed procedure, the Inter- national Labor Defense sent up its Boston representative to arrange a defense meeting. When, together with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana of Cambridge, a grandson of the poet, he arrived at the hall, he found the lights out, the doors barred, and several burly policemen on guard. "See the chief," advised the guardians of the law. "He'll give you the dope." A spirited argument between Chief of Police Martin Feeney and Professor Dana followed. No sir, the chief would allow no such meeting. He knew these radicals. They would criticize the authorities. He would have a tough job "clearing on' the hall" — as he had had on previ- ous occasions. Besides "they don't allow meetings like that in other States" — witness New Jersey. There was no meet- ing that night. The American Civil Liberties Union has now joined hands with the International Labor Defense in arranging a test meeting in Fall River. Hard on the heels of this announcement comes an amazing new development. "Police ban meetings in Fall River?" Chief Feeney has declared "No such thing!" The hall, he explains, was locked when the speakers arrived "because the rental had been revoked." Having "no official business with the American Civil Lib- erties Union," he recuses to comment upon the telegrams of protest sent to him by the union. At Lawrence petitions from the United Front Committee of Textile Workers for permits to hold open-air meetings were refused by City Marshal O'Brien and Director of Safetv Carr. No reason was given. The United Front

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation 241 Committee felt that it had been unjustly I since "numerous panhandlers, fakers, and Indian p medicine vendors" had been seen "using the streets regu- larly without molestation." It was charged that the meet- ings were prohibited by the police because Lawrence mill owners are opposed to the spread of left-wing unionism among the workers. Again the American Civil Liberties Union sent Pro- fessor Dana to aid in the staging of a test meeting. The first speaker, Fred Beal. secretary of the United Front Com- mittee, was arrested as he stepped from the platform. Pro- fessor Dana, who read the Declaration of Independence and commented on free speech, was detained by police, and alter- \ threatened with arrest and ordered to leave town. want to be arr ed. "I don*: want to be arrested, hut 1 insist that the same treatment :orded all the speakers," he replied. Eventually he was •d on the promise that he would appear in court should he be summoned. Mr. Beal was lined $20 for "dis- turbing the peace and violating a city ordinance." "I have always thought," said District Judge Jeremiah .1. Mahoney, as he imposed sentence, "that we had a reasonable amount of liberty in this country. I find that we have much more here than they have abroad." .Mr. BeaPs case has been appealed. "A reasonable amount of liberty." In other words, the new American tradition: "I believe in free speech, but — " Have faith in Massachusetts! Baron Banana in Puerto Barrios By CARLFTON BEALS ALL night long the little two-masted schooner of Don Francisco Beltran ran before the stiff breeze and scat- tering rain from Puerto Cortez in Honduras to Puerto Barrios in Guatemala — banana ports of the terrifically hot northern coast of Central America. Late the previous afternoon I had scrambled across the female- and parrot- littered deck of a tramp Mexican steamer loaded with mules, and dropped down upon the low-lying deck of Don Francisco's schooner — La Esperanza. At the orders of the willowy blond English captain — "from the Islands" - the "standing Mutt and Flying Jeff" were hoisted, and we tacked away from the low dirty shore of Puerto Cortez, feif of the Standard Fruit Company of New Orleans. We stood near the steering-wheel getting acquainted, three of us, ducking the sweep of the main-sail boom: I, Don Fran- cisco (or, as he soon became, Don Pancho), and Dona Isabela, my fellow traveler, a lean, tawny, middle-aged Guatemalan woman addicted to corn-husk cigarettes and gold-circle earrings. The heat-dancing shore, shacks, warehouses, silvered sands fell away into haze; the waves spanked against the prow; a shark's fin sliced through the water. Night fell swift and cool; the "nigger" was lit in the wheel-box; phosphorescence quivered through the black waters ; and I lay down on a piece of sail-cloth to stare up at the dagger-like tropic stars until the rain drove me down into the stuffy cabin where sprawled four nondescript barefoot sailors, Don Pancho, and Dona Isabela. I finally went to sleep, water from the deck dripping near my left ear. and an occasional gigantic cockroach scuttling over my neck. Rose and mauve dawn on the beautiful Amatique Gulf. And then the sun, snarling like a yellow dragon over the Fspiritn Santo Mountains. While we rode at anchor near the United Fruit Company pier, waiting for the port offi- cials to let us go ashore, Don Pancho bewailed the evil? of the lands where fate had cast him. Above all he damned the people, the base mixing of Indian, Negro, and Spanish blood ruining Honduras, the same thing now coming to pass in the banana country of Guatemala, the sad day com- ing when Central America would be entirely Hispanic- African. He ended his tirade with the typical Spanish vainglorious boasting of the prowess of his own pure race, from the days when the intrepid Pedro Alvarado had brought culture at the point of the sword to the highlands of Guatemala, down to the present time when he himself drove his schooner in the teeth of tropic typhoons with petty cargoes of maize and sisal and fruit all the way from Colon to the Bahamas. His courage and dignity and self- discipline never for a single moment would he slacken to the easy-going standards of the half-breed lands he despised yet exploited. Puerto Barrios and its inhabitants accounted for his sentiments of superiority. Here are all the unmasked crudities of the feverish race of modern times to wrench forth raw materials. In Puerto Barrios Baron Banana rules supreme; and he rules rough-shod with little regard for the beauty or happiness of his people. Although to the initiated Baron Banana goes by the aristocratic cog- nomen of Musa sapientum, and President Orellana calls him Guatemala's Golden Prince, he is the most plebeian of the whole family of platanos. The Spanish, with satiric Hair, have given him the phallic label "Fig of Adam." But abroad, in the United States, Baron Banana struts in fine attire. Fruit salads at banquets, banana splits in small- town confectioners' shops, banana brandy for jaded Village flappers, dances to the tune of "Yes, we have no bananas," proclaim the importance that this single tropic fruit has acquired in the diet and imagination of the United States. Bananas, and more bananas! The United Fruit Company and its lesser competitors can hardly keep pace. Their engineers go slashing through the jungles; their railroads reach out iron fingers; their smallpox-yellow clapboard buildings, hotels, bunkhouses, stores, offices, hospitals, ware- houses spring up like monstrous fungi beside a hundred streams and marshes, in the heart of mangrove forests, and on a dozen lowering shores. The big green stems of fruit are cut from the trees, loaded on to mattresses in the op , and run down to a dozen ports, banana fronds dragging and rustlin.fr over the sleepers of the track. Down to Puerto Barrios, which on the older maps is no* even mentioned. Puerto Barrios, boom banana port, epitomizes the haste and cruelty and bleeding rawness of the process. Back in the jungles the drive and jangle of the banana industry shrink in the face of vegetation so vast. The constant

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242 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 nerve-racking struggle to push, back the monstrous tangled trees, to clear out the jungles with their reeking perfumes, poisonous insects, dangerous beasts, terrible fevers — this struggle is tragic yet puny in its relative inadequacy. But in Puerto Barrios the conglomerate ugliness of raw-product exploitation is spewed forth into the torrid sunlight. Here the smallpox-yellow buildings are not overshadowed by the jungle. They squat brazenly on the golden sands by the blue, brooding ocean. We felt on that first morning, when we left La Es- peranza and the immigration, customs, and police officials behind us, and straggled through the blazing heat to find refuge on the wide piazzas of Captain Grace's Hotel, that the Government of Guatemala had suddenly ceased to exist. Baron Banana was in control, ordering his reefers in the train-yards, overseeing the typewriters clicking in the smallpox-yellow buildings, accepting company fichas in the stores. The only open evidence of President Orellana's interest in Baron Banana's exportation of "yellow gold" was the dilapidated blue barracks in the rear of the town :e at intervals came the snarl of bugles and drums whose rhythm and melody repeatedly broke down into Indian surliness. Yes, Puerto Barrios is an achievement in ugliness in a natural setting of beauty. Puerto Barrios is the only place I know where people put water-closets in their front yards. In the cool of the day I often wandered out through the hodgepodge town, built on a pestiferous marsh reeking with spilled petroleum, out along the twisted paths where are massed in utter promiscuity the blue and yellow shacks of Negroes and Indians and Chinese. Boards and gunny- sacking, banana and palm leaves, river cane, sheet-iron, and rags have gone into the making. Picking my way through the slime and excrement and swarms of naked, mud-smeared children — white, yellow, black; kinky-haired, straight-haired, curly-haired ; round-eyed, pig-eyed, slant- out on the walk fronting the foot-high break- r, and there saw the curve of the shore and the line of tall taut coccamit palms broken by an interminable row of spider-leg piers stretching out to cubbyhole closets set about four feet above high tide. This is Puerto Barrios' highest word in aesthetics! Here human life swarms without apparent meaning. Yet not without song, not without color. A group thump- ing the marimba. A half-dressed couple behind a slide window dancing the rumba. A Gargantuan Negro pair, enormously paunched; he in white spats, patent leather, waistcoat, and derby hat; she in white satin and carrying a pink sunshade. In a corner under a mango tree, a Belit- zian weaving a fish trap out of river cane- — "don't be so good this here, sah, as bamboo, but c'n catch any fish mahn a pound. Some weeks ah makes goin' on fifteen quid, yas sah." At a turn a Chinese, shirt-tail out, staring forlornly at the sea beyond the toilet. And here, crossing the foot- bridge of a little creek, shaded by bread-fruit trees — which help make life not too onerous — the town broke down into Indian xacales with thatched roofs. In this rag-tail port Baron Banana has dumped the lost sons of five continents, made them his groveling subjects — that banana splits may be. Here are great Negroes from Jamaica, never looking for a job, but a "position" or "emplawment" ; mysterious Orientals smoking long pipes; alert Japanese; white girls, ex-prostitutes or dopes, now content to marry the trash of the world; broken beachcombers and vagabonds; the taci- turn Indians from the highlands; sailors of every breed, within and without the law. Marimbas quiver through the hot night air; piano-players rattle jazz in the cantinas and gambling joints; a hundred cast-offs carouse with black women, who laugh coarsely, flaunting ample breasts and fat hips. From Puerto Barrios I rode second class up to Quiri- gua, jammed in with sweating humanity — vast families sprawling over the backless wooden benches. Bananas travel on fiber mattresses; men and women travel on boards or lie like pigs on the filthy floor and swelter at a dozen stations while the train loads bananas. Quirigua is a shop center for the banana company. More smallpox-yellow houses above long sweeping green lawns. A concrete hospital managed by a malaria specialist. Not a room was vacant in the company hotel, run by a grumpy Catholic priest. At the hospital, too, I was told "Full up, come back at ten and if no one is dragged in with a broken head before then I'll chance putting you up in Number 4, our emergency room." It was suggested I try the next village, Los Amates. So I toiled through the sun for two and a half miles along the tracks running through the jungles and the plantations. Los Amates is a straggling thatched-roof Indian pueblo with more smallpox- yellow on the company store. But no place to sleep except in the two "houses," the most pretentious clapboard edifices in the town (also painted smallpox yellow), where the em- ployees of the company on Saturday nights bestow money and maudlin caresses on mulatto and Indian girls — more toll of the tropics and the frontier. I was forced to sleep that night in a chair on the porch of the company hotel. Accommodations can't keep pace with company expansion. The next morning I caught the first banana train out past the Quirigua ruins — one of the most notable remnants of Maya-Quiche culture along with the destroyed cities of Copwan and Palemke, Chitzen Itza, Uxmal, Mayapan, and a hundred others scattered from Yucatan and Campeche down through Chiapas and Guatemala to Honduras. Drop- ping from the reefer, I avoided the usual traveled path and cut straight through the banana fields, steaming with the odor of over-ripe fruit, to a half obliterated track through the jungle by the side of a tiny stream gurgling invisible beneath mammoth leaves. Lizards, insects, snakes started from under my feet. Macaws and parakeets screamed from the depths. Overhead was a solid lacing of branches and vines, enormous cedars, zapotes, cacaos, rub- ber-trees with fluted trunks, dragon trees. From the branches streamed long parasites of brilliant hues. In every cleft of branch and trunk crowded myriads of scarlet and yellow plants. From the super-moist vegetation came long wisps of steam, sucked forth by the terrific heat. Nauseating perfumes were wafted over me in waves. I hurried on to the small Lagoon of the Idols, the scene, per- haps, of ancient ablutions, rituals, and sacrifices, and reached a wide space reclaimed from the wilderness. Quirigua is not so obviously impressive as the ruins of Teotihuacan, Mitla, or Chitzen Itza, yet this open space between prominent shattered platforms with lofty carved monoliths standing in gigantesque solemnity retains the atmosphere of ancient grandeur. I found little difficulty in recreating pictures of the ancient pageants and cere- monies, the great processions of nobles and sacerdotes

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation 243 wearing robes woven of the emerald and red feathers of the quetzal, that glorious bird, now emblem of the Guate- malan people, that in the beginning, after the great flood, sprang forth as a symbol of power and beauty — "a flying water lily" — from the crest of a mammoth guayacan tree. The old stones of Quirigua tell of the ancient emotional and intellectual striving after god and the mysteries, the seeking for Nirvana. The faces depicted on the various columns and monoliths, though of diverse types, reveal strength, nobility, even brutal will. Here is one: flat, bold forehead; flat, broad nos . round, protruding square ears; massive, protruding lowf sunstroke. I managed to get to shade and in my need for air ripped off my shirt, heedless of the myriad insects. Not a leaf moved; the sun blazed and shimmered; I lay there unable even to lift my hand to fan myself with my sun-helmet. Supreme admiration welled in n {'c,r those young engineers of the United Fruit Com- pany who carry their surveying outfits under the beating sun and hack their way foot by foot through marsh and jungle defying venomous animals and dangerous diseases; an admiration for the genius that drove railroads through such a country of fever and heat. Likewise, a supreme admiration for those older carvers of stone who cleared this site beside the Motagua River and cast up these symbols of power and hope. In easy stages I again crossed the open field past the tall monoliths toward the banana railroad, stopping to rest once where some person better acclimated than myself had built a palm-leaf shelter on high ground away from the jungle and its reptiles. And so I left the capital of an ancient empire behind me. A gasoline motor hurled me back to the smallpox-yellow town of Quirigua where the newer Baron Banana lords it over a newer empire, riding his iron steed of modern progress, breaking the jungle with his iron fingers. Land of the Free By ARTHUR GLEASON [The following story by Arthur Gleason provides a commentary on the glimpses of his life by Helen Hayes Gleason, printed in issues of The Nation for August U, 18, and September 1. The Land of the Free has not been pre- viously published J WHEN Miriam McAllister flashed into Caronia I knew there would be trouble. That head of red hair and gift of bold speech were a plume and an ensign round which the industrial battle rocked. And that night in Caronia she stood over the smoky torches on the tail- piece of the wagon and spoke the words that condemned her. Fifteen thousand workers of Caronia were out on strike. Orators at a dozen corners were barking in the cous street voice which at a little distance sounds like the cry of a wild creature in the night. But the mightL. + crowd of all — five thousand persons at least, men said — was gath- ered round the cart where Miriam McAllister stood on hi^n over the torches and the shouting. She was bare- headed as always when she spoke to the people. Her deep far-carrying voice rolled out over the closely packed thou- sands in the city square. If she had been no speaker at all, the spectacle of her would have drawn a crowd to any cart-box in America. That sun-tanned face, brown as any Indian's; the sturdy body, sturdy and yet slim; the power- ful thrust of the right arm in gesture, the great red tie on her breast, symbol of her faith, and, crowning all, that sudden shocking red of the hair, bright in the wind-driven flame of the smelly kerosene torches — these things were a sign that alone would have arrested the attention of idle strangers. But Miriam McAllister was agitator and speaker, a figure known to the workers of the East. Staunch Scot, descendant of a long line of Covenanters, she had inher- ited with the pure iron-tinctured blood a logical mind, which demanded a creed of certitude in the drifting world of change. And having found her creed, as a true daughter of her line she was making it prevail. What had been stern Presbyterianism in her ancestors had become "labor" with her. The same immaculate unity held her mind which had been in the tidy strong minds of her forebears for over three centuries. Her statements might leave much of the landscape untouched, but what they aimed at they hit. Caronia is on American city of the latter-day sort. Thirty nationalities are crowded inside its "Hook" — Ukrain- ians, Poles, Slovaks, samples from all East Europe. The little gains they had made in wages had come to them because they had rebelled. One more fight, they thought, and perhaps they would cross the line from bitterness to plenty. So the streets swTayed with them. This was the third strike in three years. Both sides knew it was final. Special policemen and workers alike had been killed. Months before, the strike had burst into a flame of passion and flame of guns. Then it had waned away and died, but that first flare had slain nine men and crippled half a hundred. A few more months of unrest and the living fire came through again, and seven men were shot dead in the city streets, and fifty more carried bloody marks to their tenement homes. That fierceness, too, had passed for a little time. But now this third and greatest strike of all

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244 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 was at its height. And at the moment of crisis, Miriam McAllister had been called to stir the men to fresh hope and long endurance. It was strange to come to her from the muttering and whispering of the streets, the restless hurried people, the dark night over them. For that last evening in Caronia she was as I had always known her — alone and apart, for all the huddled crowd at her feet, and full of that stillness which long living with nature gives. That final scene of all was for me only the gathering together in sharper focus of a hundred groups and places where I had seen her, and she was always the same — always the free spirit whom it was good for us to know. Why must men trap a free thing? She was coming to the end of her talk, and I saw the plain-clothes men exchange a nod and begin to elbow themselves toward her platform. "The bulls are here," shouted a worker at my right. "Of course they are here," answered Miriam. "They always come to hear me speak. I want them to get this, and I want your masters at the works to get it. We demand an eight-hour day and a living wage. Is there one of them, sitting in their swivel chairs, would send his son to clean a still? Is there one of them would burn his life out in a temperature of 250 degrees? You men are white- haired at forty. You grub the coke out of a hell-hole, while your masters take the air in a motor-car. If what you now get is the best they will give you, the life of a slave and the death of a pauper, pull down the American flag from every pole in Caronia. Until this wrong is righted, you are men without a country, and yo; r flag is the rag of a class, not of free men." Simultaneously from every part of the throng big broad-shouldered men, the plain-clothes squad and the special deputies, shoved in to the platform. "Here, you, come with us," said their leader, touching Miriam on the shoulder. A murmuring spread like sudden wind over the crowd. The thousands, moved by one impulse, surged toward the little group in the torchlight. "Kill them," called one and another. The squad drew their revolvers and faced the crowd. Miriam stepped to the edge of the platform and raised her hand for silence. "Listen, men," she said, "I'll go with them tonight to the lock-up. I'll be out in the morning. They have noth- ing on me. Go home. You'll be killed if you fight it. The crowd is planted with their men. Go home." Her listeners murmured and shuffled. They stood watching and brooding. Then slowly they turned and went home. I waited and saw the group of detectives lead Miriam away to jail. That night the streets were noisy with drunken men, and they were not the workers of Caronia. A small army was in the city, men sworn in for special police service, and flush of money. They drank and shouted, and in the small of the night a shot rang out on a dark street and one of the drunken official rioters was wounded to death by a revolver bullet. II The sun was climbing the sky-line as I came home to New York, full of anxious thought for all that had hap- 1 and what must follow. It was useless to try to sleep. Instead, I drew the lounge to the western window where I could look across the river and see the light clouds of the Palisades answer the colors of the East. How often I had wondered at that false dawn in the West, with none of the mounting joy of the morning which it reflected. It was like the evening flush over the same rock hills which I had seen on the day I first met Miriam. My mind went back over the years, and every little thing was clear. Seven years ago; she was a woman in her young thirties, then. She lived in the upper stretches of the Bronx, where she had bought a small wooden house and two city lots in the earlier days when the Bronx was a mixture of market garden and grazing ground for goats. Shortly after a bitter experience as a girl in the factory a tiny competence was left her by a relative in the old country, and with this she had become a peasant pro- prietor. She tended her garden, raised chickens, and kept house for a group of working girls. As the years brought the northward push of the New York population, she could have realized a neat sum on her investment. But that would have robbed her of three values better than money. For the little home was in easy reach of the city crowds where she had her work each evening. The place itself gave her the out-door life she craved. And, best of all, it was near the open water. In half an hour she could cycle to Pelham Bay. On the green bank, over the shore, her canoe was locked to the stump of a tree in front of a tiny tent. That was where the real trip began, which she sometimes shared with me. We paddled north for a bit till we came to "a little and a lone green" island that lay off New Rochelle. No excur- sions came that way. It was our very own, unbuilt upon, well out in Long Island Sound. We looked across the miles of water to the North Shore of Long Island itself — a thin white line of sand banked with dim green forest growth. Through all the hours of a long summer day we sat in bathing suits and let the sun reach down to bless us. When the water called, we ran to the rocks on the farther edge of the island and dived off into the Sound which, lifted by tides from the Atlantic, is as salt as the sea itself. Miriam carried a rhythm in her motions. Runners and swimmers have it. She was a swimmer, with a full- reaching overarm stroke. Only years of swimming give that effortless ease, where the motion becomes as natural as walking, a thrusting forward and a recovery, in per- fect time with the breathing, which merely comes and goes as when the body lies asleep. What she communicated to me was not by talk, and in answer to her some inmost inhabitant of me seemed to say, "Why, of course. This is what I have been searching for." Coming through with the tide on gentle water is a companionship with more than friends, for there are no walls of division, and the creature is finally at home in his world. One yields his temperament, that torment of the modern, to the sunshine. For each his way of escape: by mountain-path and jungle trail and the sweet meadows. For me, the path of the waters lying lazy in the sun. And it was Miriam who taught me. Once as we stood on the rocks looking over to Long Island, Miriam said : "Some day I'm going to swim across. Will you come?" "I'm afraid it's too far for me," I replied. "It must be all cf six miles." "Thev tell me it's seven." she answered. "But that's

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation 245 only half the real distance. The tide would carry us another seven miles." "Too far for me," I said, "I'd never make it." "Perhaps I couldn't," she admitted, "but some day I'm going to try." That day had never come. Well, there was small chance of its coming this summer, with the affair in Caronia breaking so badly. So I mused as I sat at the window, thinking back over the years of companionship. I knew too well the issues in the Caronia strike to think that Miriam would come off lightly from challenging the concentrated power in that city. I had warned her against going, telling her the fight was outside of her State, the labor forces unorganized, defeat certain. And now the thing had fallen just as I had feared. I knew, too, that this was no street-corner excitement, a journey to police court, a five-dollar fine, and release. Twenty million dol- lars of American money were mobilized for a grim last fight against "the foreigners" and "the demagogues." And in that fight Miriam had become the lonely outpost leader whom they had overborne and meant to crush. I still saw her as she stood when they led her away- bareheaded and unafraid in the wind-driven flame of the torches. And then that picture faded in a brighter light, and I saw her as I have so often seen her — bareheaded in the sunshine, alone and happy, driving her canoe up the salt Sound and playing in the water that stretched from our little island to the great island yonder, seven miles away. Ill Events now moved so swiftly and with such hidden power of control that all we who fought for Miriam's liberty were dazed. The bail under which Miriam was detained was placed at an impossible figure, twenty-five thousand dollars. It revealed the atmosphere in which she would be tried. The indictments were rapidly shaped. She was charged with speaking treasonably against the flag and the government and with inciting men to wilful murder. The mysterious death of the drunken deputy was being staged as both the background and the inevitable result of her dangerous activities. Sixteen deaths had come, said her enemies, from the interference of agitators in a peaceful, prosperous working community, and now the seventeenth murder had been committed on the very night of a treasonable speech by a woman demagogue. The newspapers of three States thundered. Justice must be swiftly done and an end made of undesirable citizens and dangerous disturbers. It was expedient that someone should suffer. It was in that evil temper of the public mind that Miriam came to trial. I had known from the moment she uttered them the words that would condemn her. Did she or did she not say those words? It came down to that in the judge's mind, or at least in the official judicial department of his mind. There were a dozen state witnesses to testify that she had said those words. For that matter, her own people, the workers, five thou- sand of them, had heard her say them. It was in vain that her lawyer, the keen Oscar Levitt, perhaps the best brain in the labor movement, pointed out she had said that, but not just that. He urged that the tearing out and segregation of a single sentence would condemn every revolutionary from Kropotkin to Walt Whitman to penal servitude. "And a good job, too," muttered the public prosecutor. "Why, even the blameless reactionaries of the Union Club would qualify for Atlanta," Levitt went on, "if you chopped up their thought, in the rare moments when they think." Miriam had asked that she be permitted to make a statement. The prison pallor had somehow struck through even her deep brown color. Her face was weary and grave, and her eyes were those of a hunted and netted creature. "Men," she said, "don't send me to prison. I just can't go to prison. All I've ever done is to tell the people how to get free. That doesn't seem a very wicked thing, now that you hear me say it, does it? If once the people unite and act together, they can live like men, without fear or sin or sadness. "I have nothing against your flag. What I said was that no decent flag ought to float over a human wrong. Wash the blood-spots out of your flag before you wave it in our faces." The judge rapped loudly on his bench. "The prisoner is injuring her own case," he said. "I warn her." "These are the things I have said for a lifetime," Miriam went on. "Every night on the street-corners of New York, in the halls, wherever men would listen, I have preached this society of brothers. Why do you jail me now? And even if you kill me so, remember you never really touched me. It was only my body you broke among you. You'll never catch me. Suddenly I'll be back where I belong. If it's only the dust of me that is carried from your prison, that dust will be found by the rain and it will climb toward the sun. But I think something else of me, too, will go down the wind." The judge gave his charge. Only one verdict was possible from his interpretation of the law. The jury was led out and locked up. We sat silent, we her friends, in the buzzing courtroom. An air of victory was on the state's counsel. The jury returned in record time. Their verdict was guilty. The judge summoned the prisoner. He gave her twenty years. It was a hideous sentence, the uttermost penalty of the law. A cry that was half a sob came from Miriam. It was the only time I have ever seen her moved to the breaking-point. IV The next two days and nights were heavy with despair for me. I knew there was no hope in appeal. I knew that prison would break Miriam's spirit, would kill the thing she was. On the third night I did not sleep at all till long past midnight, and then only fell into a troubled dreaming which finally centered itself about bells, bells that were forever ringing. Would they never cease their whining insistence? Slowly they burrowed through to my con- scious mind, and I woke to know that the electric bell of my flat was buzzing continuously. I put on a dressing- gown, turned up the light in my hall, and threw open the door. A veiled figure stood before me. "I've come for my swim," she said. "Miriam," I whispered, "in God's name — you here!" "Shut the door," she said. "Hurry and get dressed. At the change of guards they'll know. By seven o'clock at the latest they'll know. The turnkey tonight was a 'comrade.' He left the door unlocked. They were going

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246 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 to transfer me today to the new prison and then there was no hope." She pointed to her hat and veil: "See, I've hidden my hair. Now, hurry, and we'll be off. It's only two hours to daylight." I dressed and ran to the corner garage. I had their best car at my door in ten minutes. Miriam was waiting in the entry. We sped north with the sense of a presence behind us, closing in. Then for a mile over the dusty paths and through the wet, heavy grass we ran as I had not run since boyhood. We unlocked the canoe, carried it to the water's edge and tumbled in, and still the world around us slept. The water was smooth and silent through which we churned. Our own little island was waiting, green and solitary and all-welcoming, as we beached on the crisp sand. We were safe. No one could come to us except by the water- way, and we should know it while they were far off. "At last," cried Miriam. Her voice, so calm in my long memory of her, was tremulous, with little catches of eagerness. "Free at last," she repeated, "and forever." "Forever," I muttered. "A few hours, Miriam, at most." She only smilec1. Almost in another instant, it seemed, we were ready for the water, so fast we raced against the unseen pres- ence that was always drawing closer. She stepped to the high flat rock that jutted out over deep water. That was the signal for a long carrying dive that would send the swimmer well on his way. We cut the water clean, and swam toward the sun which was slowly rising over the Long Island shore. "This is the time we go across," she called to me. Straight on we went for many minutes. "How the tide drags," I said. "It is pulling down to sea," she answered. We swam a full two miles out. She never varied her stroke, the long-reaching overarm, with the strong pull through. Unwinded and easy she swam. "I can't make it, Miriam," I said, at last. "I'm getting tired." "Then it's goodby for a little while," she answered. Wearily I turned back, and came in, very slowly. At last I dragged myself up the shale and stood on the highest of the rocks. The light was on the waters. I could swear I saw- that little vivid head. It was here, it was there, it was at a dozen points on the flashing surface. Was it only a sparkle of sun on the ripple out of that sea of light? Second Song By LOUISE BOGAN I said out of sleeping — Passion, farewell. Take from my keeping Bauble and shell, Black salt, black provender. Tender your store To a new pensioner, To me no more. In the Driftway 'EARY of Suzanne and Trudy and the motherly Mrs. Corson, of Valentino and Prosecutor Simpson, the Drifter is thinking of retiring to a newspaperless world and studying the history of vegetables. The seed cata- logues and the horticultural guides which he finds in his friends' libraries are woefully deficient; they yield no lore or learning. There are treatises on gastronomy and solemn tomes on agriculture; but the Drifter wants to know who brought the first Brussels sprout to America, and when; who first tamed the wild carrot and the succulent pea; the adventures of Indian corn around the world ; how and when the tomato lost its earlier cognomen of "love apple" : what vegetables, besides parsnips and turnips, were known to the Romans; and what garden things came with the first set- tlers to America. TIMOTHY DWIGHT, reporting on New England more than a century ago, listed the vegetables commonly cultivated in Yankee gardens. The stern disciples of God seem to have been better eaters than their sermons would attest. They cultivated artichokes, asparagus, endive, celery, cauliflower, and other fruits and vegetables which the Drifter had supposed of later date. Thomas Jefferson, when President, kept a careful record of the green vegetables available in the capital markets — and he includes in his list "sprouts" and Lima beans, missing from the New England list. What were these "sprouts"? The Drifter wants to know. And did the fat Lima beans come to the North later than to the South? What is the truth in the story on which the Drifter was brought up that tomatoes were long re- garded as ornamental but poisonous? Both Timothy and Thomas record them in their edible kitchen lists. Timothy Dwight, when president of Yale College, grew four kinds of melons in his back yard, and distinguished the cantaloup from the muskmelon ; and he seeded his corn in twelve suc- cessive plantings so as to have fresh ears every day from mid-July to mid-November. The Drifter doubts if Presi- dent H'adley or President Angell has paid such fine atten- tion to the higher things of life. Obviously there are gaps in the vaunted progress of modern education. ***** MAIZE, tomatoes, potatoes, several kinds of squash and gourds and beans, the Drifter has been told, we owe to the American Indians. Most of them made their way to our part of North America by a circuitous route, from South America to Europe and back across the ocean. The tomato, indeed, owed its earlier name to a misunderstanding of a geographical name, for "love apple" came from the French "pomme d'amour," which in turn was a mistrans- lation of the Italian "porno dei Mori." "apple of the Moors," recalling that the tomato reached Italy from New Spain via Old Spain and Morocco. But now, the Drifter reads, ex- plorers find "Indian corn" grown for food in the remote aboriginal villages of Yunnan, close to Tibet. Can it be that this vegetable, like so many of the flowering shrubs and trees of the old New England gardens, is in its ultimate origin another Chinese? And will the botanically minded ethnologists find in it another evidence of the Asiatic origin of the American Indian? THE Drifter

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation 247 Correspondence The Worm Turns To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: We college presidents are grateful when any one shows some knowledge of what our problems actually are. have in the article Must Colleges Be Treadmills? indicated some of the sentimental vagaries of Dr. J. F. Kirkpatrick and his kind. You quite rightly say that "a body of scholars who do not know their own minds is a dangerous aggregatio turn loose with money to spend." You might have gone fur and declared that it is a dangerous group to turn loose with the younger minds of potential scholars to manipulate at will. What higher education in this country mods is not more freedom but more brains. Can anyone b instance where a faculty, after reasonable research, has re mended a policy rationally thought out and logically consistent and has found itself vetoed by the holding corporation? I know of none. Anyone who has ever sat in a collegiate faculty meet- ing will groan at the memory of cautious tedium, tedium largely due to the members being such specialists and so wholly d> of general educational theory as to render mutual constructive effort next to impossible. The college presidents whom I know sing Te Deum laudamus at every sign of faculty thought about educational problems, th practice. So do the trus There is not a faculty in America that could be hired to take over the management of its college, for the simple reason that if it did the brethren would either have to economize or raise a great deal of money Our boards of trustees are not so much administrators of large endowments as industrious beg- gars of funds which the teachers need and demand. There is no college without a deficit and a program of development. The professors know this perfectly well. Even Dr. Kirkpatrick and the smart young men must know it. That is what makes all this pity for the regimented pedagogue unreal and fantastic. If one could find, say, fifty American scholars willing to raise their own salaries and the money for their research or else starve in penury for the sake of academic freedom, the situation would seem different. It is not that there are lacking fifty honest scholars. It is, rather, that the honest scholars know they are already as free as the general intelligence of the pro- fession justifies their being — and perhaps a bit more so. Bernard Iddings Bell, President, St. Stephen's College n ndale-on-Hudson, N. Y., August 2U Remarkabler Yet To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In your issue of the 11th you say: "The remarkable and most disgraceful fact about the Republican Senatorial primaries in Illinois is the amount contributed in behalf of public-utility interests." You are wrong, I think. There is something remarkabler yet. That is the claim heralded by the press and leaders of organized labor that the nomination of Frank L. Smith was a victory for labor and a defeat for Cooli' ganized !; I way? Menu, Arkansas, August 18 Covington Hall Religion in the Medical Schools To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: You comment on the fact that Loyola College of Medicine refused admission to a well-prepared applicant pro- fessing agnosticism. Even many non-Catholic medical colleges, such as Louisville, Marquette, Buffalo, and others want to know the religious affiliation and church membership of their applicants. Their attitude shows why professional training of any sort should m by the State rather than by private educational institu of their financial support from denominational groups. Non-Catholic medical colleges would probably refuse admission to any applicant who stated that mi ■ found outside than inside the church. Else, why do they ask questions in no waj nected with the pursuit of medical stud . New ) ork, August 8 S. Michels The Peace Department, 1821 To the Editor of The Nation: .n a hundred years ago, when our govern- ment was waging war on the Seminole Indians, Dr. Benjamin Rush 1 the organization of a Peace Department in the federal government. Mr. Kirby Page could probably find sug- gestive details in the comments of the Friend of Peace (Vol. II, Boston, 1821) on this proposal. The Secretary of Peace was to be a man "perfectly free from all the absurd and vulgar lean prejudices upon the subject of government." He was to head an efficient machine for spreading peace propa- ganda, a machine which was to keep its fingers on every public school in the country. The offices of the new Department of l'oaoe were to be frescoed with appropriate designs. At the same time the offices of the War Department were to be re- decorated with "a woeful group of figures, representing scenes of desolation" under the caption "National Glory." On the door-plates of the bureaus of the Secretary of War were to be such inscriptions as "An office for creating speculators, stock- jobbers, and bankrupts; an office for creating poverty and for the destruction of liberty and happiness." Northampton, Massachusetts, July 22 M. CURTI "Singing Jailbirds" To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The enclosed is a copy of a letter just received from Ellen Wilkinson, M. P. I wonder if you would publish it and give me an opportunity to point out to your readers that there is an American Labor Play waiting for production. Unless I am greatly mistaken it is also waiting for review in The Nation. Pasadena, Cal., August Si Upton Sinclair Dear Mr. Sinclair: I have been tolling every group of American Lefts that they simply must produce "Singing Jailbirds." In London J. F. Horrabin, the editor of the Plebs, our Independent working-class educational monthly, organized the reading of the play, with a group of the lads from the Labor College. Horrabin was "Red" Adams. We tried it ou. first in a comparatively small hall, the proceeds going to the Miners' Relief. Although there wai no at- tempt at scenery, and although every part was read, the play created an immense impression. Some of our hard- est "left-wing" cynics had moist eyes. We had a record collection, and since then it has been done in much larger places. Some Labor leaders present at the first reading left the hall determined to do more for our own class-war prison- ers. We have a sood few left after the General Strike. New York City, August 20 Ellen Wilkinson "Dry" To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: It is a mistake to call Judge J. E. Martineau, the Democratic nominee for Governor, a "Wet." The judge was accused by his opponent of being what is called in Arkansas a "drinking man." This accusation was, fortunately, dis- proved, and both candidates for the Democratic nomination were vociferously "Dry," during the campaign. Everybody, alas! is "Dry" in Arkansas, although our total consumption of moonshine compares favorably with that of any other State. Little Rock, Ark., Aug. 27 Paul C. Snodgress

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Books and Drama Comparative Religions By OWEN MEARS Chen So-lin sits in the Methodist Chapel — He sits on a hard pine board, unrelenting, ugly. The chapel is a high gray box around him, Beamed with a muddy brown. The altar Arches in wood of reddish ochre — and the pulpit Juts pugnacious — aloof — unattached. The windows are a leaded, whitish glass Quite thick enough to catch and kill the light That passes dully through them. High and shrill The choir leads a hymn with nasal pitch, The congregation drags a note or two — An earnest higher purpose leads them on. The minister (the offering secure) Arises to his place and reads his text. An hour and a half he reads his theme — A technical discussion of the translation Of the original Hebrew of a certain word In a particular verso of a given chapter Of Isaiah. (lien So-lin sits in the Methodist Chapel But his being revolts from the orthodox grayness. Taking his soul he flees up to the mountains Over the brown plain with pulsating rivers — Up the steep slopes, golden fair with persimmons — Up to the mountains of pine tree and cedar — Up toward the Heaven's intense blue whose calmness Tells him that beauty and God can't be separate. Here hides the temple with its dull red wall, Court after court rises upward toward the hills. paved, moss green, and golden with the sun, temples, golden-tiled, gleam dazzling bright — Their borders, blue and green and red and gold, Are blended to a whole of which each part Sings harmony with sunset and with trees. The temple, dim and cool and pillared tall, Is lit with flickering candles whose faint light Enfolds with soft caress the eternal calm. The ineffable solicitude and peace That sit. aloft with Buddha, lotus-throned. In the distance sounds the note of brazen gongs, The minor chanting of the temple pr Tells they are come to v. n So-lin Kneels on the flame silk cushion, and his hand, Sleady with love, and sure — and oh so sure — Ignites his bit of incense at the shrine. Chen So-lin sits in the M The minister is saying the Benedict ;on. Brother Johnson grips him by the hand. "Wasn't it a splendid service?" he asks with conviction. Chen So-lin's eyes smile serene with their memori "Splendid," he said, and went out to the sunlight. A Challenge to Liberalism The End of Laissez Faire. By John Maynard Keynes. Lon- don: The Hogarth Press. 3s. TODAY we find J. M. Keynes admitting that laissez faire, the first commandment of Liberalism, is now little more than a shell and a name. And Professor Clay, one of the finest flowers of British Liberalism, writes: "Laissez faire frees the individual from legal obstructions to the exercise of initiative. By neglecting the inequalities which this freeing of initiative necessarily created it at the same time relinquished him to the new unofficial servitude to the rich consumer and to the mechanical organization of production. The problem of mod- ern society is to rehabilitate the individual." Both Keynes and Clay are disappointed with the results of the doctrine. It is important to note, in an analysis of this highly significant statement by Henry Clay, that he is speaking of two individuals: one who benefits by laissez faire and the other whom it abandons to the slavery of the "rich consumer and the mechanical organization of production" — read Capi- talism. The buyers of luxuries and the owners of the mechani- cal organization of production are one class and the individuals who serve them another. The problem, then, is the rehabilita- tion not of an undefined mass of individuals but of the victim of this "new unofficial servitude." Mr. Keynes too realizes that the end of laissez faire, of which the fall of the great party of Asquith and Lloyd George is only one manifestation, confronts every Liberal — industrial, commercial, and financial, as well as intellectual — with the necessity of making a choice in favor of some "opponent proposal." Of the two alternatives, "Protectionism," that is, state aid for capitalism, and Marxian Socialism or Communism, the former strikes Mr. Keynes as "at least plausible, and the forces making for its popularity are nothing to wonder at," whereas Marxism is abhorrent to his mind. However, though he leans toward Protectionism, he rejects it too, for the time being, one is inclined to think, in favor of a middle-of-the-road proposal. He suggests a unit of control and organization "somewhere betwe-'n the individual and the modern state" — in other words, "semi-autonomous bodies within the state" such as the Bank of England, the Port of London Authority, and "even perhaps the Railway Companies." This is Mr. Keynes's solution. He recognizes that capitalism in the last thirty years has been the irrevocable undoing of liberal industrialism and trade. And, forced to select between Capitalism buttressed by the state and Social- ism, he temporizes and offers a mongrel product which he christens "State Socialism." If the Bank of England, the British railroads, and the ordinary big banks and big insur- ance companies of which Mr. Keynes speaks are forms of State Socialism, then he is right. One suspects, however, that Mr. Keynes has made his decision in favor of modern Capi- talism, but cannot yet bring himself to admit it. At all events, Sir Alfred Mond, formerly a pillar of Brit- ish Liberalism, has gone over to the Tories with a number of his fellows, while many of his old party friends are joining hands with Labor. This may in the end be Lloyd George's fate also. The point is that in England, where Liberalism is not of the parlor variety but rather a matter of hard, every-day life, of definite economic policy, Liberals who hitherto stood on the neutral fulcrum of the seesaw are now compelled to go to one of the ends of the board, to Die-Hard Capitalism or to pro- Socialism. This is a challenge to Liberals the world over. In economic life Liberalism is dead. We have trusts and chain stores instead of free competition, protectionist tariffs and customs barriers instead of free trade; but more important still, there is frank governmental intercession on behalf of Capitalism. Baldwin openly sides with the mine owners and makes possible the eight-hour day, Mussolini decrees the nme-

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation 249 hour day; sugar, fruit, and oil companies invariably touch a sympathetic chord in the United States Navy and State Depart- ment. All over Europe states are subsidizing industry and commerce, and international trusts are growing up to limit production and fix prices. Nor are these accidental or passing phenomena. They seem to be imperative measun the support of Capitalism in what may be an extremely pro- longed period of "relative stability." With Liberalism gone out of the world of business, can it maintain itself in the life of the social individual? With the state mobilized fo alism, can democracy be real'.' Louis Fischer A Misunderstood Man The Life of William Godwin. By Ford K. Brown. E. F. Dutton and Company. $6. WILLIAM GODWIN is not the subject of a biography every year. It was to be hoped that when a suci to Mr. Kegan Paul's volumes was published it not only would gather together much of the available though scattered informa- tion on Godwin's relations with his contemporaries but would contain some elucidation of the curiously varied ways in which they regarded him, and would add to our knowledge of his tangled private affairs. Godwin was, during a part of his life, one of the most notorious of men, the subject of innumerable references in the letters and diaries of the time. Among his acquaintances were many of the most striking and important literary and political men of two generations. Yet he remains a somewhat inscrutable person. It is not difficult to understand that he aroused respect and admiration for his works in the same individuals by whom he was laughed at and despised for his personal stiffness and arrogance. But the heart of the man is a mystery, and calls for interpretation. The supposed discrepancy between his preaching and his practice accounts in part for his treatment at the hands both of his contemporaries and of later writers, and is largely due to a misunderstanding of his doctrine; to read "Political Justice" and some of the later essays disposes of it. Other wrong notions are the result of political prejudice. But there remain points that careful investigation might clear up, and which, once ascertained, would make clearer our knowledge of certain of his contem- poraries as well. What was wanted, in short, was a biography that would perform for Godwin somewhat the service that was performed for Hazlitt by Mr. Howe's recent biography. Mr. Brown's work does not completely satisfy these require- ments. He has been obliged to draw extensively upon Mr. Paul's volumes, since, as he says, some of the documents to which Mr. Paul had access have disappeared. He also draws upon the letters of Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb, and upon other less familiar sources: the book contains little that is new. Unfortunately Mr. Brown's method of ouotation is unscholarly; slight alterations in diction and arrangement are made without notice, and the defect is too prevalent for one to sunpose that he has had the privilege of using original documents in each case. Exact sources are seldom indicated. There are also inaccuracies in dates, not always a trifling matter in biography. These defects prevent the work's being authoritative. It does, however, serve the useful purpose of collecting reminiscences of Godwin not unknown but not before assembled. There is a good account of the controversy with Malthus, and an excellent one of Godwin's relations with Thelwall. Perhaps the most valuable part of the book is that on Francis Place, who attempted to set Godwin's financial affairs in order and finally gave up in disgust. We are given no satisfactory ex- planation of what became of Godwin's not inconsiderable income, but the matter of Godwin's borrowing is well handled, with some mitigation of the traditional accounts of the extent and the manner of it. Something is done, too, to destroy the myth that Godwin was "a cold-blooded monster of superhuman impassivity," though his emoti pease Of -Mary Shelley's veracity. The soundnc.-s of Godwin's heart is implied in his relations with In u mother. It is to be wished that Mr. Brown had found space for one of her chai ic Utters to her son; the single brief quotation is not altogether representative. Godwin wrote in the Enquirer: "In judging the past con- duct, particularly of others, he that is not liberal and indulgent is not just." This is especially applicable to Godwin himself. ■ many respects he stood apart from his time, by very nature he was bound to such an extent to be misunderstood both then and afterwards, that only by offsetting the prejudice against him can the truth be manifested. It was easy in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and it has been easy since, to defame an unconventional, noble mind. Mr. Brown, by presenting the facts objectively, has been liberal and indul- gent in comparison with those who have sneered at Godwin as the propounder of an impossible and obnoxious system and the writer of deservedly dead novels. By doing so he has added his name to those of Mr. Paul and Mr. Brailsford as a dealer in justice. Though his work is scarcely valuable for those who already are familiar with Godwin, it makes a good introduction to him for that larger number of readers who are not. Raymond A. Preston A Neighbor's Novel His Sim's Wife By Dorothy Canfield. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2. 'T'HERE are some novelists through whose minds, like * strangely colored windows, one looks into a new world. Dorothy Canfield is not one of these. Her sympathetic gaze is fixed upon the neighbors. Her power lies largely in the friendly familiarity of the people and places of her books and her skill in evoking experiences which might have been ours. As her interest transcends mere gossip and the collector's delight in assembling human oddities, she wants to know how the forces which animate her people ebb and flow with the tides of the world beyond their hills, and then to explain to that wider circle the engaging and lovable discoveries which she has made. She is more anxious to tell something than to say something. If one may judge from "Her Son's Wife" and the preced- ing novel, "The Home-maker," the ray of understanding which recently has illumined Dorothy Canfield's well-loved New Eng- land scene is the newer psychology and its teaching of the interaction of mind and body. Like the earlier book, "Her Son's Wife" offers a psychiatric solution to an apparently insoluble problem in personal relationships. Mary Baseomb realizes that she must find some way to free the family from the childish tyranny of Lottie, the pretty, vulvar daughter-in- law whom Ralph married in a moment of impulse and contri- tion. She encourages, then fosters, then all but enforces the invalidism to which Lottie is inclined as a means of getting sympathy and attention. While Lottie is kept in her room and bed, Lottie's husband and child may escape from the clutter and quarreling and cheapness which emanate from her. In evolving the pragmatic rule of life which alone can recon- cile Mary's highly organized self-centered universe with the helpless floundering of childish little Lottie, Mary comes to see how her own self-pity and self-righteousness have corroded her spirit and eaten into Ralph's integrity. She abandons her rigid accounting of faults and virtues to accept people for what they are and what they may be, and, in accepting them, loves them — loves even Lottie. In this story Dorothy Canfield walks a narrow and diffi- cult path between didacticism and sentimentality. In the large she avoids both; Mary Baseomb is not merely a New England symbol used to point a moral but a real and evolving per- sonality. It is safe to predict that "Her Son's Wife" will be

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250 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 used to illustrate many a sermon on the old truth that she who loses her life will find it. It does exemplify that gospel — but in the modern rather than the Puritanical understanding. Mary Bascomb succeeds not because of her sacrifice of sonal ambitions but because she sees and accepts her funda- mental desire — to save the grandchild from the wreckage of the parents — and in working for this scraps egotistic idealiza- tions and moralisms so that she may understand each opposed human factor and draw from it the constructive elements which will serve her end. Dorothy Canfield has the gift of the story-teller. Her sympathy and her vitality fuse into integrity with her story the temptations to teach and to show which lurk in the New England background. She has become a real educator — as opposed to a mere propagandist — in the art and ration- neighborliness. Mary Ross Peter and Caesar The Pope. By Jean Carrere. Henry Holt and Company. $3.50. IT is a question open to serious doubt whether any Catholic traveler through the late unlamented Papal States — meaning, of course, a traveler not directly d< pendent upon pontifical favors — ever wrote a book extolling the administra- tion of the Papal principality. This much is certain: no nine- teenth-century celebrity of any great renown. Catholic or Protestant, after his sojourn in the Papal States, ever went on record as a eulogist of the Vatican considered as a center of secular sovereignty— as long as that sovereignty existed. Even Macaulay — a fervent admirer of the Papacy viewed as a perdurable historic institution — had nothing but contempt for its domestic statecraft. His private letters — like those of the historian Gregorovius, of Margaret Fuller, and of innumerable other eye-witnesses of Roman misgovernment — ai-e full of curious sidelights upon one of the worst governments that ever carried on. Its posthumous reputation, however, amonj; de- voted Catholics is not founded upon any of its true characteris- tics while alive. It is with commonwealths as with men : the worst among them, when martyred, will find their apologists among enthusiastic souls — as if a violent death, no matter how incurred, were quite as meritorious a performance as a useful life. ^he secular reign of Roman priestcraft, after centuries of heaped abuse and tyranny, died a violent death in 1870 — and of this death it has been living in the glorifying wish-dreams of a great many Catholic enthusiasts ever since. We cannot recollect among their hosts a single one equal to Jean Carrere in fervor, eloquence, and skill of mutilating history. If you can imagine a compound of Loyola and Pod snap you have the literary physiognomy of Jean Carrere, at least as it is on view here. Like Loyola he has the power to conjure up any pseudo- historical pageantry which can shed glamor upon his Romanist doctrine; like Podsnap he has the amazing gift of waving away any inconvenient fact that may stare him broadly in the face. The main pillars of his dream-concept of papal history are two types of his own invention — an immortal Chief-Lama, called Peter, being a composite portrait of all the Popes that, ever reigned, and an equally stable fixture in the annals of Western civilization, representing a supreme secular power. whom he calls Caesar. According to Jean Carrere, the pacts and conflicts of these two perennial potentates are the central fact of Occidental history. Where did Peter get his warrant of sniritual supremacy? The author, despite his Catholic fervor, refrains from answering the question with the angry retort of Charles the Fifth when quizzed by the ambassador of Henry the Eighth: "It's too late in the day to argue dabo tibi claves." On the contrary, he devotes an initial chapter of sermonizing exposition to the choice of Christ, arranging and exhibiting to best advantage all the scriptural corner-stones of the doctrine of Roman supremacy with a skill inspired by faith. The book is about as perfect an expression of retrospective Romanist views upon history as can well be imagined. It is brief, enter- tainingly written, and excellently Englished. For all these reasons it deserves to be recommended to students of Romanist perspectives. James Fuchs The Dangerous Queen The Fugger N eivs-Lettcrs : 1568-1605, Second Series. Edited by Victor von Klarwill. Translated by L. S. R. Byrne. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $6. HP HE first series cf Fugger Xews-Letters contained reports, *■ by the best journalists of the day, of a wide variety of events — wars and witch-burnings, miracles and assassinations. The new series, while perhaps less entertaining, is of far more value to historical students. The editor has extracted from the Fugger archives in the Vienna State Library the more im- portant letters referring to England under Queen Elizabeth. They are dated from all parts of Europe and show very con- clusively the tremendous and, from the point of view of the old order, sinister influence that Elizabeth had on the Europe of her time. The Fuggers were the greatest bankers of the day. They supplied monarchs, including the twice-bankrupt Philip II of Spain, with the means to carry on wars. They were thus devoted to the cause of Catholicism and regarded Elizabeth as a menace to pr and religion. Evidently their corre- spondents had instructions to keep a close eye on "this Queen," as she is frequently called in the letters, and to report any ac- tivities of the English which might afFect, directly or indirectly, the fortunes of the House. The English Court seems indeed to have occupied a position somewhat analogous to that of the Third International to-day. It stirred up heresy and sedition in various parts of Europe. It encouraged adventurers to make piratical raids on the lawful property of the King of Spain. It even negotiated with the infidel Turk for assistance against that monarch. No wonder good Catholic statesmen and bankers were in a perpetual state of rage and alarm, and eager for any news that could be gleaned as to the Queen's impending moves ! Fugger reporters .seem to have listened to rumors as readily as do some of their professional descendants. Elizabeth was constantly reported assassinated or dead from natural causes. In one respect, however, they showed their inferiority. There are scarcely any atrocity stories in these letters, and none of ^respondents seem to have been bright enough to discover that Protestantism was equivalent to free love — or worse. Keith Hutchison An Immigration Source-Book Historical Aspect* of the Immigration Problem. By Edith Abbott. The University of Chicago Press. $4.50. XT OWHERE more than in matters pertaining to immigration ■*■ ' has fact been so lopped or stretched to fit the Procrustean bed of propaganda. The time has come for undertaking dispas- sionate inquiry and survey of the varied materials offered by the experience of the United States in dealing with the manifold problems arising in the development of an immigration policy; it is strange that thus far so little has been done. Miss Abbott, realizing the importance of immigration as one of the out- standing facts of American national life, has rendered pioneer service by publishing two source-books of immigration material. The first volume, devoted to a collection of documents and case-records which throw light on many legal, social, and histor- ical phases of the subject, is now supplemented by a second vol- ume, which is the outgrowth of material once intended for the first. This second volume should perhaps precede the first, for it is filled with documents discussing the general questions relating to immigration and therefore basic to more technical

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation 251 discussion. Presenting as it does a bird's-eye view thro:. of American life previous to 1882, when the first il immigration legislation was passed, it gives a sense of the richness of this much-neglected field. .Miss Abbott allows reprints of material long inaccessible and little known to tell their own story, adding only introduc- tory notes to each section. Since the various documents natu- rally overlap, she shows the line between differing phases of immigration to be a fluid one. In general, however, she has stuck to her classifications. Throughout the whole runs the per- ennial question as to whether emigration is a remedy for over- population. Lord John Russell maintained that the number of persons removed from a locality was never so largo as to produce an effect on the population and thus to increase wages. And ever throughout the documents runs the cry of the hand- loom weavers and the Irish after the potato famine, so thank- ful for opportunity for work that they emigrated at their own or the parish's expense and then WTote back with joy of the opportunities for work for even mites of six years. Whether or no emigration proved a solution, the steady stream went on. As district after district of the country opened up in response to the westward urge, letters went back telling of opportunities for work and homes in the new land ; even States alluringly held forth the possibilities they offered. In 1853 the State of Wis- consin distributed and sent abroad nearly 30,000 pamphlets describing its attractions. Small wonder that numbers came ever increasingly, that Ireland had "hand-bills placarded on every corner, tree and pump and public nlace in the city of Dublin and for fifty miles in the surrounding country, statins: in substance that the people were fools not to leave the country." Constantly comes the realization that American policy in regard to immigration has been hit-or-miss and has involved the same mistakes over and over again. The obloquy we cast on Southern Europeans today but repeats our attitude toward Irish and Germans. "Everywhere in the United States the Irish-born part of the population is only tolerated by the native Americans as what has been termed 'a serviceable nuisance'; it is a population of foreigners and outcasts, exceedingly valuable as a mass of labor which gives productiveness to capital in a country where the natives dislike work for hire, but socially despised, and in so many ways ill-treated, that practically it does not enjoy that equality of rights which is the boast of American democracy." That was written in 1847, and only eight years later we hear that the "German in America is a complete stranger . . . the German in America is despised as an alien. . . .-Only in places where the Germans are in the majority docs the newly arrived immigrant find, after all the hardships of the journey, an endurable existence." The papers of the Know-Nothing Party might have fur- nished much of the testimony before the Senate and House Committees on Immigration of the 69th Congress. We learn in 1856 "that most of the grog shops in the city are kept by un- naturalized foreigners"; we now hear that the bootleggers are all foreigners; in either case the possibility of ascertaining the facts is remote. We still are told that "immigration is bring- ing: the most important institutions of the land into danger" (1850), or that "the danger of foreign influences threatens the gradual destruction of our national institutions" (1845). On the other hand, in 1855 it was felt that "the powerful position of America has given its inhabitants a conceit which is expressed not only in foreign relations but toward everything foreign coming into the country." The book gives the other side of the medal too, since it shows the long struggle to keep other countries from dumping their paupers and criminals upon us, and the gradual realiza- tion that the problem was too vast a one for the separate States to control. Today, as in 1851, "there is no subject of which a merely one-sided view is more commonly taken than that of immigration": but such volumes as Miss Abbott's lead the way in showing that immigration is neither all black nor all white. Nor is it a problem of one country alone, for it leaves its mark on the country of emigration, the lands of transit, and the (dace of destination. The story is not without its idyllic side. If you had but gone l" 1V\.i hi I. , you would have been " I by a tig- ure in blue flannel shirt and pendent beard, quoting Tacitus, having in one hand a long pipe, in the other a butcher's knife; Madonnas upon log walls; coffee in tin cups upon Dresden sau- cers; barrels for seats; to hear a Beethoven symphony on the grand piano; 'My wife made those pantaloons, and my stock- ings grew in the field yonder'; a fowling-piece that cost $300, and a saddle that cost $5 ; a book-case half filled with classics, half with sweet potatoes." Jane Perry Clark Books in Brief Free Negro Heads of Families in flic United States -in By C. G. Woodson. Washington, D. C. The Associated Publishers. $5. Free Negro Owners of Slaves i» (he United States in By C. G. Woodson. Washington, D. C. The Associated Publishers. $1. Taking the census of 1830 as representing the peak devel- opment of the free Negro population prior to the repressive measures of 1840-59 against this particular class, the editor of the Journal of Negro History has compiled a documented report from the original manuscript schedules of the Census records, listing family heads of the nearly half-million who enjoyed freeman's status at that time. Apart from its startling reve- lation of the size and distribution of an almost-forgotten ele- ment of the Negro population, the study makes available im- portant material for the further study of economic and social conditions both of the Negroes themselves and of the general community. From this survey much material was gained for Dr. Woodson's study entitled "The Beginnings of the Mis- cegenation of the Whites and Blacks," since the marital rela- tions and color of persons listed were in most cases indicated; and the second of the above listed volumes, a somewhat startling list of over four thousand free Negro owners of slaves, is a direct by-product of the main bit of research. Here is another exhumed chapter of American history. While a great majority of Negro slaveholders were benevolent purchasers of the "free- dom" of their wives and relatives, protecting them from a harder slavery by this technical legal ownership, many were, as a mat- ter of fact, plantation owners and exploiting slaveholders after the general fashion of the South. Dry as the terse records are, they bear more of the actual facts and anomalies of the slave regime than many shelves of controversial literature. Sins of Science. By Scudder Klyce. Boston: Marshall Jones Company. $3. The author, with a humility most becoming to one solving the riddle of the universe, admits that he may have committed a petty blunder here and there in the solution, but says he has grown unshakably certain that he now knows the fundamental truth. It has fallen to his sad lot to protect us. and especially our children, "against the positive viciousness of scientific ma- terialism or agnosticism." For his sacrificial boldness in as- suming this modest role he asserts that he has been dubbed "a damned philosopher by the scientists" (possibly as the result of John Dewey's introduction of sanction to Klyce's latest book, "Universe") and "a damned scientist by the philosophers." The first allegation may possibly be true, though it is doubtful; but it is highly improbable that even a philosopher would accuse Mr. Klyce of being a scientist. He writes challenging letters to scientists — Richards and Millikan, for example — and then distorts their replies beyond recognition by reading his own philosophical interpretations into their scientific responses. Thus Richards's atoms acquire absoluteness, Millikan's electron attains divinity, and Russell's space-time becomes "absolute free space." The reader's salvation is conditioned by his willing-

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252 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 ness to embrace the doctrine of Mr. Klyce that "The Related Many Equals the One." Mathematicians, biologists, physicists, and psychiatrists may alike peruse the contents of this book, but only one of the groups mentioned will thoroughly under- stand it. Friends of Mr. Sweeney. By Elmer Davis. Robert M. McBride and Company. $2. "An editor," said Rixey, "is a man who can explain mole- cules to an expert on mining, and explain mining to an expert on molecules, and make each of them think he knows what he's talking about." Elmer Davis crams a lot of soundly observed satire on the highbrows of his profession into a frothy story of a plodding sub-editor who discovered tiger women, bubbling bot- tles, and burglarious bandits in one adventurous night. The Story of Durham. By William Kenneth Boyd. Duke Uni- versity Press. $5. Durham, North Carolina, is bourgeois and middle class and gloats over the fact. Professor Boyd tells of Indian settlements, of sturdy pioneers, and of General Sherman's negotiations which led to the military surrender of the Confederacy. These are interesting but irrelevant. They might as well have happened on another planet. They have nothing to do with the sign of Bull Durham and the epic of the cigarette. The Civil War increased the demand for tobacco. It was a crop which lent itself to the newer agricultural conditions of the South. Durham lay in a district which produced one of the best grades. The markets had been in Virginia. There was a prejudice against the North Carolina crop. A group of manufacturers decided to start producing tobacco products at home. They began one of the world's greatest advertising campaigns. Durham became the tobacco capital of the world. Dramc i P o t e m k i n HPHE Film Arts Guild and the Russian organization, Sovkino, I have given a private showing of the Russian film, "Armored Cruiser, Prince Potemkin," to three hundred invited guests. The picture is for sale in America. Max Reinhardt and Dc. iglas Fairbanks unite in saying that it is great art, the best motion picture either has ever seen. Already it has had, as well, a tremendous commercial success in Germany despite defeats in certain German cities by political censorship. Will Hays, who seems never to forget that the average mental age of the American public is fourteen years, and is so very careful lest the movies help mature us, was not present on Tuesday. There is no final word therefore as to whether the picture is to become a legend among the cognoscenti, or be the sensation of the movies this year. In making the picture Director Eisenstein used members of the Mo-cow Art Theater and hundreds of non-professional actors from the Proletcult (Organization for Proletarian Cul- ture). The story, based on the official report in the Admiralty files of the Czar, and on the recollections of eye-witnesses and participants, describes the revolt of the sailors of the armored cruiser "Potemkin" of the Black Sea fleet outside the harbor of Odessa during the 1905 Revolution, the demonstrations of the common people at the tent-bier of the sailor who led it, the attack on the mourners and revolutionists by the Cossacks, and finally the escape of the cruiser "Potemkin" with the connivance of comrades on the other cruisers of the fleet to the Rumanian port of Constanza. Here is epic materir.l, full of pity, terror, and truth. Someone muttered in the audience "This is only new-reel." There could be no higher praise for the reality conveyed. So it was, indicating at last in which direction the art of the movies is to lie, if the screen is to be something more than a vehicle for exploiting the personalities of stars and a distractor of the public gaze from public and private conflicts. There was no star in the picture, unless perhaps the cruiser itself, or the sailors, or the masses of Odessa. Certainly not the sailor who rose to give command and who died in the fighting. The eyes of the audience beheld, sensed, understood all that happened on those significant three days. Captions were few and simple, muted down, whispered directions to those who have forgotten history. The continuity halts nowhere for explanations. The eye but followed as the ear might hearken to a tune. The sailors, at work, asleep in hammocks in sultry and cramped quarters, waking, going to their decks and engines, to roll call, grumbling about the rotted meat. The doctor, looking at the meat through his glasses. Nests of wriggling maggots. The doctor says the meat is good, to wash it off in salted water. The sailors know that in the prison camps of Japan their com- rades are better fed. The commander of the cruiser will have none of grumbling. It smacks of mutiny. He commands the firing squad. . . . Sail-cloth is thrown over the malcontents. "Fire!" "Fire!!" . . . "Fire!!! . . . But comrade will not fire upon comrade, and the revolt has come. Words convey but feebly the tremendous impression of being everywhere at once which the all-seeing camera was able to give. This was more than news-reel. The camera, like some holy invisible, watched and recorded. Of all this population that Director Eisenstein commanded, not one lingered before the camera. Life was the thing — masses of men, sweating at the furnaces, at mess, lighting:; faces, arms, legs, engines, ther- mometers, the big guns with nostrils scenting danger, the rest- less flow of the common people of Odessa across the narrow file of the breakwater to where the dead sailor lay in common state; the faces of the mourners, the student and revolutionist exhorters; the crowd in panic — things like these have never been seen so well in life or theater before. Nor has machinery, monster and servant in the modern world, been so emotionally comprehended, or the relations between those who physically manipulate it and those who own it been so dramatized. The audience was divided between those who were nervous and puzzled by the social conflict which was the theme of the film, and those who wore deeply moved not only by the revolu- tionary theme but by the revolution in movie technique bring- ing in its wake a vision of the new developments in the one art the machine age can call its own. Whether the public sees this picture or not, it will before long experience the influence of the new technique, the use of masses, the feeling for motion and machinery, a new swiftness and naturalness. Director Eisen- stein, when he has finished the picture he is now making in Moscow, a film concerned with cattle-breeding and cream sepa- rators, I am told, will spend six months in Hollywood. He has been granted leave of absence by the Soviet Government to direct one picture for United Artists. Ernestine Evans r G LECTURES SCOTT NEARING Just back from England, will lecture on The General Strike At NEW STAR CASINO, 107th St. and Park Ave. SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SEPT. 19, at 2 P. M. Auspices Workers' School Admission 75c. SCOTT NEARING ■ Enjrland for the British Trade Union Concress, will lecture upon his return on "THE CRISIS IN BRITISH IMPERIALISM" at the Community Church, 34th St. and Park Ave., N. Y. City MONDAY EVENING, SEPT. 20, 1926, at 8:15 P. M. tickets vsc. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Where Slavery Still Rules PORTUGAL'S African Slave States, an article in this section of The Nation for March 10, described the Ross-Cramer report on the exploitation of native labor in the Portuguese colonies in Africa, and the item-by-item answer to the report given on behalf of the Portuguese Government by Alfonso Augusto da Costa, which virtually caused Viscount Cecil's Geneva Slavery Protocol to be still- born. The following articles, translated from papers issued in Lisbon, Portugal, and Angola, Portuguese West Africa, reveal the abject, if more or less intermittent, slavery of the natives to the white overlords of the land. A Government administrator declared that the Gov- ernment considers all natives its property. This is borne out by the Forced Labor Law of January, 1925, requiring all employers of native labor to contract for it with the Government. An early draft of this law was printed in The Nation for August 27, 1921, as a translation from the Jorna] dc Benguela, from which come also some of the excerpts printed below. The agreement discussed between Angola and Sao Tome has been signed. Its terms have not bee/i published, but they are not likely to differ greatly from those mentioned in the article translated from A Batalha for November 10, 1925. A Batalha is owned and operated by the Confederacao General do Trabalho, the Portuguese labor movement, a syndicalist organization which does not countenance the use of armed force. The native tax several times mentioned in these arti- cles (the collection of which seems to be the principal func- tion of the Government) has the effect of driving the natives from the cultivation of their own land to work for the planters and the large enterprises as well as to finance the Government. The tax amounts to four-fifths of all the Colony's direct taxation. The natives pay in this way 40,000,000 escudos ($1,600,000) annually. In return they receive the right to work for the white men at the daily wage of 80 centavos (3 cents). The annual tax is 80 escu- dos, so that the tax represents one hundred days of work, ft is commonly levied on males from 14 or 15 up, but a correspondent of The Nation has in his possession a photograph showing children between 7 and 13 years of age with their senhas (tax assessments). At the present time natives in the out-station villages of a certain mission are being punished by the local gov- ernment because some of them were so indiscreet as to give some facts to Edward A. Ross when he was there. The officials can only create inconveniences for the European missionaries, but the natives are made to suffer. These articles are no special indictment against the Portuguese. A similar system is in vogue in certain French colonies and in some British areas in Africa. Some of the worst exploiters of the native in Angola are non- Portuguese (American) companies. The Angola Petroleum Company, a Sinclair concern, would not permit Mr. Ross to visit its works, and grave charges have been made against it. Contract Labor in Angola A Batalha (Lisbon) in its issue of May 13 published an article signed Correia da Sousa, from which we quote: A contract has been signed between the Government of Angola and the General Construction Company which should have been denominated The Death Pact. According to its mpany, as party of the second part, has the right to recruit so many hundred Africans for its service, using them according to the customary conditions laid down in the ttxt<i- mento negro. The company exploits its worse than slaves in exchange for an insignificant remuneration and a deficient supply of food deprived of nutritive properties. The work is violent and continuous, whether the burning sun suffocates and bakes the chattels or the rain precipitates itself upon them in great torrents. Three men's work must be borne by one, although the contrary is true of the food and wages, for five do not get what one should have. And if one does not step quickly, the actual violence of the whip (latego) carries out the threat of its constant presence. The black, the poor Negro, has no right to feel indisposed, to say that he is unable, that he is sick. He may have intestinal dysentery or malignant sores. He may be anemic or jaundiced, or afflicted with pneumonia or malaria. If he dies — a Negro dies, a dog. Just one beast less. . . . Starved, sick, only when their strength is completely ex- hausted, only when even the whip brandished brutally over their wasted bodies can no longer force them to rise — only then, carried on a stretcher or assisted by their companions in slavery and misfortune, are they taken to the hospital. Some die on the way, others in the vestibule of the Lodging for Public Employees, whence, of those who reach the hospital, a large percentage go on to the public cemetery. Some who are able to walk flee from the hospital to be free from the boss who tortures them. Among these there are not a few who run away so that they can take the pieces of clothing with which they are furnished on the day in which they enter the hospital. Not a few times some of those who flee are found dead in the high grass, where the last bit of strength had abandoned them. Lodged under the vilest of unhygienic conditions, starved, sick, abused by excessive work, and by all physical and moral tortures, with hardly a rag to hide their genital organs, their bodies exposed to the inexorable rigors of the weather, the life of these unfortunates is a cycle of martyrdom. If we consult the register of the admission of patients to the Central Hospital of Loanda, we shall have occasion to see that the diagnosis of a large number of native workmen is inanition. The larger part of this contingent of hunger victims comes from the General Construction Company and from the railways. "They kill them by starvation. . . . When they come to the hospital they already have the death rattle in the throat." So said the chief of the health services of Angola, Coronel Dr. Joao Gomes Delgado, Jr., referring to the frightful pro- portion of deaths from among the employees of the General Construction Company and the railways. That is why the governor at that time, the rude mili- tarist Miguel de Almeida Santos, was, it is alleged, attacked by the journalists, who demanded that he take precautions to oblige those whose responsibility was so great to respect the life of the native laborer. The chief of the health services, observing that the inter- hospital death figures were extraordinarily augmented by the "servicais" (contract laborers) of the company, and in order that the precautions urgently required by such an excessive mortality might be taken, ordered statistics prepared. The disease-cause of the deaths in question was inanition. Upon examining the books containing the obituary registers, it was found that in the short space of less than three months almost two hundred had died of hunger. What precautions then, what restraining measures did the governor take? None. The unfortunates continued to enter the hospital by the tens and the dozens per day, going there starved, already in the agonies of death.

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254 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 And the members of the company became rich. Civiliza- tion and Progress. . . . Poor unhappy slaves. Slavery in Sao Tome From the same paper's issue of November 18, 1925, we quote the following: The roceiros (plantation owners) of Sao Tome, generously sacrificing their "legitimate interests," offer to each Negro the salary of fifty escudos [about two dollars] per month. Not content with this stupendous prodigality they offer to repatri- ate him at the end of three years if he wishes. They will give him a blanket when he embarks, and — supreme philanthropy — they will even feed the minor children who may accompany him. . . . Fifty escudos a month cannot be considered a wage. No white man, however deplorable his economic condition, would accept it, to say nothing of the accompanying long hours which invite tuberculosis. . . . Further, the Negro never has the fifty escudos in his possession . . . and, even more, he con- tinues to owe them [the roceiros] money. It is slavery without disguise. Local criticism in Portuguese East Africa is voiced by Antonio Augusto Dias in the Jornal de Bcnguela of May 7, 1926: We do not yet know whether in Loanda official attention has been given to the supply of labor to Sao Tome. We do not know whether the methods used will be studied and approved here in the colony, whether its bases have already been assented to by the home Government and the roceiros. . . . It still remains unknown whether the period of contract will be for more than two years with optional renewals, in order to guarantee the necessary number of laborers. . . . "We find in the Provincia de Angola [a Loanda paper], in an article signed by the director, various pertinent considerations. The illustrious writer finds the number of able-bodied men insignificant, according to the official charts, which show the Negro population of Angola at between five and six millions. These numbers are more than exaggerated. There are completely deserted regions whose populations were deci- mated by hunger, by sleeping sickness, and by smallpox. There may be fewer than three million native inhabitants today. We must realize that the official data coming from the enrol- ment lor the hut-tax and purporting to represent heads of families are not absolutely true. In the majority of cases the unit represents a single individual. Many of these are not yet truly adults and many others cannot be used in agricul- tural services because they are already of advanced age. . . . The greater number [of the inhabitants] are women and children. The article ends by raising two important points. The law of human liberty demands their fulfilment. They are: (1) Repatriation compulsorily assured; (2) voluntary con- tracts, without possibility of deception. The first could be guaranteed in the agreement to be drawn up between the two colonies, if Angola could exact the fulfilment of such a clause. The second depends on the free will of the native, in desiring to go to those islands. It is true today the native is so worn down by working on the roads and giving his services far from home that lie hardly has any fixed habitation, and would, perhaps, not be reluctant to emi- grate, in the belief that there is no difference between one place and another. That the natives are well treated and have medical assist- ance in Sao Tome we have no doubt. There would have been similar assistance in Angola (some pri ate agricultural enter- prises do have it as an exception), but the Government, one may say, has abandoned the project. . . . Preventive vaccina- tion for smallpox should be compulsory, and sleeping sickness reduced to the minimum by the extinction of the tsetse fly WILL DUBANT of "The Story of Philosophy" nPMi best-selling non-ficlion book in America* ac- -* cording to the official list of The linker and Taylor Company, the country's largest book-wliolesalers, is THE STORY OF By WILL DURA NT The Lives and Opinions of BACON 'SPINOZA 'KANT- VOLTAIRE SPENCER ook, a masterpiece .... The secret of its 'SUCS3S3 is th: author a commanding g;nius as a writer .... Dr. Duxaot's epigrams Hash; he it, full of wit ... . These chapters, as pieces of sheer literary art, an' better than anything this country has \ct given us ... . We don't wonder thai people are buying this book faster than the publishers can print it. ['"or sheer living interest, it heats any novel thai we have read in a decade." — John llaynes Holmes. 1'a.tlor of the New York Com- munity Church. , , , ^ "I must say very frankly that I have not been en- thralled by any hook in months as I have been by The Story of Philosophy . 1 sat si\ hours with it at the first reading, utterly unconscious of where the train was or of what was going on. When I got home I grabbed the lirst chance to begin again." — Rev. Frederick Lynch, The Christian Century. <J "Full of wonder and delight." — John Mary. <J "A liberal education." — Brooklyn Eagle. <J "Fascinating." — Stuart I'. Sherman. <J "Brilliant."- Boston Transcript. ^ "Kxciling. " — He wood Broun. •First Edition— Mav ?»/n— Sold O.il •♦Seeond Edition— June 8th -Sold Out •♦•Third Edition -June 17th -Sold Om ••••Fourth Edition— June 28th— Sold Out •••••I deli Edition— July WA— Sold •••••♦Sixth Edition— Julv 15th— Sold Out ' 'Seventh Edition Juh ' 'nd Sold Out ••'••• -]-,:,.-l,ili Edition— August Hlh— Sold Out. "■♦♦••••'•Ninth Edition Xiiqusl "<(h Sold Out . •••••Tenth Edition— September 4th -Now Heady A To; 0 Copies in 15 Weeks •I Octavo. 586 Pages, 21 Illustrations, $5 at all Bookstores SIMON \.".'. SCH1 STER, Publishers of Books 37 West 57th New York City When irritina to advertisers, please mention The

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Sept. 15, 1926] The Nation %£ 1 he development of crimino- logical theory and procedure, pena! and reform methods, are here fully discussed. There are chapters on the physical and psychological conditions of criminality and of the child criminal. $3.00 ALFRED A. KNOPF, 730 Fifth Ave., New York '& a projection of its future by Jerome 'Dowd J in the nation. The result of a quarter century of thorough research. By the Pro- fessor of Sociology at the University of Okla- homa. $5.00 \L /jv Ethel Davis Seal A practical and exceed- ingly informative book on interior decorai mfortable and at- I tractive homes at mini- j mum cost. Overflow- ing with wise suggestions and concrete illu tions. By the author of "Furnishing the little House." Illus. $2.50 Publishers of Enduring Books please mention The Nation

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256 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3193 and by the abandonment of those regions where such extinc- tion may prove impossible. No native should be allowed to go to work in regions other from that where he lives, unless there first be provided adequate housing arrangements, and unless he be furnished with appropriate clothing. Finally, we should look after him not only as representing one of the resources of the Colony but, first and foremost, because it is a humani- tarian duty which civilization puts upon us. The same issue of the Jornal states that: The active Commercial Association of Bine (Associaciio Comercial), which is headed by our dear friend, Senhor An- tonio da Fonseca Santos, who is an able and earnest defender of the interests of the Plateau, sent to Loanda the following opinion en native labor which we reproduce with pleasure, and with which we fully agree: Sir: 1 have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excellency's circular concerning the agreement which is being sought with Sub Tome for the supply of native labor. This association cannot fail to support Your Excellency's attitude since it lias been declaring for years that the population has decreased in this and in other neighboring districts to such a point that the planters of Bihe have found themselves forced to reduce their areas under cultivation, while some have had to abandon agriculture completely. In the year which just closed this district had already ceased to produce sufficient wheat for its own consumption; and in the year now beginning, for the same reason, the sowings have been so reduced that the harvest will not yield half the required amount. And thus we shall turn to Australia in search of our bread, paying in gold which costs us such great sacrifices. And this for lack of workers! First it was Sao Tome which took the best of the population — by the hundreds and thousands per year- never to return. After- ward it was the needs of agriculture and of the railways of Ben- guela, of Loanda, and of Mossamedes which took from us in these uist years more than 20.000 blacks — who also stayed away, some if them were victims of sleeping sickness. Later there were the mines of Katanga and the diamond mines which provoked a formidable exodus with the glitter of their gold and the illusion of fantastic promises. There are also the methods by which in the past years the authorities made up the tax-rolls and secured the payment of this native tax, and the way in which they have recruited labor for road work. These factors also augmented the exodus. Thus, sir, is the district of liihC- reduced almost entirely to women, children, and unfit. . . . No Money for Peking! MR. EUGENE CHEN, Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Canton (South China) Government, on July 14 handed to the American Consul for transmission to the Minister at Peking a note concluding as follows: None is so blind as to fail to see that the present phantom government in Peking is a creation of a brace of medieval mili- tarists and a bunch of Mandarin statesboys and states-coolies whose obvious purpose is to grab the proceeds of whatever tariff doles and loans America and the other Powers may be willing to grant in order to maintain a status quo that conflicts with every vital interest of Nationalist China. Any payment of tariff moneys to Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tso-lin must necessarily mean that America and the other interested Powers — through the machinery of the unified, Brit- ish-controlled Chinese Maritime Customs — will be (a) paying national revenues collected throughout the whole of China to two transient usurpers of detached pieces of Chinese territory, and (b) subsidizing these two militarists to continue the prose- cution of civil war against the Kuominchun and Canton, who are the two modern arms of Nationalist China, and thus assist militarism to dominate and flourish in China. And specifically it will mean that America and the other Powers will be collect- ing the increased customs revenues of Canton and handing the same to the medieval Wu and the ex-bandit Chang in order to enable them the better to fight and attempt to destroy the greatest center of Chinese Nationalist thought and activity, which is Canton. I have to add that any loan or loans to be contracted by the agents of Wu and Chang on the security of the promised surtaxes shall not be recognized by the Nationalist Government. And I have the honor deliberately to warn America and the other interested governments that Chinese repudiation of any such loan or loans may conceivably create a situation rendering it imperative for the principle of repudiation to be extended to other loans contracted in the interests of reaction and militar- ists and mandarin exploitation and plunder. Canton, July 1U Chen Yu-Jen Contributors to This Issue Hendrik W. van Loon is the author of "The Story of Mankind" and "Tolerance." Harbor Allen is publicity director of the Civil Liberties Union. Carleton Beals is in Mexico, where he has been for several years studying political and social institutions. Arthur Gleason, one of the most courageous liberals of his day, was known both here and in England for his articles on labor. Louis Fischer, who has been The Nation's correspondent in Moscow, is now in Berlin. Raymond A. Preston has taught courses in the literature of Godwin's period at Brown University and Washing- ton and Jefferson College. Mary Ross is associate editor of the Survey. James Fuchs is known as a writer for the liberal and radical press. Keith Hutchison is a young Englishman connected with the London office of the New York Herald Tribune. Jane Perry Clark is secretary of the International Mi- gration Service. Ernestine Evans spent the greater part of last year in Russia. STUDENT WORKER CONTEST First prize $100 Second prize $50 Third prize $25 For particulars address The Nation 20 Vesey Street New York, N. Y. NOW IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TIME OF THE YEAR FOR A VACATION IN THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. COME for a week-end, a week, or a month to Western View Farm. At. no other time of the year is this spot so gloriously beautiful or so wholesomely invigorating as in September and October. Splendid heating equipment in the house augmented by roaring log fires. Booklet and illustrated literature on request Edward G. Ohmer, Western View Farm Telephone — New Milford 410 New Milionl, Conn. AURORA HEALTH FARM ^rrTstown1 {Not a sanitarium; not a boarding-houie ) NEW JERSEY Beautiful country; elevation 700 ft.: only one hour from New York. Open all year. Suitable for those rcjquiring diet, electro- and hydro- therapy. Meal for rent and convalescence. Personal medical super- vision. Homelike atmosphere. No bed-ridden, contagious or mental cases. Robert Schulman, M. D., Medical Director. ADOLPH WeIZBNHOFFER, M. D., Associate Physician. Telephone— MORRISTOWN 18 2 0. A MOSCOW DIARY A graphic human-interest story of the life of the people in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth. 51.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. OHARL.ES H. KERR & CO. S47 East OUio Street, Chicago REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS £" irect from the Makers Manufacturer's Price Suit Lengths Cut to Oi er. Price $2.00 per Yard. Postage Paid NEWALL, ISO Stornoway, Scotland. Write ft* patterns listing shades desired MMnORBBH When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUND E n Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, I No. 3194 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS : m TORIALS: The Polities] Zoo The Golden Ekk Was Jesus a Myth ! THE LATEST AMENDMENT TO THE DECALOGUE. By H. van Loo SACCO-VANZETT1— A FEDERAL LYNCHING. New Light on an Old Stovy. By Thomas O'Connor Paving th.' Way. By Arthur Warner The Red Raids. Bv Robert W. Dunn THE EMOTIONAL NATURE OF THE CHINESE By Pearl S. Bud THE LOST ART OF PROFANITY. By John Nicholas Beffel 270 IN THE DRiri'W \Y. By the Drifter 272 CORRESPONDENCE BOOKS. ART. PLAYS: Poems. By Fos er Damon First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 274 The United States of Europe. By William MacDonald -7."i Add Americana. By B. H. Havnin 275 History by Finance. By Drew Bond L'Tu I in Brief Art: Roy Van Auken Sheldon. By Pierre Loving '277 Drama: Square of the Hypotenuse. P.y Joseph Wood Krutch INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : Abyssinia Appeals to the League. By J. M. Kenworthy OSWALD GARRISON VII, LARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH MANAOTNG Eihtor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subsc U'tion Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico : to Canada, S5.50 : and to foreign countries of the Postal Union. $6.00. NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street. New York City. Cable Address: Nation. > H York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of iptions and Advertising : Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn London W. C. 1, England. SACCO AND VANZETTI have been in prison for more than six years ; for more than five years they have stood convicted of an unusually brutal and commercial-minded murder. Yet there is a wide belief, amounting almost to cer- tainty among impartial persons who have studied the case, that these two idealistic — even if mistaken — Italian radicals could not have committed the crime and that their trial and conviction was a monstrous perversion of justice possible only because of the wild hysteria against aliens and Reds with which the American atmosphere was surcharged in 1920 and 1921. The five years that have intervened since the conviction of these men have been filled with a continu- ous attempt to obtain a new trial — so far fruitless. We hope that will not be the outcome of the latest argument, begun before Judge Webster Thayer on September 13. This appli- cation is based upon new evidence, including the confession of Celestino F. Madeiros, and affidavits from Department of Justice agents showing that that branch of the federal government worked to "railroad" two innocent men to the electric chair. If, in the cooler atmosphere of 1926 Sacco and Vanzetti are unable to obtain a new trial, belief in their innocence will not be lessened, but the judicial machin- ery of Massachusetts will stand convicted of unwillingness to right a mistake even though it cost two human lives. TWO MONTHS AFTER the conviction of these hitherto obscure Italian radicals The Nation presented their story (September 28, 1921) in an article entitled Sacco- Vanzetti- A Reasonable Doubt. It has since commented many times upon the case and rejoices that the New York World, with its fine flair for exposing injustice, has lately been giving splendid publicity to the effort to obtain a new trial. In the present issue we set forth the story of Sacco and Vanzetti in the light of recent disclosures and with a perspective of half a dozen years. All this, as our articles show, tends to fix responsibility more and more upon the Department of Justice under A. Mitchell Palmer not only for creating the hysterical state of mind that convicted Sacco and Vanzetti but also for having actually insti- gated the prosecution in order to cover up the scandal of the hounding to his death of Andrea Salsedo. With this in mind William G. Thompson, counsel for the condemned men, several months ago asked the Department of Justice to give him access to its files on the case. The request would seem more than reasonable, but so far it has gone unanswered. Why? What is the Department of Justice trying to cover up? HARRY DAUGIIERTY, the first American cabinet offi- cer to be on trial, with his co-defendant, Thomas W. Miller, once Alien Property Custodian, has heard Emory R. Buckner outline the Government's case against them. The indictment alleges that the defendants defrauded the Gov- ernment of their "honest, unbiased, and unprejudiced serv- ices" while in office; the charge in plain English is that Mr. Daugherty and Colonel Miller accepted in September, 1921, at least part of a bribe of $391,000 to effect quickly and painlessly the transfer of seven million dollars' worth of war-impounded securities of the German-owned Ameri- can Metal Company to the Societe Suisse pour Valeurs de Metaux. The transaction was put through and the money paid by Richard Merton, German financier, actively inter- ested in both companies, who was Mr. Buckner's first witness for the prosecution. Mr. Merton was in a great hurry to have his claim settled; he feared that to engage a lawyer would be a lengthy process and would in addition be too costly; he was glad, therefore, to discover certain obliging persons representing the Alien Property Custodian's office, who could put through his claim in seventy-two hours after he presented the proper papers, and he was only too happy to pay to the late John T. King, acting presumably for Colonel Miller, a retainer of $50,000 in addition to the 5 per cent "bonus" of $391,000 when the transfer was made. MR. MERTON, OF COURSE, did not concern himself with what became of the "bonus," but Mr. Buckner did. To his own satisfaction he has traced part of it to Mr. Daugherty and Colonel Miller; an item of some $22,000 cannot be finally located, but was deposited in the account of Mr. Daugherty, of his brother, or of his intimate friend, Jess Smith, now dead. Mr. Buckner says that he cannot trace the deposit with more accuracy than this because Harry Daugherty destroyed the ledger sheets of the bank for that particular day. This, of course, is unfortunate for Mr. Daugherty. If the Government should prove that he re- ceived a mere twenty-odd thousand dollars on the deal it would be more unfortunate still, for who got the rest? And

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258 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 if $50,000 of the sum paid by Mr. Merton to Colonel Miller should be traced to the latter's personal account by means of the numbers of the bonds, as Mr. Buckner promises it will be, how very cruel that will be! An ordinary hold-up man who accumulates fifty thousand dollars sometimes finds himself spending twenty or thirty years in jail as a result. The maximum punishment for Mr. Daugherty's and Colonel Miller's offense is two years in jail or $10,000 fine; and if they had had the foresight to demand $100,000 in nice, anonymous cash, delivered, say, in a black bag, they might today be pursuing their ordinary occupations, untroubled by annoying lawsuits and expensive criminal lawyers. What a majestic thing is the law! ENGLAND IS WAGING two private wars in China- one in South China, at Canton, the other in the heart cf China, on the Yangtze River. Canton has been boy- cotting British goods because British troops killed Chinese in Canton in June, 1925, and the boycott has well nigh ruined the great commercial fortress which the British have built at Hongkong. (They stole that rocky island from China in the First Opium War, eighty years ago.) Now the British have announced that the pickets who en- forced the boycott will be treated as pirates, and have landed troops to protect the docks and force the Chinese to accept British manufactures. The Chinese troops are watching from the buildings on the other side of the Bund — and no man can tell if or when their patience will end. But when it does end, the cables will report British heroism, as they did from the Upper Yangtze, and the Chinese will complain of British bullying. British gunboats have also got into trouble on the Yangtze at Wanhsien, twelve hundred miles from the sea. No treaty gives them any right in those waters — only force and the tradition that the Yangtze is a British "sphere of influence." A British steamer nosed its way into the midst of a local war, capsizing a sampan loaded with Chinese troops. A dozen Chinese, apparently, were killed, and the Chinese held the British responsible. They seized two British merchant ships and took six Britisli offi- cers prisoner. Thereupon three British warships went into action, rescuing five of the six officers but leaving the ships in Chinese hands. Seven men wearing His Majesty's uni- form lost their lives in the process. They were brave; per- haps they were heroic. been chased out of Hankow and away from the Yangtze River by the Cantonese. The Cantonese can hardly be held responsible for the acts of their enemies; Wu is far in the interior; and the Peking "Government" has no power over anyone. So British wrath is at a loss for a victim. There is just one way to keep the foreign Powers from inextrica- bly involving themselves in China's civil wars; and that is for their intrusive sloops and gunboats and auxiliary mer- chantmen to head full-steam for the open sea. They cannot help; they have already done colossal harm. Is there no decency left in our vaunted white civilization? THE FIFTH ATTEMPT at the assassination of Premier Mussolini brings even more magnificent results than the other four. An unknown young man hurls a bomb; bomb breaks glass in the duce's car ; chauffeur steps on gas ; bomb falls to ground; eight bystanders receive slight wounds from explosion; duce commands car to be stopped, sticks head out of broken window, demands all details of what has happened, inquires after victims in hospital, sends condolences to relatives, appears in person before shouting thousands, and makes a fiery speech, punctuated by yells of Viva! Viva il Duce! "As I have abolished strikes, I intend absolutely to stop periodical attempts against my life. ... I am firmly determined, if necessary, to reestablish capital punishment. . . . Excessive and cul- pable tolerance of plotters beyond our frontiers cannot any longer be tolerated. ..." This is admirable strategy; by it Mussolini utters a not too veiled threat to France, changes criminal procedure, and proceeds "with characteristic Fas- cist determination and method," and not a soul in Italy dares say him nay — out loud. A dramatic scene like this is vastly superior to the tactics of the Spanish Primo de Rivera, who can think of nothing better than to conduct a plebiscite in which persons in favor of the present govern- ment may vote yes and those opposed may stay at home and vote nothing. It is reported that Spanish women, "appar- ently above 18 years of age," who are permitted to vote for the first time, are having a lot of fun exercising the fran- chise, and that disaffected persons who do not care for de Rivera are voting anyway because that seems safer. This is a handsome method of establishing popular government, but it pales beside the melodrama carried through so well in Italy. THIS HEROISM LOSES its glamor when seen through Chinese eyes. What business had British warships a thousand miles in the interior of China? The British gun- boats concluded the "heroic" episode by bombarding the defenseless city of Wanhsien — "effectively," the cables say, estimating that as a result there are five thousand fewer men and women and children to munch rice in that miser- able city. And now the cables burn with stories of protest meetings called by the foreigners in Shanghai and Hankow. demanding "strong" action! The British Government has ordered the flagship of its Asiatic squadron, with a prince of the royal blood aboard, to Hankow, 600 miles from the sea ; and the United States has concentrated five warships at that same far-off city, with a dangerous if traditional sense of the necessity for solidarity among the foreigners. Fortunately, the British cannot quite decide against whom to vent their wrath. Yang Sen, whose men dared match bullets with the British, is a sort of bandit-subordinate of Wu Pei-fu, hitherto dear to British hearts, and Wu has just PUBLICITY PAYS; exposure pays; and the greatest governments in the world feel it worth while to heed the imponderables. The curiously phrased notes recently composed by the British and Italians in explanation of their course in Abyssinia give new faith to the disillusioned. Abyssinia, it will be recalled, is the only remaining truly independent country in Africa; Liberia is really an Ameri- can ward, and the limited "independence" granted Egypt will hardly be counted real by anyone recalling British action in the Stack incident. As the memory of the resounding Italian defeat at Adowa in 1896 grows dimmer, Italian eagerness to end Abyssinian independence waxes keener. Italy, however, needs foreign support. Now, England and Italy have had their little difficulties in Asia Minor and on the borders of Italy's other African colonies, and, as Commander Kenworthy points out elsewhere in this issue, "independent" Abyssinia seemed a good place to make mutual concessions. Since neither Power had any rights there whatever, concessions would cost nothing. But

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 259 the deal was too bare-faced; it stank. France objei British Liberals protested; Abyssinia complained to the League of Nations, and the League forwarded the coin- plaint to the guilty parties. They have replied with touch- ing innocence. They were, it seems, "misunderstood"; they intended merely to "coordinate" their economic in- terests without in any way prejudicing the freedom of action of Abyssinia, and their agreements were subject to Abyssinian approval. In other words, they were not merely misunderstood; they did not mean anything at all in the first place. As the Manchester Guardian says: A secret agreement is meaningless unless it is intended to have results. Not only has this one failed to produce results, but its secrecy has been broken, and two Great Powers have been forced to declare publicly that so far from expecting results to follow none were ever contem- plated. MAJOR GENERAL CLARENCE R. EDWARDS, re- tired, commander of the Twenty-sixth Division in the World War. has faith in the youth of America. He has just said as much, and more, to an American Legion Con- vention in Niagara Falls: I believe our youth is the most idealistic of any youth in the world, and when a crisis approaches has a greater and more accurate vision than their elders. . . . Having much faith in the idealism of our youth I am not scared to the point of surrender at this insidious poison that is being injected into the minds of the youth of this country . . . this internationalism, this brotherly love, this "no more war," "outlaw war," "peace and freedom," and "industrial democracy." In addition to this touching faith in the young men and women of America, the general thinks it would be nice if before the next war sets in a law were passed drafting every citizen and every branch of industry into war service. "Pass this law," he says optimistically, "and no nation or combination of nations will dare to challenge us if we learn to appreciate and develop the idealism of our youth." Thus the professional soldier speaks. The general, however, added a note of sober truth to his remarks : "I don't know," he told the Legionnaires, "of any lot of men better ac- quainted with hot air and gas than you. . . ." The general ought to know. WHAT IS A FLAG? What is this fetish-worship that brings millions of children to attention every morning, mumbling a form of words before an idol made of cloth? A day may come when these symbols of national- ism will seem as much child's play to us as they would to a visitor from Mars. Meanwhile South Africa is seething with a sort of religious war of flags. The Nationalists want a flag of their own, recognizing their independent status; the old Britons roar that never, never, never will they desert the Union Jack. Already King George's whiskers have vanished from the stamps, replaced by springboks and old Dutch sailing-ships and orange trees; and the Dutch language has appeared beside English even upon the sacred silver coins. The British colonials — always more British than the British of England — foam with rage, and break up the Nationalist meetings. "I'll tell you what it is to be patriotic in Durban," a labor leader shouted at a Natal audience that was interrupting speakers with boos and "Rule, Britannia" and shouts of "God bless the Prince of Wales." "It's to buy an American motor car and put in front of it a Union Jack mad,' in Germany." FOR Till': FIRST TIME since the war an international congress of philosophers is being held. It is a sad comment upon modern scholarship thai Die war mobilized n that elite which is supposed to devote itself in aca- demic quiet to the serene processes of thought. The his- torians and scientists, with a few honorable exceptions, revised their texts, threw mud at the enemy, and de- scended into the streets to make four-minute speeches full of dishonest piffle. Even the philosophers proved human. Eucken and Wundt and Alois Riehl were among the famous ninety-three Germans who signed a manifesto about things of which they could not possibly know anything; in America even Royce and Dewey and Santayana got out war philoso- phies. And even after the war was over the scientists felt that patriotism forbade them to meet with their German colleagues. Today Hindus, Frenchmen, Germans, Japanese, English, and Americans meet as equals in the old Harvard Yard. Are they really less provincial than when they met amicably in those far-off days before the war? HARDER THAN SWIMMING THE CHANNEL these days it is to keep up with the record for Channel swimming. As we go to press Georges Michel, the intrepid French baker, holds the championship with a time of eleven hours, five minutes, but there is no telling how soon this will be reduced to ten hours or less. M. Michel is reported a strong but not a swift swimmer; if a really fast performer should appear he might breakfast comfortably in Gris Nez and arrive in Dover not more than a few minutes late for lunch, thus avoiding the tiresome business of snatching, on the fin, so to speak, a bite held out by a friend in a rowboat. Speaking of nourishment, there is M. Michel's recipe for Channel-crossing: he not only sustained himself solely on sugar soaked in cognac but his first act on landing was to run for a double whiskey and soda. Is it not whiskey that shortens life, weakens man's physique, makes his organs ineffective and his muscles flabby? How much nicer if M. Michel had performed his feat on a glass of milk and a bottle of sarsaparilla! But of course the Channel is wet, so that the Frenchman was breaking no laws, and anyway, didn't our Trudy swim across on a perfectly constitutional beef steak? THE FIRST THREE NUMBERS of the New Criterion, a British quarterly edited by T. S. Eliot, seem to estab- lish this journal as the most interesting clearing-house of literary ideas that we now have. It represents an attitude without precedent in England and almost incomprehensible in America; it is at once revolutionary and traditional. It is revolutionary with respect to the current romantic decadence, being without the messianic special plea so fa- miliar and disastrous to intellectual order in America; yet it attempts the definition of a continuous Greco-Roman cul- ture as a principle of unity in Western civilization, of which, some of us notwithstanding, we are an extension. Its critical method is rationalism and it demurs from senti- mentally absolute values; it has the perspicacity to see that diverse expressions of a living order, such as those of Gertrude Stein and the late T. E. Hulme, may participate in the same discipline. Americans will observe with inter- est this effort toward an ordering of the modern spirit.

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260 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 The Political Zoo ANOTHER batch of primaries has rushed across the headlines like a comet, and now the political analysts are filling the inside pages with their sage interpretations. Fortunately for the analysts, some of whom are hired by Republicans and some by Democrats, some of whom write for Dry papers and some for Wet, there were enough pri- maries and enough varying results to satisfy everybody. The net result is a jumble of cross-currents, and an honest forecast can hardly predict more than "Cloudy, with un- certain breezes and varying temperatures." In Wisconsin Senator Lenroot, with all the Adminis- tration support behind him, could not stand against the La Follette influence, and lost the Senatorial nomination to Governor John J. Blaine. But Fred R. Zimmermann, a handshaking politician who had grown up as a disciple of La Follette and loudly advertised his long friendship with the old chief, was able to defeat Herman Ekern, the State Attorney General, who was the real La Follette choice, for the nomination for Governor. The Coolidge Republicans deserted their own candidate and flocked to help Zimmer- mann in his attack upon the "Madison ring" — meaning the stalwarts who stood by La Follette principles. The result gives little substantial comfort to anyone. Blaine's certain election will add one to the insurgent list in the Senate, but he is not a disciple of the old crusading type; and the staunch Progressives have lost something of their grip on the party machinery in Wisconsin. In New Hampshire Senator Moses, independent con- servative, who fought the Administration on the World Court issue, defeated Robert P. Bass. Dry, pro-World Court, and Roosevelt Progressive. In Massachusetts and Arizona Senators Butler and Cameron won the Republican renomi- nations without opposition, and Senator Oddie had small difficulty in Nevada; but in all three States the Republican stalwarts face real fights against the Democrats in Novem- ber. In Georgia Representative Upshaw, prize orator of the Anti-Saloon League, was defeated — by a man who in- sists that he is as Dry as Upshaw. There is no tidal wave discernible in these results, al- though they confirm the result long predicted — that the Coolidge Republicans will lose control of the next Senate and perhaps of the House. There were fifty-five nominal Republicans in the last Senate, but four of these — La Fol- lette, Norris, Frazier, and Nye — formed a Progressive Re- publican Opposition of their own; and Borah, Howell, Norbeck, Couzens, and Hiram Johnson were certainly not to be counted upon. In the next Senate Brookhart and Blaine will be added to this powerful little insurgent group; and half a dozen Democrats threaten to defeat sitting Republicans. Ex-Senator David Walsh in Massachusetts is waging effective war against the President's crony, Mr. Butler, who singularly lacks capacity for making other friends; the Dry revolt against Senator Wadsworth in New York State threatens his career; Arizona. Oklahoma, Mary- land, Nevada, and even Oregon are today in the doubtful column. Even if Pennsylvania and Illinois soddenly elect the Republicans in whose behalf so many millions were mis- spent, it is unlikely that the Senate which sniffed so long at Newberry will seat these men whose expenses so over- shadow his. But what if the Senate does turn against the Presi- dent? What will it stand for? There is plenty of latent discontent in the country, but it is not focussed. Outside of the great cities the wet-and-dry issue does not excite the masses of the voters. The good old tariff leaves the 1926 citizen unexcited. The World Court, hard as it has been ridden by the professional interpreters, is scarcely a vivid national issue. A generation that has seen the corporations withstand a score of deadly thrusts no longer answers to the old battle-cries, and the exposures of vast corruption have been so widespread that they have left the country numb rather than indignant, and uncertain where to look for a remedy. The Democrats appear to the ordinary voter simply as the Outs who want to get in. They have dickered and dealed on petty sectional lines, stultifying themselves by bargain- ing with Mr. Mellon to support his millionaire income-tax theories, and failing to convince the country of the sin- cerity of their interest in the people's cause. The party did not give Senator Walsh effective support in his attack on the oil leases, or follow up Senator Wheeler's exposure of the Ohio gang in Washington. In every real economic battle — Muscle Shoals, farm relief, the sugar tariff, railroad regu- lation, and all the rest — they have left leadership to the overworked Republican insurgents. Why, in these circumstances, should any reasonably disillusioned citizen be excited by the prevailing winds of national politics? What if politicians themselves have tired of the canny little Yankee who gives out such diverse state- ments through his Official Spokesman at Paul Smith's; they offer the voter in exchange only a Lowden or a Longworth, men who may be able to round up the delegates at a con- vention but are as impotent to stir voters as a James N. Cox or a John W. Davis. On the Democratic side there is always "Al" Smith. But what does "Al" Smith stand for? It would be a healthy thing if this country could squelch the Klan spirit by electing a Catholic to the Presidency, but membership in a religious minority which has suffered per- secution is hardly sufficient credentials for the Presidency. Governor Smith has the indispensable quality of person- ality; he has proved executive ability; but where does he stand on any national issue of importance? No one knows. The campaign for his nomination is being waged on per- sonality, and on personality and religion alone. They are not enough. The country is politically apathetic. Both Republican and Democratic parties shelter whole zoos of political speci- mens, but not within or without either of them is there a clear-cut issue to fire the country. Labor, too easily de- pressed by the results of 1924, has abdicated its task of political leadership. The farmers have not yet learned the lesson of organization. Individuals stand aghast and per- plexed as they watch the growing control of the country's life by the vast corporations centering in Wall Street. But so long as corporation control provides the relatively com- fortable material basis of existence which still exists in America, effective political revolt seems unlikely. And we should like to feel surer than we do that the necessary study was being carried on to make eventual revolt intelligent and effective.

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 261 Was Jesus a Myth t THE publication in America of C.eorg Brandes's "Jesus, A Myth," contending that no such person as Jesus ever lived and that He is as completely a myth as Hercules or Prometheus, has already produced newspaper headlines. Yet this theory, far from being new, belongs to the childhood of biblical criticism. The roots from which it developed go back at least a century and a halt"; its fully developed form is some fifty years old; and it is, indeed, one of the most immediately obvious solutions of the difficulties which the study of the growth of Christianity involves. As everybody knows, the New Testament is extremely unsatisfactory as a series of historical documents. That it remained for so many centuries unquestioned is due chiefly to the fact that the great age of the Church occupied a period before the development of the most elementary prin- ciples of historical criticism. Centuries which were accus- tomed to believe that a certain barbarous summary of the Iliad was written by an eye-witness of the Trojan war and accepted in all good faith the forged Donation of Constan- tine were not likely to criticize the fundamental documents supporting their faith. Even Luther definitely declared his lack of interest in the harmonizing of the four Gospels. far back as 1782 the German scholar Karl Fried- rich Bahrdt developed the theory that Jesus was a more or less passive tool in the hands of a secret order among the Essenes who used Him as the means whereby they might detach the Jewish people from their somewhat materialistic conception of the function of the Messiah, and when, some three-quarters of a century later, Bruno Bauer was seeking for some explanation of the absence of any strictly contem- porary evidence of the existence of Jesus he gave this theory of the secret society a new development. Boldly moving the date of the Gospels forward to the second century, he declared that the myth of Jesus was invented out of whole cloth about the time of Nero. Various heathen philosophers, notably Seneca, had, so he argued, developed the ethics of Christianity but had failed to popularize their ideas, so they deliberately invented the figure of Jesus in order to add the charm of an heroic personage and the sanction of the supernatural. Such theories solve certain historic difficulties but they are a little less credible than the most naive supernatural- ism. Like those rationalistic explanations of the miracles which make Jesus a sort of Houdini who was, besides, remarkably favored by chance in the perpetration of decep- tions, they demand more credulity than the miracles them- selves and remind one of the taunt hurled at a famous rationalist by one of the faithful who said "He will believe anything, provided only it is not in the Bible." Myths are not so much the result of deliberate fabrication as of a process by which tales are gradually adorned as they pass from mouth to mouth. If Jesus is a myth He was not deliberately invented by any benevolent secret society but grew, instead, by slow stages out of the needs of men. Doubtless the majority of competent scholars, Christian or skeptic, would agree that the Jesus of tradition is not identical with the Jesus of history. To most, however, it will seem probable that however great the proportion of myth there was, nevertheless, some historic figure about whom myths could crystallize. There is not, at present, any convincing contemporary evidence of His existence. Should the recently discovered translation of Josephus, containing the reference to Jesus which has generally been supposed to be a late interpolation, really lie as old as it is said to be, we should at last have an almost conclusive proof of the historicity v( Jesus. The Golden Egg THANKS to the recent reappointment of Henry H. Glassie to the United States Tariff Commission, that body can continue unhampered its investigation of the rela- tive costs of producing eggs in this country and China. The President has announced the reappointment "tempo- rarily," although he is aware of the widespread opposition to it in Congress. Senator Weller, Republican, as well as Senator Bruce, Democrat, representing Maryland, Mr. ('■lassie's State, are openly opposed to him. There can be no hope of a confirmation. It may seem strange that Mr. Coolidge has flown thus in the face of a Senatorial rejection; but two other of his appointees now cling to their jobs by a toehold so precarious that there is grave doubt as to the legality of their votes. These are Commissioners Edward B. Brossard and Sherman J. Lowell. Comptroller General McCarl has ruled that they can draw no salaries for their present labors unless they are confirmed by the Senate, which refused at its last ses- sion to confirm them. Unless it does act favorably, there will be a legal question as to the validity of their official acts; and with Commissioner Glassie's place unfilled there would be only three sound and unclouded votes — which is not a majority of the commission — on eggs. Mr. Glassie's vote is valid, although Congress passed a special act to disqualify him from voting in the sugar case because Mrs. Glassie's family owned a sugar plantation and mill. Mr. Glassie is a Democrat by official label, but not by tariff affiliations. He may be counted upon to assist in acting on President Coolidge's statement that "the Ameri- can farmer must not be undersold at home by . . . Chinese eggs"; and this is important at a time when the farmer vote must be conciliated. Under the so-called flexible provi- sion of the tariff law, the President is empowered to in- crease the rate on eggs by 50 per cent if he sees fit. An egg fit for the breakfast table now retails at five cents or more, and consumers may question whether this is too little to pay, but then, the consumer does not see, as does the poultryman, the Yellow Peril of the egg question. Dur- ing the last fiscal year we imported, almost wholly from China, nearly one one-hundredth as many eggs in the shell as we exported : 275,892 dozen, to be exact, as against 27,930,637 dozen exported. Our imports, however, are chiefly of eggs dried or frozen, and are figured by the pound. Even so, taken all together, the imports do not equal the exports, and they are an insignificant part of the total home production, which runs toward two billion dozen a year. One does not get a picture, from these figures, of an industry throttled by competition and waddling toward its grave. But the Tariff Commission, as soon as it has deter- mined the average cost of production of an egg in this country, is going to investigate average costs over the vast area of China. Most men would say it could not be done, but we may depend upon the Commissioners, picked by Calvin Coolidge, to accomplish the impossible. They are there to tend the goose which lays the golden egg.

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262 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 The Latest Amendment to the Decalogue Diaicn by Hcndrik. can Loon

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 263 Sacco-Vanzetti— A Federal Lynching New Lii^ht on an Old Story By THOMAS O'CONNOR ON December 24, 1919, at about 7:30 a. m. three em- ployees of the L. Q. White Shoe Company of Bridge- water, Massachusetts, were riding on a motor truck carry- ing a strong box containing a $80,000 payroll. They were met by an armed man standing in the street close to an automobile which contained three other men. The bandit fired and the fire was returned. The bandit jumped into the car, which sped down a side street. The truck went on, its driver in a state of collapse but the payroll intact. On April 15, 1920, at about 3 p. m. the paymaster and guard of the Slater and Morrill Company, shoe manufac- turers, in South Braintree, Massachusetts, were carrying a payroll of about $16,000 from the company's office to its lower factory through the main street. They were met by two men armed with revolvers. The two shoe-company employees were shot and killed. As the murder was com- mitted a touring car drew up, the murderers threw the money boxes into it, jumped in, and the automobile was driven away. These two crimes were among a series of daring pay- roll robberies, store holdups, and bank robberies which terrorized the inhabitants of industrial towns in eastern Massachusetts in the fall of 1919 and the winter of 1920. Captain William H. Proctor, head of the State police, took charge of the investigation of the South Braintree murder. After two or three weeks of sifting of clues the police were still at sea. In the intervals between their discouraging pursuit of bandits the local police were called upon to assist the Bos- ton office of the Federal Department of Justice in arresting anarchists and other radicals in the game of chasing the Reds, devised by Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer to head off a revolution and incidentally to win the Presidency for Mr. Palmer as a reward for saving America from the Bolsheviki. The Red raids began on January 3, 1920. Spying on Radicals One of the accommodating local police officers was Chief Michael E. Stewart of Bridgewater. On January 3, 1920, in the early hours of the morning Department of Justice agents from Boston, with the Bridgewater police, descended upon Bridgewater, routed four bewildered Lithu- anians out of their beds, and arrested them as Russian Reds. It was this introduction into the work of spying upon, arresting, and catechising radicals which was to lead Stewart, a small-town policeman, into a blunder which re- sulted in the conspiracy to send Sacco and Vanzetti to the electric chair. Having enlisted the aid of Chief Stewart, the Boston office of the Department of Justice next called for his assistance in locating one Coacci, a radical, distributor of the radical paper of one Galliani of Lynn, and friend, as it later turned out, of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Van- zetti. Coacci lived in the same house in West Bridgewater with Boda and Orciani, also friends of Sacco and Vanzetti. Sti wart had been supplied by Kelli her and West with the catechism for anarchists, and he asked Coacci: "Are you a citizen or an alien? Are you an anarchist? Opposed to any organized government? Believe in force or violence to overthrow this form of government? Have you assassi- nated' any high officials of this country?" To this last Coacci answered: "Not yet." On April 16 Stewart was asked by the Department of .lustice to look up Coacci, who had not appeared for a hearing. His excuse was that his wife was about to have a baby. Stewart, with a Department of Justice agent and Officer Lawton of West Bridgewater, found Coacci in the middle of the room in a little house near the Johnson ga- rage. He had his trunk packed and was about to leave. They suggested that his wife go with him, but she wished to have her baby on shore. Coacci, it appeared, insisted on leaving at once. He was deported from Ellis Island on April 18. Chief Stewart Pricks Up His Ears Echoes of the Bridgewater crime in December, which had died down, were reawakened in Chief Stewart's ears when it appeared a day or two after the South Braintree holdup that both crimes were probably the work of the same gang. He began making inquiries in Cochesset, a little section in West Bridgewater, to learn if there was an Italian there who owned a car. He found one. His name was Boda. Boda lived with Coacci. Stewart remembered that he had arrested Coacci as an anarchist. Coacci was a man of mystery — a newcomer, with strange-looking Italian friends. The friends were Sacco, Vanzetti, and Orciani. Some evil genius gave Chief Stewart an inspiration. He found that Coacci had worked at the L. Q. White Shoe Company in Bridgewater a few days before the attempted holdup of the payroll of that company and later at the Slater and Morrill factory until within a few days of the South Braintree robbery. The plot presented itself: Coacci had "skipped with the swag," under cover of his depor- tation. Boda, owner of the car, a small Overland, was the leader of the gang, and the unknown Italians coming under cover of night were the confederates. Stewart found Boda. He asked him about his car. Boda told him the car had been taken to the Johnson garage the day before. Then Stewart got the information from Johnson that Boda had come about having the car fixed on the day before, or the day of, the South Braintree robbery. Stewart warned Johnson not to let Boda have the car; to telephone the police when anybody came for it. While Stewart waited for the payroll bandits, what were Sacco and Vanzetti doing? Sacco was working in the shop of the Three-K shoe factory at Stoughton. Vanzetti was peddling fish in Plymouth. In their spare time they were circulating among their radical friends, attending meetings, and advising one another of the activities of the Department of Justice agents who were making a reign of terror among the Italian radicals as a part of A. Mitchell Palmer's little party. Andrea Salsedo and Robert Elia, both Italians, printed an anarchist paper in New York. Vanzetti wrote articles for the paper. Salsedo and Elia were arrested by Depart-

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264 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 ment of Justice agents in March and held prisoners in the offices of Chief William J. Flynn, head of the Division of Information, in the Park Row Building. Salsedo smuggled two letters out to Vanzetti. On receipt of the first letter Vanzetti sent money and on receipt of the second got up a meeting of Italian radicals at the Italian Naturalization Club in East Boston, on April 25. He told the story of Salsedo and was selected to go to New York to help him. Vanzetti went and came back about May 1 ; he reported at a second meeting, on May 2, attended by Boda. He said that Walter Nelles, a lawyer, advised that the Department of Justice agents were to make raids on their homes and arrest them. It was decided at that meeting to get Boda's car, notify the various "friends," and gather and conceal the radical literature. Sacco, Vanzetti, Boda, and Orciani were to meet at Johnson's garage in West Bridgewater the night of May 5. Salsedo Falls to His Death Salsedo was released from his strange prison in the Park Row building on May 3; his body came tumbling down fourteen stories to the street. Next day Vanzetti read of what had happened. He and Sacco prepared a poster an- nouncing a meeting to be held in Brockton, a few miles away, on May 9. Ke finished writing the poster on the street car on the way to Bridgewater to meet Boda and Orciani. So the four worried Italians appeared in West Bridge- water on the night of May 5, looking for Boda's car "to hide the literature and to notify the friends against the federal police." They presented themselves at the Johnson house — and sprung the trap set by Stewart. Johnson halted Boda with the warning that there was no 1920 number plate on the car. While Johnson kept them there arguing Mrs. Johnson went to a neighbor's house "to get some milk," and telephoned the police. When Mrs. Johnson came out after some ten minutes Sacco and Vanzetti became sus- picious. They walked off to take the street ear to Brock- ton. Boda and Orciani went off in Orciani's motorcycle. When the street car reached Brockton a police officer boarded it and arrested Sacco and Vanzetti. Orciani was arrested the next day. Boda was never seen again. He had had enough. At the police station Sacco and Vanzetti were found to be carrying loaded revolvers and two or three shotgun shells were found on Vanzetti. To the police and to the District Attorney they told lies — where they got their weapons, what they were doing, and what they intended to do on the night of their arrest. In the trial these lies weighed heavily against them. Tiny were the basis of the Commonwealth's assertion that they had exhibited a "con- sciousness of guilt." Later that night Stewart himself, now become master detective of payroll bandits and local inquisi- tor for A. Mitchell Palmer, came and questioned them. He found on Vanzetti the notice of the meeting to be held in Brockton on May 9, with Vanzetti set down for a speaker. Finding his supposed payroll bandit a radical, Stewart got out his anarchist catechism: Are you a citizen? Arc you an anarchist? Do you believe in the overthrow of this form of government by force or violence? To the question on anarchism Vanzetti answered mildly, and considering his predicament not unreasonably: "I like things a little differ- ent." To the "force or violence" question he answered: "If necessary." Sacco shared the same experience. When Orciani was arrested the following day he was similarly catechized. He lied to the police also. He told them he did not know Sacco, whereas Sacco had affirmed his affection for his friend Orciani. Yet in the end — and despite the fact that witnesses "identified" him — he was released because it had been found he had been at work both on the day of the Bridgewater crime and on the day of the South Braintree murder. When the police set about to get Sacco, Vanzetti, and Orciani identified, all usual procedure went by the board. The victims were not lined up to see if the witnesses could pick them out of a crowd. They were placed on exhibition in the station and witnesses came in and looked them over. Sacco's hair was rumpled, he was told to crouch down, to extend his arm as if shooting at somebody, his hat on and off — all to force a likeness to a bandit. Yet even then some of the witnesses did not identify them. The police forgot to take the names of those who declined to identify. As it was, in the murder trial there were more identification witnesses for the defense than for the State, despite the trickery of the prosecution. The district attorney, having Sacco, Vanzetti, and Orciani on his hands, had to adopt the fantastic theory of Stewart, the Bridgewater policeman — and adopt Stewart with it, for only he could apply it to the realities. Accord- ingly, Stewart secured a leave of absence from the town of Bridgewater and became the chief investigator for the Commonwealth. Captain Proctor, head of the State Police, a man of thirty years' experience in hundreds of murder and robbery crimes, wrarned the prosecuting officials that he believed they had the wrong men — and stepped out. The State's Theory The State's theory of the crimes, as Frederick G. Katz- mann, the prosecuting attorney, finally smoothed out the messages which Stewart had received from the spirit world, was as follows: The little house of Coacci, the radical and friend of Sacco, Vanzetti, and the others, near the John- son garage, was the bandit headquarters. Boda was the leader of the gang. He was a salesman, knew the roads, and had a car. That at the time of the crime the car could not run mattered little. The four Italians had come back to Bridgewater to make a get-away. Coacci was the fifth man. There had been five bandits in the South Braintree crime. Boda disappeared after he found that Sacco, Van- zetti, and Orciani had been arrested. Coacci had taken the payroll with him to Italy in his trunk when the federal Government deported him from New York City three days after the South Braintree robbery. Coacci had worked for a short time at the White shoe factory in Bridgewater, prior to the attempted holdup of the payroll there, and also had w'orked at the Slater and Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree up to within a few days of the robbery at that place. Sacco worked in a shoe factory in Stoughton. Boda had been seen ridiivr in a Buick car (the bandit car was a Bui< earlier and "waved his head" to a neighbor. It was found that Sacco had been at work on the day of the Bridgewater crime, and the prosecution decided not to charge him with participation in that. Vanzetti stood alone as the defendant in the Bridgewater case, although there were four bandits in the holdup. The government's theory was beginning to leak. Sacco was held for the South Braintree crime because it was found that he was not at work on that day. He said he went to Boston to obtain a passport for Italy — and offered to prove it. He had been

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 266 at work every other day that winter and spring. Vanzetti was his own employer. He could not give himself a certifi- cate that he had been at work. His word was not taken as to his whereabouts, nor was the word of the greater part of the Italian colony in North Plymouth. What about Coacci, the man who "skipped with the '".' immediately upon the arrest of the three Italians the police, with the help of Department of Justice agents, sought to catch Coacci, as soon as he landed on the Italian shore. They located Coacci, intercepted his trunk, had it taken back to America. The trunk was broken open and found to contain nothing except Coacci's own belongings. Yet in the face oi all this the prosecuting attorney told the jury in the murder trial at Dedham a year and a half later that Coacci escaped to Italy with the swag. \ anzetti's First Trial After the fishy identifications of Vanzetti in connec- tion with the Bridgewater crime and the rejection of wit- nesses who would not identify him Vanzetti was placed on trial. The trial was '"staged" at Plymouth in June and it "ran" for a week. The outcome was a conviction, followed on August 16, 1920, by a sentence from Judge Webster Thayer of twelve to fifteen years in State prison for assault with intent to rob. Fred H. Moore, a California lawyer, who became chief counsel after Vanzetti's Plymouth trial, had been one of the defending lawyers for Ettor and Giovannitti, leaders of the Lawrence strike of 1912, when they were tried on a charge of constructive murder. The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti at Dedham for the payroll robbery and murders at South Braintree began on May 31, 1921, and ended on July 14, when the jury, after five hours' absence from the courtroom, brought in a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree against each defendant. On the opening day of the trial the front entrance of the county courthouse at Dedham was guarded by an iron gate, behind which stood policemen and deputy sheriffs. They opened the gate, admitting only one man at a time. There was a big crowd around the courthouse, made up almost entirely of the 250 men who had been summoned as prospective jurors. Each of them, as he passed through the gate, was "frisked" for a concealed weapon. Newspaper men were felt over for guns for the first time in their career. Throughout the trial a squad of policemen, with riot guns at the ready, stood on the courthouse steps, guard- ing the place against "the anarchists." Troops of the State police patrol, on horseback, paraded about the otherwise quiet little town. Arrangements for guarding the court- house were made by the State police in cooperation with the Department of Justice, the latter under the direction of William J. Burns, whose machinery had been taken over bodily when Harry M. Daugherty came in for his hectic term as Attorney-General. The Parade of the Police Sacco and Vanzetti were lodged in the county jail at Dedham, some two blocks from the courthouse. They were taken to the courthouse in the morning in the midst of a crowd of deputy sheriffs; they were taken back at noon the same way. A squad of twenty-eight men brought them back in the afternoon and took them away at night. All through the trial this march was made four times a day, through the public streets. Though the number of police was after a time reduced, there were never fewer than six- ■,,■11 officers with the two defendants. The panel of 250 jurors was exhausted without secur- ing the required twelve good men and true, and a second panel of 250 was summoned and questioned without filling the box; a special panel was called and finally the deputies were sent out into the "highways and byways." Protest was vainly made by counsel for the defendants in regard to the manner in which the final lot of jurors was secured. Before the trial opened every person who could read a newspaper knew that "Vanzetti, convicted holdup man, goes on trial today for murder." The agreement, made in the dial, that if the defense would not introduce character witnesses for Vanzetti the State would not refer to his con- viction at Plymouth, was consequently a one-sided deal. Moore began his task in a friendly atmosphere, but it was not long before Judge Thayer and he were locking horns. Hardly a day went by that Moore and the court did not get into a wrangle in the midst of which the jury would be excused. Moore's unfamiliarity with Massachu- setts practice added to his troubles. His aggressiveness, his long black hair, his somewhat dark visage, his dour manner, together with his open espousal of the radicalism of the defendants, did not tend to put him on a good footing in that tight little New England town. At a lunch-table of newspaper men reporting the trial Judge Thayer declared: "I will show them that no damn long-haired anarchist from California can come to Massachusetts and run this court." The newspaper men reporting the trial were drawn into the battle between Moore and the court. According to Frank Sibley of the Boston Globe, Judge Thayer spoke to a group of reporters during a recess. Sibley reports the conversation as follows: "I think," said the Judge, "that I am entitled to have printed a statement in the Boston papers to the effect that this trial is being fairly and im- partially conducted." "To this nobody replied," according to Sibley, "where- upon Judge Thayer addressed one of the reporters by name. 'What do you say?' he asked. 'Is this trial being fairly and impartially conducted?' The reporter addressed replied emphatically: 'We have never seen anything like it.' " Sacco Tells All In planning the defense, Moore decided to face the whole truth, radicalism and all, and trust to the ultimate fairness of the judge and jury. The prosecution seized upon that attitude and capitalized it. The personal records of Sacco and Vanzetti, their participation in strikes and radical meetings, their visit to Mexico to avoid getting into the war, their attachment to supposedly anarchistic groups, the revelations of Chief Stewart and his anarchist catechism, all were constantly kept before the jury — and the public. Sacco took the stand in his own defense. The prosecution asked him little about the murder, but plied him with a maze of questions covering his philosophy of life, why he was against war, his attitude toward America, what he thought of Harvard College. In addition Sacco was egged into making a "soap-box" speech in the course of which he avowed his atheism. Forgotten was the ques- tion whether the defendants at the bar, under the evidence strictly related to the case, were of the band of five who killed the two shoe-company employees and ran off with the payroll. In the words of the foreman of the jury, a former chief of police of Quincy: "Damn them, they ought to hang anyway."

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266 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 The case was no longer the Commonwealth vs. Nicola and I> (0 Vanzetti; it became the Common- wealth vs. the Anarchists. Out of the mass of testimony — there were more than 160 witnesses, the majority of them called by the defense — there emerged for the State five persons who definitely placed Sacco in South Braintree on April 15. They were Mary Splaine, Frances Devlin, Louis Pelser, Carlos E. Goodridge, Lola Andrews. Each was contradicted by other eye-witnesses called by the defense. Miss Splaine, who had long been an employee of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company, had begun her active interest in catching the criminals by charging that two employees of the shoe factory plotted the robbery and murder. Before Sacco and Vanzetti had been arrested she identified as one of the bandits the picture of Anthony Palmisano, known as Tony the Wop, who, it turned out, was in jail in Buffalo at the time. At the preliminary hearing in Quincy she refused to identify Sacco positively, but eighteen months later she swore that Sacco was one of the men she saw. Carlos E. Goodridge, whose real name was Erastus Corning Whitney, had a criminal record in New York and had been in prison. There was a complaint against him in the local court for larceny. This complaint had been placed on file shortly before the Sacco-Vanzetti trial began. In vain the defense counsel sought to be allowed to show that the situation offered a motive which might have in- duced Goodridge to testify for the State. Lola Andrews was believed by the defense to »e at the mercy of the prosecution. Her testimony was contradicted by the woman who walked with her near the bandit car. Mrs. Andrews later gave the defense an affidavit which Moore used in a motion for a new trial, repudiating her testimony, but the State forced her to recant the recantation. Captain Proctor's Testimony After the Dedham trial Captain Proctor of the State Police, a firearms expert, who had at the outset told the State of his doubts as to Sacco and Vanzetti, gave the de- fense an affidavit in which he explained how he had made an "agreement" with the prosecution that he would testify that it was in his opinion "consistent" that the No. 3 bullet which killed Berardelli could be fired from the gun found on Sacco. Captain Proctor said that he warned the prose- cution that he would not testify that the bullet came from Sacco's gun. The arrangement had been made to save the State's face, fool the defense and the jury, and keep Cap- tain Proctor a government witness. To others than the defense counsel Captain Proctor, who has since died, said that the State had the wrong men. When in 1924 Moore, broken by the case and sick at heart, stepped out, the friends of Sacco and Vanzetti pleaded with William G. Thompson to take up the battle for the two men. Mr. Thompson has been for years an out- standing figure of the bar in Massachusetts. He is chair- man of the grievance committee of the Bar Association and takes the responsibilities of the legal profession seriously. Also, he is independent and takes his own stand on any issue. A member of the Union Club, moderately rich, con- servative, the interests of large trusts and wealthy clients in his keeping, he is the antithesis of his humble clients in outer respects. But while expressing his emphatic and impatient disagreement with their political and economic views, he has displayed a certain sympathy with the ideal- ism which has been the mainspring of their activities, and the charge of payroll robbery and murder he regards as a question of elementary justice. The true story behind the Sacco-Vanzetti case may be contained in the files of the Department of Justice and in the knowledge of certain men there at the time of the Palmer Red raids. According to the affidavit of one Wey- and, a former Department of Justice agent, at one time the department had ten under-cover men working on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. What were they doing? Were they helping to get them convicted to cover up the Salsedo case; to "get somebody" for the Wall Street bomb explosion of September, 1920; or were they trying to "get" them as anarchists anyway? Some of these under-cover men were on the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, collecting money, some of which they put in their own pockets. Some two months ago the Department of Justice was requested to open its record files in the Sacco-Vanzetti case and to direct employees who might have knowledge of it to tell frankly what they knew. Mr. Thompson finally appealed to Senator Butler, who in turn urged Attorney-General Sargent to grant the request. Mr. Sargent was understood to have agreed to do so and to have taken it up with the Boston office, but nothing came of it. Most unfortunately the request, made in writing, is still slumbering in the files of the Department of Justice at Washington. A rem- nant of Palmer and his gang is still in the department. Who is sitting on the lid? Paving the Way By ARTHUR WARNER IF Sacco and Vanzetti are innocent workingmen, how dnes it, happen that before their conviction for the mur- er at South Braintree Vanzetti had been found guilty of an attempted robbery at Bridgewater? With any one man there may be a single miscarriage of justice, but there can hardly be two. This, in substance, is a doubt often voiced among those who have interested themselves in the case of the two Italians, even on the part of those to whom the whole course of the murder trial appears as a farce and a frame- up. It is a natural doubt, growing out of the fact that the first conviction of Vanzetti has received no adequate atten- tion on the part of his friends and defenders, who have been preoccupied with the subsequent trial for murder. Even Fred H. Moore, when he took up the murder case at the instance of a defense committee, failed to move for a new trial for Vanzetti on the Bridgewater charges within the one-year limit prescribed by law, thus making it impos- sible to reopen the case. No, a miscarriage of justice is not likely to happen twice to the same man if it be in different parts of the country, on different charges, and at different times. But it is more than likely to happen in any one neighborhood and at a civen time, especially when that time is one of hysteria and there is a widespread community desire to get rid of a particular man or group of men. Vanzetti's trial at Plymouth was not, in fact, a separate one from the subsequent proceedings against him and Sacco at Ded- ham. It was a prelude to it, and it will take much more explaining than has so far been forthcoming from the

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 267 judicial machinery of the Norfolk-Plymouth district of Massachusetts to clear itself of the definite charge made by Vanzetti and his counsel that his trial at Plymouth was a deliberate attempt to injure him and Sacco in the murder case then pending- Lot it be recalled that Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested in May, 1920, for a payroll robbery and murder at South Braintree. Between then and their trial in the summer of 1921 Va I i was a Q. What is the difference? A. Unsteady. Q. Both the Italians and Russians run unsteadily? A. As far as that goes, I don't know. Q. Don't know how a Swede runs, do you? A. No. Q. Does a Swede run cross-h'gged? A. No. Q. You don't want to have this jury think, do you, that you can tell what the nationality of this man was by the way he ran? Do you want them to believe that? A. Yes, I do. Q. New, what nationality did he belong to? A. I believe the first thing that came into my mind was that lie was an Italan or a Russian. I would not say; he might be a Mexican for what I know. I would not say he was an Alaskan or an African. Q. You eliminate the African? A. Yes. Q. He was either a Russian or an Italian or a Greek or a Brazilian or Mexican, either one of these? A. Yes. Q. Or a Jap? A. Might be. Q. Would you say that he might be a Jap? A. No. Q. You would not say that he was a Jap or a Chinaman or an African — these three are eliminated absolutely, are they? A. Yes; nor an American. Q. I think four now are eliminated. He might be a member of any other nationality on the face of the globe? A. Yes. Q. You only got a fleeting glance at him? A. Yes. Q. You were 150 feet from him all the time? A. I came a little nearer to get behind a tree; about five feet nearer. The Red Raids By ROBERT W. DUNN A MITCHELL PALMER— perhaps you have forgotten . the name. This man was Attorney-General of the United States under Woodrow Wilson. He was also aspi- rant for the Democratic nomination for President in 1920. He was smoother, handsomer, but essentially the same type of man as Harry M. Daugherty. Perhaps you have for- gotten what Mr. Palmer did to American constitutional liberties. Then consult the "Report Upon the Illegal Prac- tices of the United States Department of Justice" issued by twelve distinguished lawyers in May, 1920. It says of Mr. Palmer: Wholesale arrests both of aliens and citizens have been made without warrant or any process of law; men and women have been jailed and held incomunicado without access of friends or counsel; homes have been entered with- out search-warrant and property seized and removed; other property has been wantonly destroyed; workingmen and workingwomen suspected of radical views have been shame- fully abused and mistreated. More than that. The report accuses Mr. Palmer of planting agents provocateur in workingmen's organizations to facilitate his wholesale and merciless raids and arrests. He also flooded the nation with lying propaganda against radicals for the purpose of justifying his illegal acts and inflaming public opinion. He intimidated, terrorized,

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268 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 finger-printed, persecuted. His agents resorted to torture, brutality, and third degree in their campaign of illegal violence. Louis F. Post, Assistant Secretary of Labor from 1913 to 1921, describes all this in his book "The Deporta- tions Delirium of 1920." It was Mr. Palmer who carried out the illegal raids of 1919 and 1920 described in Mr. Post's book. In the Janu- ary, 1920, raids Mr. Palmer arrested more than 3,000 citi- zens and aliens for the purpose of catching a few aliens guilty of membership in working-class organizations hold- ing radical views. And it may be recalled to the reader of short memory that in all these nationwide raids on alleged "dangerous reds" Mr. Palmer's men found a num- ber of stage guns used for amateur theatricals and the famous four iron balls which were placed in a pail of water and were never heard of again after their publicity value as "suspected bombs" had been adequately exploited. In extenuation of Mr. Palmer, the "fighting Quaker," it is said that he was actually seized with a delirium of Red-baiting. In fact, he was worked into such a frenzy by radical spooks that he rushed to Congress for funds, exclaiming: We have received so many notices and gotten so much information that it has almost come to be accepted as a fact that on a certain day in the future, which we have been advised of, there will be a . . . revolution, a proposi- tion to rise up and destroy the Government, at one fell swoop. The good sentinels of the American Defense Society and the National Security League echoed his siiriek of revolution. The money was voted by Congress, neatly $3,000,000 of it in one year. But it was appropriated only for the "detection and prosecution of crimes against the United States." This did not include the terrorization and deportation of aliens, a function reserved to the De- partment of Labor. Yet it was for this very purpose that Mr. Palmer expended the taxpayers' money. In cooperation with him and his adjunct William J. Flynn, Chief of the Division of Information of the De- partment of Justice, worked a number of industrial detec- tive agencies as well as some heads of the employment, "welfare," and secret-service departments of such corpora- tions as the American Woolen Company and the United States Steel Corporation. Palmer's agents assisted I open-shop concerns in arresting coal, steel, and textile strikers in 1919. They in turn placed their own under- cover agents at his disposal in his "head-hunting jamboree" of 1919 and 1920. Many of these private industrial spies were placed on the Palmer payroll as special agents. Some, like the under- cover men of the Sherman Service — America's leading labor-spy corporation — had been exempted from the draft during the war and continued to perform favors for the Government thereafter. In fact, Sherman had a working agreement with the Department of Justice in the New- England district and boasted in his sales literature of his role in the anti-Red campaign. In several instances "emis- saries" of this service staged secret raids on radical head- quarters and turned over the documentary booty to the Department of Justice. In the textile and shoe towns of New England, where Palmer conducted some of his illegal raids, these private spies were particularly active. They assisted Mr. Palmer to build up his card catalogue of 200,000 "agitators" and "ultra-radicals." The distin- guished Attorney-General referred to them as "moral rats." This background of unbridled Red hysteria stirred up by the Attorney-General and the labor spy agencies must be fully appreciated by those who would understand the Sacco and Vanzetti case. For what were these two men doing at the time of their arrest? They were, on the advice of counsel, engaged in hiding harmless anarchist tracts which, in the eyes of Mr. Palmer, were seditious. They were also arranging for a protest meeting against the mysterious murder of Andrea Salsedo, a friend and fellow countryman. Who was Salsedo? One of the aliens picked up unlaw- fully by Department of Justice agents in New York City. If subject to deportation, he should have been arrested by an immigration official of the Department of Labor. Instead he was taken into custody by the Department of Justice and held without even the knowledge of the Department of Labor. He was given no hearing or examination, such as the law requires, before an immigration official. He was subjected to the third degree by agents then connected with the Department of Justice in New York. After being held incomunicado for two months — a common procedure in those days — Salsedo's body fell from the fourteenth-story window of the Department of Justice office in Park Row on the morning of May 3, 1920. To this day his friends know nothing of the physical and mental torture which led to this homicide, except what was contained in a deposition by a fellow prisoner, Robert Elia, who asserted that Salsedo had been tortured to the verge of insanity in an effort to extract "confessions." Immedistely after the death of Salsedo Elia was rushed to Ellis Island and placed in the custody of De- partment of Labor officials, where he and Salsedo should have been lodged upon their arrest. The Department of Justice then demanded his speedy deportation and refused to cooperate with State officials in prosecuting him for the alleged offense for which he had been arrested. Such a trial would have permitted his story of the Salsedo affair to reach the public. He was immediately deported and has since died in Italy. Vanzetti had been in touch with Salsedo and upon receiving news of his death prepared a handbill for a meeting at which he himself was to speak in Brockton on May 9 to protest against the murder of Salsedo. The copy for this announcement was found on Sacco when he and Vanzetti were arrested. The contents were certainly com- municated to the Boston agent of the Department of Jus- tice. Which leads to this question: Were Sacco and Van- zetti held as suspects and charged with the South Brain- tree payroll murders in order to help cover up the Salsedo affair? It must be remembered that on that date the Department of Justice was already on the defensive in certain quarters and that United States Circuit Judge George W. Anderson had already condemned it unsparingly in the hearing on habeas corpus held for some of the de- portees in Boston. He had said: "A mob is a mob whether made up of Government officials acting under instructions from the Department of Justice or of criminals and loafers of the vicious classes." The Department of Justice obviously wanted to hush up the Salsedo affair. Sacco and Vanzetti, on their way to arrange a public meeting to protest the murder of Salsedo, were certainly not the sort of persons A. Mitchell Palmer desired to see out of prison in May, 1920.

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 269 The Emotional Nature of the Chinese By PEA1M. ONE of the most difficult adjustments the people of the Western nations have ever had to face is the adjust- ment to the new Chinese. He is freed at last from his in- herited inhibitions and is showing himself for the emo- tional being he is, with, of course, a certain temporary addition of war psychology. The citizens of the West have for a long time taken the Chinese as a matter of course. To most of them in imagination he is still the impassive, unemotional, yellow Oriental, with a stealthy step, an impenetrable face, and a swinging queue. The queue has long been obsolete. The impassivity is now gone. So is the unemotionalism. We shall have to throw away this old picture; relegate it to the attics of history. Certainly it has no reality in the present. Of course, to the person really acquainted with the Chinese, old and new, this unemotionalism has always been a myth. They are and have always been one of the most emotional races in the world. That is why now, when the old repressive bonds of their civilization, welded by Con- fucius thousands of years ago, are breaking apart, we see this natural capacity for emotion exhibiting itself, and it is frightening in its intensity. The present attitude of the young Chinese toward their country, for instance, is often emotion amounting to frenzy. There is in it the hysteria and religious devotion of a self- martyr. They are capable, many of these young persons, of letting their own blood as a wild sacrifice to the only god they worship — love of country. Patriotism, so-called, has laid hold of the imaginations and emotions of some of the younger students to such an extent that they are wholly unable to use their reasoning powers. What constitutes patriotism, in what way their country can best be served in reality, these things are impossible to dwell upon nowT in China. Youth demands an instant outlet for its exaltation. Suffering is welcomed, even courted; the weight of emotional energy must be discharged. I do not intend to discuss the proper and natural re- action of the Chinese to the treatment they have received from the West. Personally, I am wholly on their side. They have the right of it, in the main, beyond discussion. What I am interested in is the emergence of the real Chi- nese, at last, out of the trappings which their civilization has placed upon them for so long; the real Chinese, whom so few have ever seen. Yet they have been there all these centuries, sensitive, restrained, ardent, and romantic be- yond the imagination of the prosaic Westerner. For the men and women of the West have certainly an exceedingly cold emotional life in comparison to these men and women in China. The Western people are colder by nature, and with the passing of youth the brief bright moment is gone. In the Chinese emotion is potent their whole life long. Moreover, for centuries the Western peo- ples, and by these I mean primarily those of the white race, have had normal outlets for their emotions; there has been no system of ethics, no book of manners, detailed, rigid, and inflexible, bearing down against the individual, forbidding all original expression. This has tended to allow any sur- plus of emotionalism to be carried off naturally. But in the history of China we have had a condition wholly contrary; we have a people far more emotional than the Westerner by nature, a people naturally richer in ap- preciation of the emotional aspects of life, a people of high intensity to whom all or nearly all possibility of emotional expression has been denied for centuries. They have been dammed up, and now the dam is broken and the flood is alarming. It may take centuries for this to subside to anything like normal. I am well aware that in maintaining such a thesis as this I am contradicting to their faces many "old Chinese hands," who contemptuously expect to see the present ex- citement quiet clown again and impassivity and apparent apathy return. One may as well expect to see the queues come back. For the barriers, builded by ages as they were, wei e nevertheless artificial. What the West has to make up its mind to is that this Chinese we have now is the real Chinese, and he is the Chinese the world is going to have in the future. One might, of course, give any amount of evidence that the Chinese is by nature an emotional person. Take, for instance, the ancient and not infrequent custom of killing oneself after an insult, preferably on the doorstep of the individual by whom one has been insulted. Several explanations of this have been made; among others, the superstition that the ghost would haunt the enemy, that the Chinese do not value human life and die easily, that there is little sense of individualism, and so on. There is, undoubtedly, some truth in all of these. But the essence of the thing is that when one is a Chinese gentleman and has been insulted tradition denies the possibility of revenge by laying hold of the offender, and so, like a child rending its own clothes and biting its own flesh in futile anger, emotion turns upon the man himself. And anger in the Chinese has a wildness of which the people of the West know little. I have seen an angry Ameri- can; I have seen him curse and snort and swear. I have never seen him capable of the pitiless, inhuman madness of the Chinese, whose anger seizes him and makes him as helpless as a branch tossed in the wind — unless he is a gen- tleman, and then you may see it all in his eyes for one terrible moment; then his lids are dropped and his hands shake a little, his voice comes with controlled softness and he bows. He bides his time and he never forgets. Only, it is becoming the fashion not to drop lids over angry eyes, not to restrain clenched hands, and not to bow where friendship is not meant. All the years of enforced restraint are behind that anger now. I have heard an angry woman on a Chinese street scream out her fury from dawn till dark, until her face is the face of an insane pei-son and her voice is utterly gone. They have an affection of the throat, a constriction of the muscles, which they call "the anger dircase," and it comes from nothing but unbridled rage. True, it is nearly always found in the lower classes. Until now, the upper classes have restrained themselves according to custom. For many years I have taught young men and women in China. I have seen young- people in other countries; I have seen them in love and they have it badly enough, some of them. But I watch my Chinese boys and girls with twice

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270 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 the anxiety. I have seen a boy sicken and die of love for a girl he had seen but once and whose name he never knew; I have known boys and girls to commit suicide because of despair over some matrimonial arrangement. They commit suicide with the most horrifying ease. One may see this terrifying capacity for feeling in the Chinese love poetry, a feeling which has with it too often an edge of despair. The emphasis is all the more marked in that it is put into delicate, restrained words almost devoid of physical allusions, yet breathing a power as final as death itself. The Chinese have until now been a people possessed by quietism. An imposed fatalistic turn of mind, inevitable from their religions and philosophy, has rendered them seemingly impassive, and even indifferent. Now, with the breakdown of the old forms of Buddhism and the reasser- tion of nationalism, always latent, fatalism is fast disap- pearing and they are beginning to form a determination to wrest their fate from the hands of heaven and mold it nearer to their heart's desire. It is, undoubtedly, true that the present situation aggravates their high emotional state. This crisis of fever and madness must wear away to some extent. But there will remain a person new to many of us, a person who will be exceedingly easily hurt (as he has al- ways been in reality), a person whose sword will now fly from its scabbard at the slightest breath of insult where before it remained sheathed, not in cowardice or from in- sensitivity but from the restraint of dignity. It will take a good many years of sincere friendliness and honest, dis- interested treatment on the part of other nations to convince him that the world is not waiting to devour him. At such a time as this, then, when the pent-up emo- tionalism of centuries has been released, it is absurd that we should demand an ability to judge any situation im- partially. It is not in the power of the Chinese, certainly not of the young Chinese — and he is in the ascendancy in China just now — to see any side but his own. It is inevi- table and a wholly natural result of his state of mind. Ju- dicial nvestigations only increase his indignation. He is profoundly skeptical of conferences. Any appeals or de- mands to reform himself first and talk about foreign aggression afterward simply infuriate him further. Many younger Chinese apparently believe that if China were a sovereign nation with all her rights restored, she would automatically become strong, quiet, and prosperous. The source of all evils, from foot-binding and concubines to cigarette-smoking and the movies, is to be found in the unequal treaties. Nothing will change this conviction short of giving up the unequal treaties and letting the truth show itself. And in the long run it will be worth it to everyone. Aside from the moral question involved, which makes it the only honorable thing for the Western nations to return to China what has been all too often unlawfully seized, the fact remains that it is really the only solution to the situ- ation now in China. Until China has no excuse to turn her attention to anyone except herself, until she has no one except herself to blame for her condition, this emotionalism now rampant will not cease to express itself in chauvinism and in an actual willingness to shed blood. Once the im- mediate cause of irritation can be removed, there is hope that this intensity of nature, common to the Chinese people, may turn upon itself and really force some sort of order out of chaos. The Lost Art of Profanity By JOHN NICHOLAS BEFFEL SOME writers in the metropolitan press have been la- menting the decline of profanity, the passing of old- time brimstone language, of Trojan and trooper talk. No- body has a profane vocabulary any more, there is no variety in oaths, nothing unique, no artistry, no sparkle. Every- body uses the same words in swearing. This indisputable fact is of course chargeable to the universal trend toward standardization in the United States. We are victims of the machine. We have become a nation of copy-cats, with the same commonplace newspapers every- where, the same movies, the same parroted phrases issuing from every throat. Chains of drug stores, groceries, filling stations, waffle parlors, lunchrooms, beauty dens. Cities all alike. Originality faces starvation. Artists get no encour- agement. Emotion is at a low ebb. Passion is gone from us. Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson in their play "What Price Glory?" exemplify the appalling stand- ardization of profanity in this republic. Most of the actors play the role of marines in the late war. In every scene, amid tense battle action and during lulls in the fighting, there is a plethora of swearing and there are interpolations of obscenity. But the dingy speech lacks variety, as the speech of marines lacks it in everyday life. Over and over the actors use the same oaths; they take a handful of pro- fane idioms and beat them to the thinness of a blanket in a junction-town hotel. It is dull reality; to have lent imagi- nation to the profanity in "What Price Glory?", to have made it anywhere unique would have belied the truth. The impotency of our modern epithet-makers was brought to our doorstep by the vain effort to make popular the coined word "scofflaw" to denote one who tramples heed- lessly upon the Volstead Act. Try uttering "scofflaw" aloud. How much force can you put into it? How far can you throw it? It is akin to a ball of cotton thrown at an infant's head; its component letters are too soft, too yielding; they can hurt no one. Memories of the old days have the mantle of illusion about them. The difference between the profanity of earlier times and that now prevailing was quite as much one of emotional values as of vocabulary. Men gave freer vent to their feelings then. True, there were individuals who found diversion in building up a great repertoire of swear- words, who delighted in the admiration of listeners. They livened the mining towns, the railroad camps, the cattle ranches. There were more of such men to the 100,000 population than now, but even then they stood out as a small minority. I remember a man of unassuming appearance named Marryat, who captained a double span of white mules which pulled the State boat, a repair barge, up and down the length of the Illinois and Michigan canal. We kids would watch him when he was starting from our town with a boat heavily loaded with dredged mud. He was a marvel to listen to. There was a whip in his hand, but he rarely utilized it. He didn't need to, for he had a voice and unfailing vocal energy. His store of unprintable words was not large, but he constantly varied his combinations, and he put tonal force into them. An oath would strike just behind the ears

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 271 of the forward off mule like the crack of a lash; an would fall upon a near kicker with the thud of a club. Marryat got work out of those beasts. But one day, while trying to recover a lost clay pipe, he fell between a di and the canal bank ami was crushed to death. We were saddened. The town was lonesome without him. When I was thirteen 1 worked in a newspaper office for the most impressive cusser I have ever met. For sheer originality I have never heard of his equal. His name was Absalom Bixby. He had a penchant for eating fried dipped in mustard at midnight, and he weighed ninety-two pounds with his clothes on, but there was a tradition among the older members of the stall' that when Bixby got mad he had a habit of throwing monkey-wrenches and hatchets at those who offended him. They pointed to a jagged slit in a door panel, obviously made by a hatchet blade, and a deep dent in the base of the Gordon press where the sharp corner of a big wrench had dug in. But Bixby had such a command of profanity that he had no need of assaulting anybody with iron weapons. I discovered this on the day when I locked up a type-form too tightly and broke a Gordon chase. Absalom happened to be at my elbow. Instantly he began excoriating me. His words came like a rain of metal — of lead slugs, brass rules, bolts, nuts, steel bars. They smoked and emitted odors — like gunpowder that has been shot off before. It took him ten minutes to run down and during this angry fusillade he uttered scarcely a word that was in the diction- ary or that was used in the speech of ordinary folk. His words were of no known language ; he had invented them for his own devices. But there was no misunderstanding their meaning. Twice afterward I ignited Bixby's ire — when I blew up the stove with gasoline and when I amused myself by sing- ing while inking the Ideal press when the weekly edition of the Bumble Bee was being run off. Each occasion produced a host of new exotic words. The room shook with the roar. Once a picture of Queen Victoria fell from the wall. Bixby turned and glared at the interruption, but kept up his assault. To these onslaughts I could offer no defense. It would have been like trying to push a tornado out of a window after it had come into one's house. Those who fear that epithet-making as an art will com- pletely die out in this country can find some reason for hope in the intelligent efforts of one playwright to keep it alive. I refer to Eugene O'Neill. In the stokehold scene in "The Hairy Ape" he gives an excellent portrayal of black-gang speech on a steamship. Using words and phrases that in most communities are not yet under any legal ban, O'Neill brought together a powerfully convincing composite of sor- did speech, of talk that is sodden and begrimed. In Phila- delphia this language was too much for the sensibilities of the police, who compelled the producers to eliminate many of the most vivid effects in the play. Even the word "hell" was barred. In Detroit, too, much of the dialogue in "The Hairy Ape" had to be toned down. Carl Sandburg often achieves the effect of profanity in his poems without being technically profane. Consciously or not, he does it by the steady, skilful massing of crash- words, words that contain elements of harshness — acridity, iron, grime, rust, stench, impact. In his lines To a Con- temporary Bunkshooter he answers Billy Sunday with as much force as Sunday ever generated in all his tabernacle a, robatics and hysteria. Contempt for the furniture-break- - evangelist gushes out like a stream from a hydraulic washer in a gold mine. When that poem appeared in the old M 08863 the postal authorities held up the magazine for two days before they could determine that Sandburg's poem ated no law. One commentator wonders what contribution women eventually will make to profanity. There is little to hope from them in this field. Women — sober women— who essay to swear are self-conscious about it; they handle their winds gingerly. Years ago, when Chicago was a wide-open town, I did hear women swear in such manner that no one could deny their art. Drunken women. One doesn't see quite the same kind anywhere now; the tribe has gone the way of the Indian and the buffalo. Particularly do I remember one woman to whom I lis- tened at a First Ward Ball, a gigantic social event in the demi-world, which dyed one night of each year a deep red. That gathering was staged in the Coliseum, a hall with a capacity of 11,000 persons if all were sitting down. This woman had been a beauty, and her clothes were all new and costly; plumes adorned her, as they adorn a fire-horse at an annual tournament. But there were heavy lines under her eyes. Her feelings had been injured, her social status ignored — so she explained to all who might hear. Her specific grievance was that a particular alderman had failed to invite her to sit in his box. Ten or twelve other women were within its confines, drinking at the alderman's expense. And she had been left out. She held on to the railing of another box near by and explained the alleged treason in meticulous detail. Brannigan had ex- plicitly promised to send her an invitation. He hadn't done it, and he was a no-good. She told the crowd what her own name was — a fancy one. Pansy Ethel Woodward will ap- proximate it. Curses poured from her lips in a torrent. Alderman Brannigan's family were upstarts, rent-dodgers, meat-stealers, fly-by-nights. He was a snake-in-the-grass, an alley dog, a robber of blind beggars and crippled orphans, a gutter-bird. Pansy's speech was heard by a thousand dancers and drinkers, by all who could press near, and by the alderman himself, who gave a high-sign to two policemen. The "cops" fought their way through the reluctant listeners, who had no desire to see Pansy silenced. And Pansy was not silenced. Long after the "cops" laid hold of her she kept up her tirade. They had to drag her out of the hall, and they were scratched and bitten in the process. Pansy was the best part of the show. In those years I knew another woman who was a won- der with profane talk. A sober woman withal. She was advance agent for a road show, and used to come into the newspaper offices in the cities, sit on a desk with her plump legs swinging beneath, and tell stories of the mud-lots to the reporters. Born in a circus tent, she had been on the road all her life, living in a rough world, a world of give- and-take. She had a husky voice and had no consciousness of femininity, and she was universally liked. I remember one story she told about a Minnesota judge who was trying a man accused of stealing a grandfather's clock, about a mysterious package the judge found on his doorstep in the night, and what he said when he opened it in his library. It was an anecdote rife with suspense, and the quoted language of the judge had all the warmth of a

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272 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 blast furnace and all the vivacity of a wild horse which is being shod by an absent-minded blacksmith. The fact that the judge was a prominent member of a moral secret society known as the Guardians of Purity lent contrast to the tale. After he had opened the mysterious package he went down into the cellar, got an ax, and smashed a grand piano into flinders. She made us see the judge during every moment of the incident which so embarrassed and enraged him. The tale might have come out of the "Decameron" ; yet the teller spoke without the slightest self-consciousness. That woman, as a raconteur of racy episodes, is no more. Several years later a train wreck smashed up the road-show, killing and injuring many of the performers. She was on that train and was badly hurt. In a hospital close to death, she got religion. And all of the dark-night words and stories she had picked up from association with klems and snares and menagerie men, from living in cheap hotels, from the race-track crowd in New Orleans, where she had spent her winters, were blotted from her repertory. After her recovery from the accident she quit the road and went to Missouri with a sister to engage in mushroom- growing. There was a man once in Peoria who was a master cusser. He drew wages as an express agent, but tuned zithers and repaired alarm clocks on the side. He was called into court as a co-defendant in a suit over some lost gold- plated jewelry. "Do you swear ?" the court clerk asked him. "Do I swear?" the express agent roared. "Do I swear? You bet your lying, thieving father's life I do — upside down sideways, backwards, crosswise, day and night, Sundays and holidays. You listen to me, Bo! I'll show you some swearing. . . ." And then he proceeded to smoke and sizzle and scorch the atmosphere for several consecutive minutes. In the Driftway IT must have been the wraith of a scent he caught the other day of one of the sun-burned slopes of Central Park in New York City that whipped the Drifter's thoughts a thousand miles and several years westward, where as passionate a sun was distilling homely essences over the wide, pale-gold spaces of a threshing ring's activities. Even without the Drifter's sagacious discerning organ, you could not have missed the sweet hot perfume of those oats shocks. The harvest sun extracted it forcibly and the effulgence rolled over, broke round, and smothered you like surf. There was no wind. The sky was an unfeeling blue, fdmed over with that white haze that means rain before the change in the moon. The men worked swiftly, without a word, and until the fretful snort of the rapacious harvester began there was only Keats's "noiseless noise." ***** THE sweating horses had a teeming, friendly smell. They flicked their tails, pointed their ears, and rubbed their noses on each other's streaming flanks in the most successful attempt the Drifter has ever seen of achieving philosophical equanimity. He achieved but little that day in waiting for the shadows to shorten and the bell to clang forth over the wash basin on the warped hickory bench outside the kitchen door. He loses it completely in the recollection. For he had caught an emanation from that same kitchen door, and by its potency saw whole hams, clove-stuck and sugar-rubbed, simmering rosily in their milk bath! Divine odor! Most ineffable of smells! Led on by it, he saw in anticipation — can see today — that profligate board surrounded by the cheerfully perspiring "ring," their hair slicked down with rain water above faces burnt beet-red. * * * * * ITIE Drifter smells the drying leaves of the branches the women folk waved slowly over the table, shooing away the crazed flies with one hand, with the other passing and repassing the aroma-giving dishes. Great platters of young frys with their richly browned crusts, old hen with steaming schooners of dumplings and gravy and saffron noodles. Sweet corn piled high like cordwood. Long, juicy pole beans, flavored with a hunk of bacon, and a mild crisp Bermuda waiting to be chopped into them. No fol-de-rol salads, but sliced, bleeding-red tomatoes, eaten with pepper and salt; cold slaw that crunched between the molars; snowdrifts of cottage cheese. And the spreads. The Drifter met a cosmopolitan lady once who did not know what a spread was. He wishes she had seen that table — peach butter, plum butter, apple sauce tanged with nutmeg, quivering cranberry jelly, wild grape jelly, blackberry jam, apple jelly into which a rose geranium leaf had been dropped. And the pies, with cream the color of old ivory to pour over them. The cakes with their perilous layers. . . . The Drifter could distinguish each of them with his eyes shut, though he would not know Coty's L'Origan from Caron's Narcisse Noir. The Drifter Correspondence "Professor Sam, Militarist" To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have personal knowledge that the United States Government is not trying to "Balkanize South America" by "callously drifting into military arrangements which destroy our claim of impartiality." Your statement that "we are helping Brazil, but not her greatest potential enemy, Argentina," is based on misinformation. For almost two years I was con- nected with Argentine-American naval relations as secretary to the Naval Attache to the Argentine Embassy in Washing- ton, Commander R. A. Vago. During this period the United States Navy Department actively cooperated with us and with the Argentine Naval Commission in New York in the work of modernization of Argentina's two largest battleships, the Riva- davia and the Moreno, at an expenditure of $10,000,000. This assistance, it is true, was not rendered on Argentine soil, but only for the very practical reason that the ships in question were originally built in this country and were therefore sent back to the docks of the Fore River Shipbuilding Company at Quincy, Massachusetts, in the thought that greater facilities 1 r the work were available there. I have toiled for countless hours over the translation of the requests for information and advice transmitted to us for presentation to the United States Navy Department by the Argentine Ministry of Marine. Rear Admiral Kenry H. Hough, then Chief of the Naval Intelligence Division, was ever quick to respond and eager to suggest, at the instance of his technical divisions, the latest improvements in the science of naval war- fare for adoption on the Argentine ships. In addition to this, Argentine naval students were granted entry into the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and data were furnished for the improvement of Argentine naval aviation.

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 273 Why should we not supply the desired and formally re- quested instruction pei-sonnel to the Brazilian and Pel navies and technical assistance to the Argentines? Should we rather permit our European competitors for Latin-American markets to establish the bonds of good feeling that are thin created? Nations are nothing more than trading companies which must establish mutually satisfactory relations with each other in order to buy and sell without begrudging reluctance or bitterness. The American naval policy toward South Amer- ica— which no more discriminates than does a merchant as be- n customers of any sort who have the money to p thus a brilliant stroke of commercial good sense. We should not think for a moment of relenting our activities in the grow- ing markets to the south, toward which all but the prejudiced know that we have only frankly commercial and not imperial- istic designs. We do not desire to disrupt and conquer easily. as is alleged, but rather to unite and sell easily. Washington, D. C, September J, Irving Gordon That Armistice Pledge To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Is it true that when Germany accepted the terms of the armistice — making herself defenseless — it was conditioned on the promise of President Wilson and our allies that she should rave a peace based on the well-known Fourteen Points? As I have never seen this denied, I have so far believed it to be true. Whenever Armistice Day comes around and the people celebrate I do not take part, for shame that a promise made by our President in behalf of the nation stands unful- filled. If we can say for our justification only that the President under the 'Constitution had no right to make any promises, it does not relieve us of the moral obligation to make good the President's word, or to make an effort to this effect. There is a movement started to make Armistice Day a legal holiday. The point mentioned should be cleared up. Redlands, Cal, August 28 Max Hentschkf. [In the pre-armistice negotiations President Wilson in- formed the German Government that the Allies were willing "to make peace with the Government of Germany on the terms of peace laid down in the President's address to Congress of Janu- ary, 1918 [the 'Fourteen Points'], and the principles enunci- ated in his subsequent addresses," with reservations only as concerned interpretation of the phrases "freedom of the seas" and "restoration" of invaded territories. — Editor The Nation.] The Garvey Gospel To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I take this time to thank you for your article for our beloved leader, Marcus Garvey. Not being a Negro, you don't just quite understand our aims. This letter I hope will help you. Garvey taught us six great truths, and it is on these principles our race will stand or fall. First, this is not our country and we are not to remain here and become a part of this nation. Numbers alone will crowd us out in time. Sec- ond, we have no constitutional rights. Having been unable to force them in the Constitution — they were put there as a free gift to be withdrawn at will — we have no power to compel their enforcement. Third, politics, religion, and education cannot solve the Negro problem ; nothing but a government owned by Negroes will solve it. Fourth, begging and pleading will not get for us what other races have had to use force to obtain. Fifth, Africa is the natural home of black men and will remain so when these countries where white men live become too crowded. It is our duty to carry our education to the native African, teach him the ways of civilization as we know it, and become great men of the world in and among our own people. Sixth) Africa can be r ideemed. The alien races will give back Africa as soon ns they know all the four hundred million • s want it. With the help of the true white men of this country who want to preserve their race in purity we will be able to get a colony in Africa and show the world we are capable of maintaining a government of civilization. These are the ideals that Garvey's followers look to for salvation and, whether Garvey he alive or dead, we will follow them to victory or eternal defeat. St. Louis, August 8 J. R. Ditto A Venezuelan Speaks To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In the name of the martyred and silenced people of Venezuela our organization begs you to ^ive space in your periodical for their complaints, that we may thus secure the attention of America, that all humankind may hear it, that magnanimous souls may be moved to come to the help of those who have the undeniable duty and the most decided purpose to break a way toward the light through the jungle of social venality. Human dignity, a well-conceived Americanism, and the most elemental principles of solidarity constrain every country not to regard with continued indifference the vandalic capers of Juan Vicente Gomez, applauded as they are by a cohort of hired journalists who in no way reflect popular sentiment, because they confound the issues and renounce all dignity for the sake of the despot's favor. By consent of the National Congress it had been resolved that Juan Vicente Gomez might purchase for the sum of seven- teen million bolivars the estates known as "Hatos de El Caura," consisting of more than one hundred square leagues along the Orinoco. These Gomez acquired for the ridiculous sum of three hun- dred thousand bolivars; he contrived to plunder Venezuela with his customary procedure, and suggested the scheme to his henchmen in Congress. It was accepted without objection, with the enthusiastic approbation of persons who, through fear or effrontery, sanctioned and continue to sanction the monstrosities of this man who has given free entrance, without precautions and to their huge advantage, to the dangerous magnates of im- perialist countries. Thus he has seized upon whatever the country produces, monopolizing the cattle industry and its derivatives, the mills, navigation, the manufacture of Roman cement, the exploita- tion of minerals, woods, pearls, cigarettes, transport, etc. — all this to such a degree that a newspaper in San Jose, Costa Rica, edited by Venezuelan exiles, enumerating the number, extent, and other particulars of the properties acquired by Gomez during his dismal predominance, establishes a total of much more than a thousand million bolivars! And yet when he first came into power he was a man of very modest fortune. We make Pan-Americanism effective by attacking in its very lair all such systematic brigandage. We do not hesitate. Brooklyn, August it) Martin Feinstein, English Secretary, the Venezuelan Labor Union Omitted To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Why, in your article Next Winter in the Theater, did you keep secret the plans of the Lenox Hill Players? Hard on the heels of Mr. Walter Hampden and Mr. Basil Sidney, there is in preparation a no-star production of "Ham- let." Also we will give Frank Wedekind's "Earth Spirit," Nikolai Gogol's "The Inspector General," and St. John Ervine's "John Ferguson." New York, August 3 Mitchell Padraic Marcus

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Books, Art, Plays Poems By S. FOSTER DAMON Epitaph in a Garden Here, in the shade of younger leaves, Now they lie sweetly. They never lived but as a dream, Then died completely; For flowers face no Judgment Day And risk no Resurrection: Their part to shake the Naked Void With rings and ripples of perfection. Epitaph Upon a Philosopher The sun, the moon, the stars, the earth Wore all created at my birth, And now they blur and swim away Like dreams at the approach of day. I open, and not close, the eye; 'Tis they are dying, and not I. Epitaph I found the answers, then I learned The riddles you had been; And deprecated labyrinths Which we had wandered in. Now suddenly a silence; All riddles are outrun: Though I might touch you, yet you are Departed past the sun. First Glance FEW things arouse my curiosity more than a new book by an interesting poet. There are no straight lines in the careers of poets — they must curve up or down, and the reader, if he can, may share the writer's sense of ad- venture as the two move together into the dark or light of a new level. The second of Amy Lowell's three posthumous volumes, "East Wind" (Houghton Mifflin: $2.25), is neither better nor worse than any of the seven volumes which preceded it. It has all of their famous qualities and all of their notorious defects — speed, dexterity, garrulity, and glitter. But its subject matter is different, as that of any new book by Lowell was likely to be; it represents an extension of her effort to cover a great deal of ground as perfectly as impetuosity would permit. And it proves that she had it in her to become one of our best na- rative poets — with the emphasis on the narrative rather than on the poetry. In "Legends" and "Can Grande's Castle" she labored with a manner. Here she has her hands full with the materia! of thirteen New England stories. These would have been diffi- cult to tell in any medium, for the problems of their chief characters are problems which the services of psychoanaly- sis are necessary to make intelligible. That Miss Lowell is not only clear but continuously and simply interesting means that she has removed most of the obstacles between herself and the public; "East Wind" should be her most popular book. It does not mean that she stands any higher as a poet. She probably had gone as far in the direction of art as she would ever go. In the other direction of theme there were no limits upon her energetic mind. She would have continued to entertain us vastly, and I look forward to the collection which still remains to be published. E. E. Cummings in "is 5" (Boni and Liveright: $2.50) plunges straight ahead along the path he has so indignantly claimed to be his and only his. On he goes, shouting abuse to any little fellow who may stand in his way and lowering his really fine voice to the lyric pitch whenever the proper persons over the hedge incline respectful ears. It is right that he should take his own road, and it is refreshing to hear him on the subject of his far too many competitors. let freedom ring amen, i do however protest, anent the un -spontaneous and otherwise scented merde which greets one (Everywhere Why) as divine poesy per that and this radically defunct periodical, i would suggest that certain ideas gestures rhymes, like Gillette Razor Blades having been used and reused to the mystical moment of dullness emphatically are Not To Be Resharpened. This is amusing and good, and not to be contested. Most of the time Mr. Cummings as satirist is a man to be feared and hence to be enjoyed. I am interested, however, in the very plain signs here that the highway tilts dangerously before him; he may lose his balance and fall flat, or go rolling dangerously down hill. He misses his step at least as often as he hits it, both in his serious work and in his foolery. The extreme of his foolery is meaningless vul- garity; the extreme of his serious work — done too dis- tinctly on the rebound — is sentimentality. He is free now; why should he not consider his pace? Orrick Johns, who in his time has been something of an experimentalist, settles into simplicity with "Wild Plum" (Macmillan: $1.25), a group of thin lyrics most of which are stale and three or four of which achieve a beautiful brightness. He has undertaken a difficult task — to say old things, and small things, well; he seems not to have known just how difficult this can be. Vachel Lindsay takes to the mountains of the West again in "Going-to-the-Stars" (Appleton: $2). The book is to Mr. Lindsay, evidently, a valuable record of pure moments spent among flowers and stars. To his readers it will say less, since, alas, Mr. Lind- say sings mostly into his own ears these days. The tune of other times is hardly to be heard, though here and there we get sweet quavers of it. Mr. Lindsay, being truly simple, has developed a complicated way of expressing himself. All but inaudible under his symbols, he sings on in happy soli- tude, renaming all the posies of the world and scratching hieroglyphics on stones which never saw a man. In that solitude we must, it seems, respectfully leave him. Leonard Bacon, meanwhile, cannot be admitted into the company of simple souls. The clever author of "Ulug Beg" and

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 275 "Ph.D.'s" attempts in "Animula Vagula" (Harper: %] to shake off his cleverness and pierce to the center of a dark experience he has had. He never arrives with the hu mien that would be fitting. He is ingenious in the way he leads us up to the horror. He says a number of very neat things about it — I shall not take my life. It has been taken — but he does not forget that he is writing long enough to give us the thing itself. That, and that only, would have been simplicity. Mark Van Doren The United States of Europe Pan-Europe. By Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. THIS interesting book, first published in 1923, has now been brought out in an American edition with a rather non- committal introduction by President Butler of Columbia Uni- versity and a supplementary chapter in which the author sketches the progress of the Pan-European movement during: the intervening three years. As the book, although well known in Europe, will probably be new to most American readers, the thesis which it develops may properly be outlined. Count Kalergi, who is the official head as well as the mov- ing; spirit %of the Pan-European Union at Vienna, believes that if Europe, meaning thereby the western and central Continental states and their colonial dependencies, is to enjoy peace and independence, its present disunited nationalism must give way to a federation somewhat analogous to the Pan-American Union. In his view, the World War has not only altered fundamentally the relations of the European states to each other but has also relegated them to a place of dangerous inferiority and helpless- ness in the face of the world Powers. Of the world Powers, the two whose destined expansion is of most serious concern are Russia and Great Britain. Russia, as Count Kalergi sees it, has practically ceased to be a European state, and must henceforth be regarded as the head of a new Asiatic federation. Its influence is already being felt strongly in China, and it is laying the foundations of an accord with Japan. With Ger- many, however, it has a large community of interest, and if, because of political ambition or some provocation of war, it should decide to try conclusions with the West, its conquering march would not stop until it had reached the Rhine. What was left of Europe after the Russian advance had ceased would be little more than the area over which Rome once exercised control. Great Britain, on the other hand, although bound to the Continent by many ties, is seen by Count Kalergi as more and more engrossed with imperial concerns, and in particular with the solidification of its interests in the Far East of which the new Singapore base is symbol and seal. Its natural alliance in the future, in spirit if not actually in form, will be with the United States, the world Power from which Europe has eco- nomically the most to fear. Between the English-speaking peoples on the one side and the Russian Asiatic federation on the other, western Europe, if it continues to cling to the nationalism and particularism which have been its historical portion, will be overrun if not obliterated. For the moment, Count Kalergi sees the key to the future as held mainly by Germany and France, and upon the success of Germany's eiTorts to effect a reconciliation with France, and of the effoi Frenchmen of the Poineare type to prevent it, hangs the ques- tion of whether "the day" shall be hastened or postponed. The Pan-Europe which Count Kalergi envisages is not, apparently, an organic union, but a loose federation somewhat akin to the former German Zollverein, while embodying on its governing side the American principle of representation of states and population. The first and greatest object, however, is peace. The next war, for which the author believes that the g nations are .-ill preparii gy of destruction in comparison with which the World War will Beem hardly more than a skirmish. Against such a calamity the League of Nations, whoso illogical ition and general ineptitude Count Kalergi dissects without mi ns to him to afford no protection. The only preventive of war is a European federation, excluding Great Britain and Russia, with security pacts and compulsory arbitration. What shall be added after this consists principally, it would seem, of a modification and unification of customs duties and the encouragement of English as the obvious universal language. Count Kalergi's analysis of the world situation, with its recognition of something like a destiny which awaits the West, contains a good deal that will remind the reader of Spengler's political philosophy. What has been done since 1923 to spread the idea of a Pan-Europe appears, from the supplementary chapter, to be mainly a propaganda of discussion, and the idea itself is obviously still in the domain of theory. As an exposi- tion of political tendencies, however, and of the grave predica- ment in which Europe has been left by the blind and perverse framers of the peace treaties, the book is an impressive per- formance, well worthy of attention whatever one may think of the way in which ultimate salvation may best be attained. William MacDonald Add Americana Jazz. By Paul Whiteman. J. H. Sears and Company. $3. HTHIS is a book by a successful American, conscious of his •*■ success and fortified, therefore, in his status, wisdom, and wit; talking — not writing — to "just plain folks"; talking faster than any man can think, and with no time, therefore, to do more than send out through his mouth whatever has drifted in through his ear: the homely philosophy, bromidic wise-cracks ("Consistency may be a jewel but most people would rather wear diamonds, even so") , and muddy notions about music that are characteristic of his place and time. Out of all the dizzy chatter certain truths emerge. "With a very few but important exceptions jazz is not as yet the thing said; it is the manner of saying it." This is true in two senses. Since, in the first place, the thing said — the fundamental plunk- plunk-plunk-plunk of every measure — is utterly invariable, jazz is an art of embellishment, embellishment superimposed for the purpose of concealment on what is itself incapable of change. And since, in the second place — and this is what Mr. Whiteman means — the superimposed melodic embellishments, "with a very few but important exceptions," are poor in quality and re- stricted in rhythmic variety to a little syncopation, the art of embellishment is mostly an art of orchestration. Mr. White- man, on the occasion of his first Aeolian Hall concert in Feb- ruary, 1924, caused considerable befuddlement by his own be- fuddlement in calling it "An Experiment in Modern Music" intended to demonstrate the beginning of "a new movement in the world's art of music"; for the development which he actually demonstrated was that of a new type of orchestration, which. was mostly his work and represented a genius for combining instrumental timbres comparable with that of Berlioz or Stravin- sky, as his own orchestra represented a genius comparable with that of Gericke or Stokowski. But there is a constant and growing demand for change and novelty. "Four years ago a whole chorus could be run through with but one rhythmic idea. Now there must be at least two rhythmic ideas and sometimes more." And new ideas are progressively more difficult to supply. For one thing, then, recourse is had to trick and comedy scoring, even to the cheap- est of cheap vaudeville entertainment, a tasteless degradation of instrument and players. But it seems that a more valuable, if less expected, source of help is serious music. Either the theme of a serious composition is taken as the point of departure of a

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276 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 subsequently original jazz composition; or the entire serious composition or a section of it is played — often as a novelty interpolated in a jazz scoring — in fox-trot time, with its melody dislocated, a new rhythmic trick at each half-chorus, low comedy on the high clarinets by Ross Gorman, and so on. The first use is unquestionably legitimate, the second unques- tionably not. But, legitimacy aside, one is aghast at the lack of discrimination, the appalling ignorance of musicians who can think of these practices as a continuation of the job left unfinished by the serious composer, and expect Handel to enjoy and respect the use made of his theme in "Yes, We Have No Bananas"; who can, inasmuch as "nine-tenths of modern jazz music ... is frankly stolen from the masters," chuckle over "lowbrows who say they can't abide classical music and high- brows who squirm when they hear jazz," and not realize that what the first enjoy and the second squirm at is the perversions of the serious compositions, not the originals; who can, there- fore, pride themselves on stimulating with the perversions a taste for the originals, and wonder at the inconsistency of "the patrons of music in America who for years have been keeping good music barely alive ... by artificial stimulation . . . while they lamented the lack of a musical public ..." and yet do not "rejoice to see music rising like a wave and engulfing America, to see people music-mad." It is all like that. Perhaps the other idiocies are more familiar: about jazz expressing America, its "composite essence," "fundamenta' emotion," "place and time"; about its having to create new forms to do it; about art that is too good for the mass being too good for this earth and not standing the test of time, since "beauty is emotion, not intellect — and emotion is universal." B. II. HAGGIN History by Finance The War Period of American Finance. 1908-1925. By Alexan- der Dana Noyes. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50. THIS work is an extension of the author's well-known book called "Forty Years of American Finance." But whereas the former work covered a period in part coincident with the writer's early years and known to him only at second-hand, the present book is the fruit of the mature thought of one of the keenest analysts, and probably the best informed financial writer, in America. Moreover, for a full account of certain needed data the writer has had the first-hand assistance of Messrs. Carter Glass, Bernard Baruch, and Benjamin Strong. "The War Period," though explicitly an account of Amer- ican financial and economic conditions during the war and for some years afterward, might almost be regarded as a history, during those years, of our country, written not from a political or military standpoint, still less from the standpoint of a liberal, but from the view of an exceedingly well-informed, well-balanced, and rather conservative financier. The facts are given in such abundance, with such power of choice of the effective rather than the irrelevant, that the reader can readily discern the scene from his own philosophic or economic stand- point by a mere personal reinterpretation. The data are before him. Indeed, from the author's standpoint, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the keenness and breadth of his view. This book stands among the best histories produced by Amer- ican writers. It is a book for reading first, for attentive study afterward. It is not to be implied that the present reviewer agrees with Mr. Noyes in certain of his implications in financial his- tory. Criticism of details is inhibited by the author's own statement that he has had, necessarily, to "treat the subject in broad perspective" and by his elaboration of this remark at some length in the preface. It is even possible to assent to the implied idea that the best standpoint from which a nation's activities may be viewed is the standpoint of its financial center. But it is impossible not to call attention to the fact that while in a book of lesser merit the total absence of any allusion to mighty sociological factors which have entered into American life in the years under discussion might be passed more or less unnoticed, in this work, because of its very excellence, one expected that no gross lacuna would appear. Thus, the grow- ing divergences between commercial and industrial leaders on the one hand and financial leaders on the other is mentioned only incidentally in a somewhat contemptuous reference to the Pujo Investigation of 1913. It may fairly be argued that woman suffrage lies outside of the writer's purview, but, in his constant interweaving of political, economic, and massive social factors, the absence of one word (as far as the reviewer has discerned) on the subject of prohibition reveals a positive hiatus in the story of the grain markets. Of this movement itself, its initiation and its present control by the industrial and commercial leaders of the country, there is wanting even a fragment of discussion. It might be noted also that the index is unworthy of the book. But these and similar matters put aside, Mr. Noyes has written a sketch of the leap of the nation from a debtor's position to holder of the economic hegemony of the world which deserves that rarest of praises when true — the book is really indispensable to him who desires authentic knowledge of the most important economic happenings in the history of civilization. Drew Bond Books in Brief Studies in Public Finance. By Edwin R. A. Seligman. The Macmillan Company. $3.25. Any book upon taxation and the problems of fiscal science by Professor Seligman must be accorded special recognition. The present volume, a companion and supplementary to the "Essays in Taxation," represents a selection from such of the author's fugitive writings as have a pertinent bearing on con- temporary fiscal problems. The most noticeable characteristic of the studies is their lack of academic longwindedness. With the exception of the first and last chapters, on Comparative Tax Burdens in the Twentieth Century and The French Colonial Fiscal System respectively, they are ex parte arguments, terse and cogent. If the reader finds himself in disagreement with any of the conclusions, he must turn back to Professor Selig- man's theoretical first premises and content himself with deny- ing the axiomatic quality of these assumptions, for the logical progression from premises to deductions leaves no chink for rebuttal. A criticism may be made against Professor Selig- man's approach to one group of problems. Because of his interest in the tax problems of the Eastern States — particularly New York — and his valuable services in an advisory character to the legislatures of these States, he has failed to realize the divergence of fiscal interest between the creditor States where dwell the masters of wealth and the debtor States who view these capitalists as absentee landlords. Very naturally, the first group of States seek to base income taxes on the residence of the taxpayer, while the second group would make the source of his income the base. Professor Seligman's compromise solu- tion of double income taxation turns out, upon analysis, to be a disguised insistence upon the principle of the residence of the taxpayer; it is not surprising that the New York Legislature adopted it, but it will hardly satisfy Wisconsin or the Dakotas. The Wood~Carvcr's Art in Ancieyit Mexico. By Marshall H. Saville. New York: Museum of the American Indian: Heye Foundation. Contributions, Vol. IX. $5. This handsome volume is a sequence to the author's recent superb monograph on "Turquoise Mosaic Art in Ancient Mex- ico," also published by the Museum of the American Indian. "Wood carved and painted or gilded," says Professor Saville, "was extensively employed in the interior of houses and tem- ples, in fashioning idols, for various articles of furniture, and

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 277 for ceremonial and other objects. Highly intricate designs were graved with a delicacy not excelled by the work of any other people of antiquity and certainly equal to the best carved of ancient Egypt." Owing to the perishable nature of the ma- terial few examples remain, but there are enough to emphasize Professor Saville's contention as to the extraordinary skill possessed and the rare beauty of the product. The book is illustrated by fifty-two fine plates showing carved spear- throwers, horizontal and other drums, etc., and by nineteen text figures. Peary, The Man Who Refused to Fail. By Fitzhugh Green. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $6. Admiral Peary's whole life was a battle with adverse cir- cumstances that would have defeated many men. This book is specially important, because it presents by a competent hand the story of Peary's early life — not before available — as well as an excellent, condensed record of bis endeavors and successes in the field of exploration. A brief introduction by Mrs. Peary puts her valuable approval upon the volume. Spiritual Values in Adult Education. A Study of a Neglected Aspect. By Basil A. Yeaxlee. Oxford University Press. Two volumes. $1 The first part of this work is a history of the development of adult education in the United States during the nineteenth century; the second is a consideration of the current situation; and the third is a detailed survey of adult education in churches and kindred organizations. For Dr. Yeaxlee the fundamental problem of education is the conservation of religious senti- ment. He is almost exclusively occupied with religious organi- zations as agencies for the education of adults. To one who is more interested in adult education as an independent secular activity than in the possible expansion of the Sunday school, this book is chiefly of interest for the valuable historical ma- terial it contains. Europe and the East. By Norman Dwight Harris. Houghton Mifflin Company. $5. One would like to give unqualified commendation to a work which brings together such a vast amount of material and presents in such excellent form the elements of the problem of East and West as it affects Turkey, Syria, Persia, India, China, and Japan, to say nothing of minor entities from the Lebanon to the farther isles of the Pacific. It is not the occasional errors that seriously impair its value. These are inevitable in a work of this scope and in the present instance do not destroy the substantial accuracy of the account. But the author, after a masterly statement of the essential problems of each country, offers suggestions for their solution. These sugges- tions are so simple and off-hand that they amount to hardly more than a restatement of the problem. For example, there is nothing constructive in the suggestion that all that is needed in China is a strong and efficient government. Certainly, but the problem is how to get it and what to do until it arrives. The author's handy prescriptions for the ills of these Asian countries, together with his hearty condemnation of the states- men who have tried to resolve the resulting issues practically, convey an impression of simplicity which may well be wholly misleading to the uninformed reader. Sicilian Noon. By Louis Golding. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. This is a first-rate book of travel impressions. The less- frequented Sicilian pathways have not yielded richer artistic material to Samuel Butler or even to George Gissing than they have to Mr. Golding, who substitutes for the fine sweetness of Gissing an occasional stylistic coruscation and brittle unex- pectedness of phrase — tricks that too many of the clever young Georgians have stolen from the magician's hat of Aldous Huxley. In other respects this is a volume worthy of being bracketed with "By the Ionian Sea." The amazing accounts of the Palermo marionette performances and th ns in hould be mi of the humorous or the vitally carnal in literature. Art Roy Van Auken Sheldon ¥ F art is concerned with measure and symmetry, being a ■i of music that enslaves for its peculiar ends coin- and linear form, mass and recession, then it follows, I suppose, that v is a kind of subtle movement which the human mind and senses can grasp and take delight in. Without trying to gauge the man who paints, writes, or models by a scale of oddness or rarity, as is often done nowadays, it can be shown that the artist who stands at the other end of triteness and dulness communicates out of the depths of himself a singu- larity, a something of divergence, which is beautifully human. It is this that he deposits as the enigma of creative personality on the doorsill of his own generation. If Ruskin responded uniquely to Gothic values and Pater chiefly to the Renaissance, we today have come to realize that even more important than these is what the individual painter or sculptor or architect as such has to say. He does not, to be sure, say a neat word, a clear concept, a glittering fable; but he does express, if he is worth a second glance at all, an emo- tion, his burgeoning sense of the world, and he voices it in his own unborrowed way. Random thoughts these, but quite forgivable, I think, when one contemplates the figures, torsos, half-finished studies, and portraits scattered about the Paris studio of the young American sculptor, Roy Van Auken Sheldon. Mr. Sheldon bears the stigmata of his austere training; but the inevitable asceticism imposed by his metier is even more apparent; the outcome of this self-searching eremetism has been that his masters, Bour- delle, Landowsky, and Boucher, have left his hands bare of an encumbering catechism touching the noble art of sculpture. He has talked and worked with these men, and they have whetted his nostalgia for the search. The goal of the search for any artist worth his tubes or clay is, of course, his own nexus with what, if you are a pure ironist, you will style a watchmaker's world. But you cannot with impunity get very far without music and order in the plastic arts. After admiring the admirable canvas or figure in stone before you, you are borne inescapably to the impulse or forces back of the artist's will to create some- thing beautiful. "Elles sont au milieu de ce monde, comme les monuments d'un autre monde; ou bien comme les exemples, ca et la dissemines, d'une structure et d'une duree qui ne sont pas celles des etres, mais celles des formes et des lois." And further on in the same dialogue Paul Valery makes his beloved Socrates say that all these abiding works of art simply tend to conjure up, on the one hand, the naked structure of the world and, on the other, its order and stability. They evoke, more- over, the contours of the spirit of man and its unfettered pursuit of harmony. Mr. Sheldon, unlike the professional Kunstfnrxchcr, has quietly taken to the road, armed with scrip and staff, and if his search is plain in his work it is not overly obtrusive. He schools himself to the classic tradition. The lingering tra- dition may have to be overridden, you note, but he feels that it would be fatal to ignore or deny it. Thus he inches forward by miniscules, but his growth as an artist, his erect dignity as an artist, is an assured thing. For he is aware that no artist can live by a panacea, a code, a formula, or a theory. Mr. Sheldon knows that you cannot breed unicoi'ns or hippogriffs from tame stable mares. Brancusi has stopped toying with light and reverted to pm-e mass; Mr. Epstein still leans too heavily on his surfaces, broken like a crinkled sea.

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278 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 As an example of the best of the sculptor's work I would point unhesitatingly to his head of A. G. Warshawsky, the American painter, which was exhibited at the Autumn Salon. It is, say, classic — but the mind is urged to no vain compari- sons. Mr. Sheldon has gleaned ruggedness from the model, but he has also made a vivid discovery which is as startling for the layman as it must have been for the sculptor. The discovery is, in brief, "mobility in rest"; he came upon it, you feel, neither aided nor prompted; and even if this find was knowledgeable to the primitives, for Mr. Sheldon it persists, nevertheless, in being a first-hand discovery. The world moves and it is still: balance and order. Measure and movement — and music, to refer once again to suggestive words of Paul Valery — are also discernible in his fine Pallas Athene. In the representation the grace and se- verity of the goddess merge gradually into the pervading wist- fulness, into the shy droop of the naiad. How did these polar qualities creep into the figure, you ask? When an artist en- visages measure and movement in things, it follows, doesn't it, that opposites function only as a part of the bigger diapason? Flux and rhythm. To revise the pantheistic law slightly, op- posites like good and evil do exist, but only for the sake of the imperative music, the ebb and flow. Mr. Sheldon's penguin, his white bear for a gate-post or for a pool, his numerous dan- cing figures, his busts and heads, especially his head of Ludwig Lewisohn, bear witness to the sculptor's journey toward self- realization; they reveal no less that he has conquered his medium and that his discoveries must in time lead to other discoveries equally worth while. If Roy Sheldon holds that all art, and the sculptor's art in particular, is utilitarian, he wishes by these terms merely to have us understand that he intends making his own art so. The young American is an ardent devotee of city-planning because the baffling problem nowadays is what to do with works of sculpture once they are finished. And so we have no difficulty in making out what he means when he boldly says: "Give me the Woolworth Building and I will use it as a pedestal for my Pallas!" Pierre Loving Drama Square of the Hypotenuse "\TOTHING could be more conventional in the pattern of its 1\ plot than "Sour Grapes" (Longacre Theater). A man falls in love with his friend's wife; the unexpected fertility of a former love — that bane of careless lovers and the sure resource of dramatists — neatly disposes of him; and the husband and wife make it up again. Yet, in spite of all this the play is not so banal as might be expected, for the very simplicity of the triangular situation puts the author on his mettle and challenges him to reinvest it with the emotional freshness which in real life it always has. In itself the triangle is anything or it is nothing — depend- ing upon the characters and the ethos of the people involved. Granted a society dominated by a religious view of marriage, it becomes tragic in its most sinister form with Sin as the soul of the plot; take it down a step to the level of the seriously skep- tical and it becomes a problem play not improbably freighted with "social significance"; follow it into the haunts of the more casually sophisticated and it inevitably turns to a comedy which grows lighter and lighter until, in that society devoid of either passions or inhibitions which forms the milieu of the French farce, triviality extinguishes it completely. Adultery is a sin, an experiment, a game, or a banality, depending upon the atmos- phere in which it is committed; but it is always, except when it is the last, interesting, if only the atmosphere be definitely cre- ated and consistently maintained. In the abstract the triangle is as bare as that famous formula which involves the square of You Will Enjoy the Theatre More— — if you read about the fine points of all the plays you see! .y-FTER all, the iheatre is like golf, bridge, foot- \yl ball or any other form of entertainment — the more you know about its fine points the more you enjoy it. That is why the readers of Theatre Arts Monthly find something to give them keen pleasure in nearly every play. Theatre Arts Monthly is the only magazine in the world today devoted chiefly to explaining just how all of the arts unite in the theatre to serve the one great end of creating human enjoyment, illusion and interest. Then.— for those not in the great theatrical centres. Theatre Arts is their link with the stage — keeping alive the greatest traditions of the past — forecasting developments — criticising current plays — encouraging the Little Theatres in three hundred cities — reviewing the literature of the stage — and casting over all. with its fine illustrations, the glamour that is the Theatre. A record and a prophecy ! If you have never read Theatre Arts Monthly, send for a free sample copy to- day, using this coupon. Its small sub- scription price of four dollars a year is the best theatre investment you can make. THEATRE ARTS MONTHLY kr Theatre Arts Monthly, Name Address City 11U West 67th St.. N. Y. C. E-l .State Again THE MODERN QUARTERLY the only revolutionary critical magazine in America, challenges you to surpass its Fall Issue, Just off press. WILL, THE FAMILY PASS? by Ernest Boyd a provocative topic dealt with by a provocative thinker. THE AMERICAN LITERARY RADICALS by V. P. Calvert on an analysis of the literary radicals of America and their listlessness. DECADENCE AND THE POETRY OF ROBINSON JEFFERS by Floyd Dell a study in the effect of the shell-shock of the War upon poetry. THE NEW UNIONISM by Benjamin Stolbcrg an attack upon the liberal in labor politics. THE GENIUS OF POE by Rt. Hon. J. M. Robertson the most Important study of Poe in the last decade. Other articles by Q. V. Plechanov, Arthur Calhoun, Walter Long, Hubert Harrison, Bertram Wolfe, Joseph Vanzler; poems by Genevieve Taggard and E. Merrill Root. You cannot be up on modern American thought or the develop- ments in radical philosophy and criticism without reading The Modern Quarterly. Subscribe now I The Modern Quarterly 318-S20 N. Exeter St., Baltimore, Md. I enclose for one year's subscription to The Modern Quarterly $1.50 With The Nation 5.25 With The Never Spirit, by V. F. Calverton ($2.50) 3.00 Single Copy .50 Name Address When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 279 the hypotenuse, but reduced to the concrete it has a way of eluding formulae. "Sour Grapes" manages to engage and to maintain the attention of the spectator because it docs just that. The persons involved are rather ordinary people, neither primitively tense enough to convert the situation in which they find themselves into violent tragedy nor relaxed enough to see it as a mere tiresome farce. When the discovery is made the chief regret of the husband and perhaps of the wife too is not that this thing has happened but that they do not feel it more keenly than they do. "I would rather," says he, "have lost you than discover thus that I have lost my love for you"; and so the most unassimilable fact with which they are faced is the fact that love, for no reason at all, loses its rapture. A small but admir- able cast, headed by the accomplished Alice Brady, maintains perfectly the requisite tone, and the audience is continuously interested because lure, in all probability, is its own emotional common denominator. Here are no heroics beyond its own potentialities and here, on the other hand, are none of the remote conventions of artificial comedy; but here, instead, is the triangle as it may at any time appear in any milieu where there is enough leisure to give fancy opportunity to develop but where the people are not yet wholly disillusioned. Unfortunately the play is marred by a rather fantastic conclusion for which the general good sense of the author during the course of the piece had not prepared one. In a passage marked by a somewhat desperate intensity the husband and wife decide that if they will only each act out a rapture they do not feel that rapture will be recaptured. Here is the James- Lange theory of the emotions proclaimed with a vengeance and put into practice with a naivete which would leave its original proponents a little abashed. If it is merely our author's way of bringing down the curtain, a more conventional conclusion would have been less annoying; if, as is apparently the case, he takes it with high seriousness it is merely painfully silly. "Potash and Perlmutter, Detectives" (Ritz Theater) is funny in a manner now sufficiently standardized to call for no comment, although Ludwig Satz, brought from the Yiddish theater to fill the role made famous by the late Barney Bernard, achieves moments — especially those marked by touches of pathos — which are above the level of the text. "If I Was Rich" (Mansfield Theater) is a vernacular comedy much after the manner of "The Fall Guy." It is constantly kept within the limits set for purely commercial comedy, but its dialogue is ingeniously human and it is, all in all, a genuinely diverting piece. "Castles in the Air" (Selwyn Theater) is an elaborate musi- cal comedy, long on sentiment and a little short en humor, but well produced and sung. It was a huge success in Chicago and will probably repeat that success here. Joseph Wood Krutch LECTURES RAND SCHOOL Lecture Courses Beginning Noxt Week ALGERNON LEE A Socialist View of Human History Tuesdays, 7 p. m., Sept. 21 to Jan. 18 JOSEPH M. OSMAN _ _ . _ , _ The Psychology of Personality 7 JL. 15th M. Tuesdays, 8:30 p. m., Sept. 21 to Jan. 18 SCOTT NEARING will give his last lecture in New York this year, when he speaks on "THE CRISIS IN BRITISH IMPERIALISM" at the Community Church, 34th St. and Park Ave., N. Y. City MONDAY EVENING, SEPT. 20, 1926, at 8:15 P. M. tickets tsc. Uiking "Books "A wonderful performance. I am humble before it." -SHERWOOD ANDERSON THE TIME OF MAN by Elizabeth Madox Roberts No prize of thousands of dollars is affixed to this novel ; no motion picture rights have been sold or ever will be. Instead it comes to you as a master- piece of contemporary American literature hailed by Sherwood Anderson, Edward Garnett, Harry Hansen, T. S. Stribling, Joseph Krutch, Robert Morss Lovett and all who have read it. You will find greatness and the thrill of its discovery in this story of Ellen Chesser's life. $2.50 THREE IMPORTANT BOOKS PUBLISHED SEPT. 18TH. Biography for the Intelligent MOHAMMED by R. F. Dibble A revealing biography of the great prophet of Allah, the statesman, the politician, the lover and the man. R. F. Dibble has written in an in- formal informative manner for those who would take their legends with a grain of salt and their heroes with a leavening of humanity. $3.00 An Important Discovery THE TWO SISTERS by H. E. Bates Introduction by Edward Garnett 4V ej" \j\ _Jl Edward Garnett, the first of the critics to discover Con- rad, Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson, sponsors this first novel — a fine study of two women's lives irom the pen of a twenty-one year old Englishman. $2.00 TRANSITION by Edwin Muir Readers of The Nation will welcome the publica- tion in book form of Mr. Muir's brilliant essays on contemporary literature, many of which have already appeared in these pages. $2.00 30 Irving Place THE VIKING PRESS New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Abyssinia Appeals to the League By J. M. KENWORTHY T was hoped that the setting up of the League of Nations would diminish the crimes committed in secret by diplo- matists and Foreign Ministers on the plea of serving their own national interests. The Government of Abyssinia, the newest recruit to the League of Nations, is seeking the protection of the Leagu itself against two fellow-members, two supposedly civilized and advanced European Christian Powers, England and Italy to wit, on a charge of aggressive action against a poor, backward, but also Christian, inde- pendent state on the mainland of Africa. The British Foreign Minister, Sir Austen Chamberlain, is a man of spotless personal character. In his private dealings he could no more conspire with a neighbor to despoil a poor man than he could rob a church. Yet he has allowed him- self to be led by the nose by his own permanent officials at the British Foreign Office and to be hypnotized by Signor Mussolini and tne Italian diplomats in this Abyssinian affair. Let it be understood quite clearly that no British Government dare embark on a policy of aggression against Abyssinia by itself if only because British public opinion would not tolerate it. But because more water is needed for the river Nile to serve the purpose of irrigation in Egypt and the Sudan, and because our efforts at the capital of the State of Abyssinia to obtain the necessary conces- sions for the provision of this extra water had been blocked by the Italians in the old-fashioned manner, the British Foreign Office, headed by Sir Austen Chamberlain himself, has allowed itself to become allied with the most aggressive and imperialistic Power in Europe. Ever since the eighties of last century the Italians have been seeking, in spite of numerous setbacks, to acquire a recognized protectorate over Abyssinia. Italian policy showed its hand clearly for the first time in 1889 when the Treaty of Uccialli was concluded with King Menelek of Abyssinia by which Italy believed herself to be the "Pro- tector" of Abyssinia. This first step to invasion and annexation alarmed the Abyssinian people and the Italian claim was repudiated. Italy bided her time until 1890 when she invaded Abyssinia only to suffer a crushing mili- tary defeat at Adowah. In October of the same year a new treaty of peace was concluded between the Italians and the Abyssinians by which the independence of Abyssinia, or Ethiopia as it is officially styled, was recognized. This, however, was only a step backward in order to leap again. And whenever the forward school has been in the ascendent in the Italian Foreign Office Italy has attempted, some- times in conjunction with France and England, to interfere with Abyssinian sovereignty. The history of French relations with Abyssinia has been similar but less aggressive and, therefore, more suc- cessful. The French have not attempted military aggres- sion, but, after many efforts, supported in the beginning of the present century by Great Britain and Italy, France obtained a concession to construct a railway line from her port of Jibuti in French Somaliland to the Abyssinian capital. But Britain and Italy received a quid pro quo from the French, of course without the consent of the Abyssinians. In spite of fighting one war against the Abyssinians, when we wisely resisted any attempts at annexation, the British have been solely concerned with the water supply for the Lower Nile. In its upper reaches the Nile divides itself into two main branches, the Blue and the White Nile. The Blue Nile takes its source at Lake Tsana on Abyssinian soil and flows for some hundreds of miles through the mountain gorges of Abyssinia, afterward joining the White Nile in the Sudan. If the outlet of the Blue Nile from Lake Tsana could be dammed by a great barrage, extra water would be available for irrigation purposes in Egypt and the Sudan. The population of Egypt is growing and undoubtedly more water is required for agricultural purposes, while a great new source of excellent cotton is being exploited in the Sudan by British companies and corporations, and for the purpose of Sudanese cotton growing an almost unlimited supply of water can be utilized. The French, therefore, so far as Abyssinia is con- cerned, have been contented by the building of their railway and the developing of a considerable trade with a country as large as France and Germany together and of great potential richness. England's one object is to obtain extra water. But the Italian program and ambitions are quite different. To the north of Abyssinia is the poor, barren Italian colony of Eritrea. To the southeast is another barren, almost desert area, under Italian rule, known as Italian Somaliland. Italy, never having abandoned her program of controlling and even annexing the major por- tion of Abyssinia, has evolved a plan of joining these two poor colonies by a great trunk railway line passing through Abyssinian territory. The Abyssinians will have none of this project. They regard Italian designs with deep sus- picion. Abyssinia being an ancient Christian country con- verted to the faith at about the same time as Ireland, and before England, is not open to the activities of European religious missionaries. This one-time favored excuse for intervention, therefore, in the protection of missionaries, is not available where Abyssinia is concerned. But railway construction is another favorite weapon of imperialism. Railways need guards and, as in the case of the Russian Railway through Manchuria, control of the weaker power gradually passes into the hands of the owners and guardians of the railway. But for the outbreak of the great war the economic partition of Abyssinia would have proceeded unchecked. But from 1914 to 1918 there was a hiatus. The great war having come to an end, the British renewed their pressure at the Abyssinian capital for the Lake Tsana irrigation concession. Italy offered her support to Great Britain in return for British assistance in obtaining her railway building concession. Linked up with this request, the Italians asked both the British and the French to recog- nize an exclusive Italian economic interest in the whole of the west of Abyssinia. This Italian offer was rejected at the time by the British Foreign Office as it was felt to be dangerous to allow any foreign Power to be placed in a position to obtain control of the head waters of the Blue Nile. Let it here be noted that the British objection was not to the Italian penetration into Abyssinia and the in- fringement of the sovereignty of an independent state but was based only on the ground of the water rights. In 1925

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Sept. 22, 1926] The Nation 281 The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers a fifteen months' course of graduate study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Cent The Fall Quarter begins October 4, 1926. For further information, address the I >u ■ THE TRAINING SCHOOL JEWISH SOCIAL WORK (Initiated by the National Conference of Jewish Social Service) J10 WEST »lsi si'ltll I MAY YORK ( II V accept /,,/*> S Non Depressant nor HabitForm i n£ m Convenient Aluminum Boxes Ai-mvwry draiattxxB ^HEADACHE GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New York NOW IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TIME OF THE YEAR FOR A VACATION IN THE BERKSHIRE HILLS. COME for a week-end, a week, or a month to Western View Farm. At no other time of the year is this spot so gloriously beautiful or so wholesomely invigorating as in September and October. Splendid heating equipment in the house augmented by roaring log fires. Booklet and illustrated literature on request Edward G. Ohmer, Western View Farm Telephone — New Milford 440 New Milford, Conn. AURORA HEALTH FARM &?&£?&}$ (Not a sanitarium; not a boarding-house) NEW JERSEY Beautiful country : elevation 700 ft. : only one hour from New York. Open all year. Suitable for those requiring diet, electro- and hydro- therapy. Ideal for rest and convalescence. Personal medical super- vision. Homelike atmosphere. No bed-ridden, contagious or mental eases. Robert Schulman, M. D., Medical Director. Adolpu Weizenhoi fer, M. D.. Associate Physician. Telephone— MORRISTOWN 18 2 0. VERY UNUSUAL TRAVEL BOOKS among the latest publications FIRE OF DESERT FOLK DR. FERDINAND OSSENDOWSKI'S hrilh'ant picture of Morrocco as it is to-day. He shows both the gorgeous orien- tal coloring of the external Morocco and the inner dorm religious, and political life just now internationally i esting. By the author of "Beasts, Men and Gods." Illustrated. $3.00 RAINBOW COUNTIES of CENTRAL AMERICA WALLACE THOMPSON'S account of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Salvador, and Guatemala, an access- ible, interesting, yet neglected wonderland almost at our doors. Illustrated. $5.00 E. P. DUTTQN & Co., 681 Fifth Ave., New York LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL lllli STREET 2nd AVENUE Courses by WILL Course 7. Contemporary Literature. Sundays at 5 p. m. 16: The Book of the Month (Spengler: The De-line of the Wemt) Oct. :> : H I- Mencken and the New Oct. 10: Theodore Dreiser Oct. 17 : Eugene O'Neill Oct. 24 : Sinclair Lewis Oct. 81 : Tin- Hook of the Month Nov. 7 : Sherwood Anderson Nov. 11: James Branch Cabell Nov. 21: Carl Sandburg Nov. 28: The Book of the Month Dec. 5: Anatole France Dec. 12 : Romain Holland Dec. 19: Marcel Proust Dec. 2G : The Book of the Month Jan. 'I : Gerhardt Hauptmann Jan. 9: Mikhail Artzibashev Jan. 16: Anton Tchekov Knut Hamsun The Book of the Month Feb. 6-Mar. 20 : Absent on Tour Mar. 27 : The Play of the Season Apr. 3: Thomas Hardy Apr. 10 : Joseph Conrad Apr. 17: Bernard Shaw Apr. 24 : The Book of the Month May 1 : H. G. Wells May 8 : Havelock Ellis May 15 : George Moore May 22 : John Galsworthy May 29: The Book of the Month June 5 : John Masefield June 12: James Joyce June 19: D. H. Lawrence June 26 : The Play of the Season Jan. 23: Jan. 30: Sg. adm. z^c; course tickets $5.on. Scud joy Fall Term Announcement. DURANT, 1926-1927 Course 8. Contemporary Psychology. Wednesdays at 8:30 p. m. Sept. 22: The Status of Psycho- analysis Sept. 29 : Psychoannlysis in America Th., Oct. 7: Is Behaviorism a Fad? Oct. 1 !: Experimental Psychology Oct. 20: The Evolution of Mind Oct. 27 : Our Nerves Nov. 3: Brnin and Mind Nov. 10: Instinct ami Emotion Nov. 17: Instinct and Property Nov. 21: Instinct and War Dec. 1 : The Psychology of Laughter and Play Dec. 8 : Social Psychology Dec. 15: Crowd Psychology Dec. 22 : The Mechanisms of Social Control Dec. 29 : The Nature of Love Jan. 5 : The Psychology of Marriage Jan. 12: An Analysis of Character Jan. 19: An Analysis of Intellect Jan. 26: The Training of the Child Feb. 2: The Training of the Mind Mar. 23: DEBATE: to be announced Mar. 30 : Psychological Differences of the Sexes Apr. 6 : Psychological Differences of Rares and Peoples Apr. 13: The Industrial Applications of Psychology Apr. 20 : The Commercial Applica- tions of Psychology Apr. 27: The Mind of the Criminal May 4 : The Nature of Insanity May 11 : The Nature of Genius May 18 : The Psychology of Conser- vatism May 25 : The Psychology of Radi- calism June 1 : The Psychology of Liber- alism June 8 : The Psychology of Religion June 15 : The Psychology of Art June 22: Psychology and Literature PREPARE FOR WINTER NOW! You can ensure yourself one evening's pleasant reading a week during the coming winter by devoting it to ®lj? iMaurljpfitpr datariMan WEEKLY You will like its freshness of viewpoint coupled with the accuracy of its facts. It is a store-house of information on international politics, European trends of thought, current English literature, and cultural developments the world over. The intellectually inclined in more than sixty countries depend on The Manchester Guardian Weekly to keep them furnished with reliable information on all important world happenings and on new trends of thought in various countries. MAIL THIS COUPON To The Manchester Guardian Weekly, 220 Vv est 42nd Street, New York City. I enclose three dollars for a year's subscription to THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WEEKLY, to be mailed to me direct from Manchester, England. Name Address When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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282 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3194 the negotiations between the Italians and the British were resumed. The bargaining went on in secret and the Abys- sinian Government was not consulted at all. But in the meantime the French had become thoroughly alarmed, and in 1923 they sponsored Abyssinia's application for member- ship in the League of Nations. This application was resisted, secretly of course, by the British and Italian gov- ernments. But they dare not come out into the open and Abyssinia was admitted to full membership. Her joining of the League of Nations made not a tittle of difference to Italian policy. Nor did it make any apparent difference in British policy toward Abyssinia. Instead of openly applying for leave to barrage Lake Tsana and agreeing to pay a suitable royalty to the Abyssinian Government, the British Foreign Office attempted to obtain its water-rights by allying itself with the Italian demands. This was the prime blunder. By December, 1925, the British and Italian governments were in accord. Italy undertook not to interfere in any way with the Nile water; and England not only undertook to support the Italian demand for leave to construct the railway but recognized the exclusive economic dominance of Italy in the west of Abyssinia. Not till June of the present year was the un- fortunate Abyssinian Government apprized of this secret agreement. The response of that Government was im- mediate. A note of protest was dispatched at once to the Secretariat of the League of Nations and the matter has now to be thrashed out before the Council. And where has this latest example of secret diplomacy led? If Italy wishes to construct her railway she will have to fight her way into the country. Whatever the award of the Council of the League of Nations, the Abyssin- ians are thoroughly alarmed and will fight to the last be- fore giving in. They are well armed, the country is ex- tremely difficult, the northern and western portions being mountainous, and the inhabitants make good soldiers. A victorious war with Abyssinia, wiping out the memory of Adowah, might suit the Fascist Government of Italy, but the British people will never permit a pound to be spent or a British soldier to be killed in any such unworthy enterprise. As for the perfectly honest desire of the British to obtain extra water for the Sudan and Egypt, by omitting to bargain for the necessary rights in a straightforward manner we have put back the possibility of obtaining this extra water indefinitely. Once more secret diplomacy has overreached itself. It would not have been difficult to come to an agreement with the Abyssinian Government by fair and open methods. We have now placed formidable ob- stacles in our way. If Egypt requires the extra water the British Government must retrace its steps, renounce the agreement with Italy, and start over again.* The only alternative is to abandon the attempt to obtain the extra water from the Blue Nile and to carry out similar irriga- tion schemes on the White Nile. The White Nile lies en- tirely in British-controlled territory, and many engineers consider it superior to the Blue Nile for irrigation purposes. •A note of protest sent to the Secretariat of the League by the Abyssinian Government and forwarded to Italy and England by the League drew replies from both governments earnestlv denvine any intention to exert coercive pressure on Abyssinia. The Italian note, summarized in the Manchester Guardian for August 14, protests that the agreement constitutes "solely an arrangement between the Italian and British governments with a view to coordinating certain of their economic interests, and that any such arrange- ment is subject to the decision of the Abyssinian Government and to the recognition by the latter that these interests harmonize with those of Abys- sinia and promote civil and economic development." — The Editor The Nation. Contributors to This Issue Thomas O'Connor is a Boston newspaper man who be- came so much interested in the Sacco-Vanzetti case that he obtained a leave of absence early last summer and has devoted his time since to investigations in behalf of the counsel for the defense. Arthur Warner, an associate editor of The Nation, wrote the article Sacco-Vanzetti — A Reasonable Doubt in the issue of September 28, 1921. Robert W. Dunn is one of the directors of the American Civil Liberties Union. Pearl S. Buck comes of an old missionary family, and knows both the old and the new China. Her husband teaches agricultural economics at the University of Nanking. John Nicholas Beffel has studied words and idioms in several special fields — in the circus, among thieves, among migratory workers. The Honorable J. M. Kenworthy is a lieutenant com- mander, retired, in the British navy and since 1919 has been a Liberal member of Parliament from Central Hull. S. Foster Damon is the author of "William Blake." William MacDonald, formerly associate editor of The Nation, lectures on American history at Yale University. B. H. Haggin is a teacher of music who writes on musical subjects for various publications. Drew Bond is a writer on financial subjects. Pierre Loving is an art critic who frequently contributes to The Nation and other periodicals. Glenn Frank on Charles W. Eliot in Next Week's Nation Your Fall Problems Tf you want to rent a house or an apartment or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section of The Nation, read by honest landlords and desirable tenants. Rates on application. Special three-time rate. Dept. F. P., The Nation. THINKING An Introduction to its HISTORY AND SCIENCE By FRED CASEY THIS is the first authorized American edition of a text-book in logic, based on the work of Joseph Dietzgen. which has been exceedingly popular in England. Thinking has for thousands of years been a theological or meta- physical mystery. This book shows how the methods of modern science can be applied to it, and how the process of thinking can thus be improved. Cloth, $1.25 postpaid. We also publish Dietzgen's PHILOSOPHICAL Essays and his POSITIVE OUTCOME OF PHILOSOPHY, each $1.50 postpaid. CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1866 Vol. CXX1II NKW YOKK, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, No. 3195 Contents EDITOR! \I, PARAGRAPHS 'JS;* EDITORIALS: Spokesman. What of the Night ? The Greatest Newspaper in the World The House on the Prairie College or Country Club? «8B THE BIRTH OF A NEW IDEA. By Hendrik van Loon 289 GEORGE WASHINGTON— THE IMAGE AND THE MAN. By W. E. "■•, ELIOT: ICONOCLAST AND BUILDER. Ry Glenn Frank .!9-i AT A WORKERS' VACATION CAMP. By Michael Gold . IN THE DRIFTWAY. Ry the Drifter 296 CORRESPONDENCE i - "' ROOKS \ND PLAYS: ira of the Corn. Ry Hal Saunders White Sleirht of Hand. By Mortimer J. Adler 298 The New Asceticism. Ry Joseph Wood Krutch Compai itive Superstition. Ry Woodbridge Riley 299 itholic Vicar of Bray. By .Limes Fuchs 300 and Times. By Raymond Weaver 300 Drama: Miss Ra'mbeau Enjoys Herself. Ry Joseph Wood Krutch... 302 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: nee in Algeria and Tunisia. Ry Eli7.abeth Knowlton SOS -That Film" 30r' OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Assort \te Editors LEWIS S GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH MANAGING Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HORSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID ROEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada. $5.50 : and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $f>.0n. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising : Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1, England. FLORIDA, which has been much in the news for several years, is again on the first pages of the newspapers. First there was the boom, fantastic and almost incredible in some of its aspects; then there was the collapse, tragic for those involved, but not altogether displeasing to a good many others; now there is the hurricane, ferocious in its destruction of life and property, which, not content with its ruin in Florida, swept on westward through Alabama and Mississippi. Whatever opinions citizens of other States may have had of the Florida boom and its sequel, there will be nothing but profound sympathy for the vic- tims of the present disaster, and relief will be quick and generous. Humanity contemplates with a certain self- protecting indifference the fall which follows pride, but when nature strikes us in its dumb, uncontrollable way it unites us as nothing else can in common awe and sorrow. And Florida, of course, will weather the hurricane just as she will the real-estate boom and deflation, as San Fran- cisco did her earthquake and fire. Men are as relentless and unstopable as nature itself. THE DECADENT FRENCH— where are they? Suzanne swept the women's tennis courts, but Suzanne was Suzanne, superb, unique, beyond frontiers. Georges Michel, however, who plowed across the cold September Channel ahead of British, German, and American records and crawled up onto the British shore shouting "J'ai battu FAllemand!" with one breath and "Whiskey!" with the next — he was indisputably a product of Gaul. And now the men tennis stars — Lacoste, Cochet, Borotra, and Brugnon — three of whom mowed down all competitors and entered the semi- finals of our national tennis tournament ; one of whom, Borotra, downed Johnston and Vincent Richards on succes- sive days and then lost the silver cup to his teammate Lacoste, who had beaten Tilden's conqueror — what are they if not a product of that exhausted post-war France which, with its low birth-rate, its diet of frogs and snails, and its wild, wild ways, was doomed forever? Here, as much as at Verdun, is the spirit of France — a France that takes sport with a laugh, and wins. WHAT IS ATTORNEY GENERAL SARGENT going to do about Sacco and Vanzetti? The completion of the hearing for a new trial confirms the story of the case presented by The Nation last week in which responsibility for the conviction of two probably innocent men was placed primarily upon the federal Department of Justice. William G. Thompson, counsel for the condemned men, submitted to Judge Webster Thayer affidavits from two former agents of the Department of Justice, Lawrence Letherman and Fred J. Weyand, that the machinery of the federal government had been used to convict Sacco and Vanzetti of murder although it was the opinion of those working on the case that the two Italians were not guilty of the crime charged. The real crime of the two men, in the eyes of the Department of Justice, was that they were aliens and radicals. Because they could not be deported "it was," Letherman swore, "the opinion of the Department of Justice agents here [in Bos- ton] that a conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti for murder would be one way of disposing of them." Letherman added that "the letters and evidence on file in the Boston office would throw a great deal of light on the preparation of the case." A. Mitchell Palmer and not the present Attorney Gen- eral was responsible for the policy of the Department of Justice in 1920, but unless Mr. Sargent does his best to undo the wrong he makes himself an accomplice in the effort to send two probably innocent men to the electric chair. As Mr. Thompson said: "The government that values secrets more than it values the lives of citizens has become a tyranny." MR. THOMPSON'S DEMAND for a new trial seems to us impregnable. Dudley P. Ranney, retained by the State of Massachusetts to oppose the application, made a weak defense of the conduct of the prosecution in the case, failing wholly to meet the great issues involved. He made no effort to controvert the charges in the affidavits of Weyand and Letherman. On the contrary he defended the conduct of the federal government and fell back on the lame argument that in revealing the facts Weyand and Letherman had been guilty of a breach of loyalty. Nor can one restrain impatience at finding Mr. Ranney relying on such technicali- ties in opposing a new trial as that the defense had been guilty of undue delay in making the motion. The fact is that the case against Sacco and Vanzetti is now of no impor- tance compared with the case against the courts of Massa-

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9Q4 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 chusetts. Mr. Thompson did not exaggerate when he said : Do you think that that part of the evidence which tells of the relations between the federal officials in Boston and the prosecution is of such a character that the honor of the Commonwealth can be supported if there is no new trial in this case? . . . Think what is going to be said about it: The man who does not believe in private property in America is going to be killed whether he commits murder or not! These words are going to ring around the world. THE ROUT OF THE KLAN in Colorado surprised its most sanguine enemies. Senator Rice W. Means, sup- ported by his fellow-Senator, L. C. Phipps, chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, expected renorni- naiion; he lost by 16,000 votes. The Klan candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor was also badly de- feated by former Governor 0. H. Shoup; and the "radical millii vrnor William E. Sweet, over- whelmed the candidate supported by the Klan and Mc v ' o forces for the D mocratic nomination for Senator. Now, Colorado has boon a foil cess of the Klan; the Wizard's office was reckoned as important as the Governor's by those who sought official favors. Only in Indiana did its rule firmer. And Colorado has turned against it. This is good news, and it disturbs the regulars in both old parties. Bui Mr. Means's victor, Charles W. Waterman, has not, as coun- sel of President Coolidge's Oil Conservation Board, shown insurgent tendencies. Colorado is another evidence, of the vigor of local revolts. The State was tired of Klan domina- tion; but those who read a national meaning into the returns fool themselves. The only other primary surprises of last week were the signs of returning Dry strength in the East. Several New York Republican constituencies defeated Wads- worth Wets; and although John Philips Hill, Maryland's his- trionic Wet, swept Baltimore, the rural districts assured the renomination of Senator Weller, who is relatively Dry. CANADA'S El ECTION s\ th; | toward the Liberals. The last, two elections had isive; even with Progre? ive support Mackenzie King's majority in the last Parliament was unstable, and when Goverivr Byng refused an election and called in the Con- servative leader. Mr. Meighen could win a majority only against King but not for his own policies. In the new House the Liberals will have 119 seats, the Conservativ the much-divided Progressives 19; Labor holds 3 seats the Alberta United Farmers their 11. This, then, marks a loss of 25 seats for the Conservatives, chiefly in Western Ontario. The Conservatives won only one prairie seat. But the phalanx of French-Canadian Liberals from Quebei of very different stuff from the American-minded Liberals of the West. Quebec Liberals are protectionist ; the Western farmers are as suspicious of tariffs as their American col- leagues south of the frontier. The customs scandals which forced Mr. King's resignation in June faded during the cam- paign, as the oil scandals faded in our own President ial cam- paign, largely because the Liberals w re able to find on the Conservative scutcheon to match their own stains. The constitutional issue played a larger role; the Liberals attacked the Governor General's intervention in dome tic politics (see Mr. de Brisay's article in The Nation for Sep- tember 8) and the Conservatives retorted by accusing thn Liberals of being annexationists in disguise. The Li gains indicate that Canada will continue along the path of growing independence which her economic interests so plainly mark out for her. THE BRITISH COAL STRIKE is row in its twentieth week, and it is further from a solution than it was on the first day. The miners have offered to negotiate — but they will not discuss wages, hours, or the substitution of district for national agreements; the owners prefer not to discuss anything, but especially not wages or hours or the substitution of national for district agreements. The own- ers claim that the men are returning to work in droves, that plenty of coal is being mined, that plenty of coal is being imported, that nobody needs coal anyway, that the country ia getting along very well without the miners, and that the miners are on the point of capitulating to every one of the owners' demands. Mr. Cook insists that only 2 per cent of the miners have returned to work; that in the face of grind- ing hunger and the approach of winter the men are as grimly determined as ever to make this a fight to the finish. Over all this intransigence the Government clucks like a frightened hen. Mr. Baldwin makes proposals; in his ab- sence Mr. Churchill makes proposals. These proposals all begin with the plea to both sides to "get around a table again and discuss matters"; they have nothing to say about reorganization of the industry. Discussion; words; ges- tures— that is all the Government has to suggest. While the talk flows, miners' children starve; if their fathers were to go back to work on the old wage they would starve only a little less painfully. POLAND WON the semi-permanent seat on the League Council which was the price of her assent to Germany's election as a permanent member of the Council. The other nations elected were China, Colombia, Salvador, Chile, Hol- land, Rumania, Czecho-Slovakia, and Belgium. With all her satellites on the Council France is thus stronger at Geneva than ever before. Meanwhile, as an episode in the new reconciliation, the French and German foreign ministers evaded the newspapermen and had a long, comfortable, pri- vate pow-wow. All sorts of hints of vast peace plans have since been dropped. Germany, it appears, is ready to market some billion dollars' worth of Dawes railway bonds, 52 per cent of which would go to France, if France will agree to evacuate the Saar, end military control of the Rhineland, and consent to return Eupen and Malmedy. This may well be the outcome of the mysterious travels of Messrs. Mellon, Morgan, Strong, and Norman, for of course the bonds can be sold only through British and American banks. The plan would release immediate credit for France; and the new industrial energy stimulated by evacuation of the Rhineland might compensate for the extra burden laid on Germany. There, of course, is the crux of the matter: Germany is today prosperous at the top, but how much more grinding can her workers stand? WITH ADMIRABLE RESTRAINT the French have refused to be stampeded by Mussolini's threats and blustering against them. "The land of France, for whose safety some of our 500,000 war dead fell, has been for years the most hospitable land for all those hatching in their per- fidious hearts hatred against Italy"; this is the gist of "orders" issued to the Fascist Party by the incorrigible head of Italy's Government. He is like a small boy calling his neighbors names, sticking out his tongue at them over

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Sept. 29, 1926] Tli- -ion 2S5 the back fence. If his neighbors have so far gone quietly about their business, ignoring these outbursts as the out- bursts of bad boys ought to be ignored, there is no reason to suppose that this moderation will last forever. The small boy, in time, receives a proper tanning; if his parents are wise, they do the chastising themselves without waiting for the neighbors. But there Is no indication that Italy is wise. Instead Mussolini is permitted to go his way. The Capital Punishment Bill is his latest contribution to good govern- ment; Italy earned the approbation of intelligent persons when capital punishment was abolished. Mussolini is restor- ing it — for attempting the life of the King or the head of the government, for revolt against the state, for grave per- sonal crimes — and for those persons conspiring against the welfare of the country. This last covers a multitude of sins, but it may be summed up in one word : for anti-Fascists. JESSE SMITH, the omnipotent, omniscient Jesse Smith, is again the pivot on which the trial of Harry M. Daugherty for fraudulent conspiracy turns. Never was a suicide more ill-timed than that of Jesse Smith. lie had the run of the Department of Justice; he hired and fired with- out consulting with anybody; he was the god from the machine operating only on an expense account; he lived in the same house with the Attorney General — officials of the Department of Justice have testified to all of these things; and then at the critical moment, when he might have testi- fied, when his word might have saved or damned his friend, he put himself beyond the reach of cross-examination. Dis- trict Attorney Buckner is attempting, in the present trial of Mr. Daugherty and Colonel Miller, to prove that Daugherty and Jesse Smith came to New York while the claim of the Swiss Metal Company for securities worth $7,000,000 was at stake; he has tried to prove that $25,000 of the retainer of $50,000 paid by Richard Merton to John T. King went as a check to Jesse Smith, that Merton was introduced by King not only to Colonel Miller, Alien Property Custodian, but to Jesse Smith, confidant of the Attorney General. Mr. Buck- ner also has presented testimony to show that Colonel Miller, while traveling in Pennsylvania, was advised by his secre- tary of the progress being made by the Swiss claim — and by that claim alone; and finally that Mr. Merton's papers were passed on from the Alien Property Custodian's office to the Attorney General for approval and the claim was settled in three days — surely a record for government settlement of anything! PRESIDENT COOLIDGE and Secretary Hoover have been filling the papers with their tender concern for the safety and well-being of our rubber industry. The President's attitude was announced after a visit to his sum- mer camp by Harvey Firestone, who told him of the advan- tages to be derived from large-scale exploitation of Philip- pine lands for rubber-growing. Mr. Firestone, one gath- ered, was struggling to make ends meet and without the Philippine rubber land he might go under. Now, as a matter of fact, the net profits of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company for its last fiscal year were more than a million dollars a month. In 1923 its net was a little more than $6,000,000; in 1925 it was $12,800,000. The B. F. Goodrich Company also showed net profits last year well above a million a month. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company had net profits for the year of thirteen and a half millions, while the United States Rubber Company topped the list with the eye tilling net of $ 1 7, I1. 1 0,000. It is on behalf of such puny and struggling enterprises that Mr. Hoover raises his whine about foreign monopolies against the United States, arch-monopolist. In the last three years the profits of the rubber-manufacturing industry in this country have doubled. Must Filipinos be deprived of their promised freedom in order to fatten this giant further? WE NOTE WITH PLEASURE that the councils of the American Legion are no longer unanimous in re- gard to the proposed reunion in Paris. The reason given by the opponents of the plan — French discourtesy toward Americans is perhaps not of the best, but anything which will prevent the descent of a mob of American revelers upon the already long-suffering Parisians is good enough for the purpose. We do not mean to assert that the members of the Legion are worse than the members of any other miscel- laneous group. Their convention will doubtless be no more objectionable than a convention of the Benevolent and Pro- tective1 Order of Elks or the United Brotherhood of Under- wear Salesmen, but there is no particular reason why this sort of thing — annoying enough to us, who are used to it — should be inflicted upon the French, who are already con- vinced that Americans are by nature as raucous, rowdy, and absurd as the jollifications which accompany our popular conventions are. If the Legion goes to Paris it will go with a whoop. Its members, off for a holiday and full of the vulgar American idea that Paris is the place where one may do all the things one may not do at home, will be as welcome there as a victorious football team would be at a League of Nations convention at Geneva. Parisians will not be flattered even by the things which are intended as compliments, and if there is one left who still refuses to believe that all Americans are noisy vulgarians a Legion convention will convert him. THE BODY OF GEORGE VLIDO, a king of the gipsies, has been buried at Trenton, New Jersey, in much the same way that any Christian body would be buried. But last week it lay in state as Romany clay should lie — in a mahogany coffin in a royal tent in a vacant lot somewhere along Rockaway Avenue, Brooklyn. There was nothing unfitting about a vacant lot. Gipsies traditionally die along country lanes, and. if they are kings, wait in pleasant fields to be put away. These days, however, gipsies — in America at any rate — grow fond of populous cities; their lanes are avenues, and their groves are blocks of brick. Their land- scape is lined with chimneys, their air is full of smoke. And still their way is their own. Closed within an im- memorial world they still walk on — or drive in Fords— through an alien universe the extent and character of which they neither know nor care to learn. The rows of flats and small shops which ran around this vacant lot in Brook- lyn might just as well have been rows of trees; the curious persons who crowded up to the tent, and were resented, might just as well have been curious bipeds come out of the forest to gaze in wonder at the first men. The trip to Trenton was through a human landscape, but one that may still have seemed wholly impersonal to those who conducted the body of King George. King George is dead, and his son George will take his place. Who in America knows the age of this line? Who can count back to the first re? Who can recite the new one's royal duties? No man knows, and no stone either.

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286 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 Spokesman, What of the Night? ONE MILLION TWO HUNDRED AND NINE THOU- SAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE words, a proud telegraph company announced on September 5, had been sent to the newspapers from the President's Adirondack camp. They told what the President was under- stood to believe, what "official circles" reported, and, most particularly, what the "Presidential spokesman" said the President believed. The sophisticated world knows that the Presidential Spokesman is the President himself. He calls the correspondents into conference and answers their ques- tions. They must not quote him, but they may paraphrase his remarks. Sometimes he mumbles and they cannot hear him well; they have to do the best they can. There was a time when a stenographic record of the sessions was kept. But one day the Spokesman's statements as quoted in the newspapers made trouble; President Coolidge denied that he had said anything of the sort; the indignant corre- spondents proved by 'he stenogram that they had cited accurately — and the President, to save his face in future, ordered that no record be kept. And now, day after day, week after week, the President launches millions of words of trial balloons, and the correspondents bear the burden. If the venture goes well, it was accurately reported; if not, the statement was "unauthorized," "inaccurate," "due to faulty reporting." The system is an insult to public intelli- gence and to the newspaper profession. A truly independent press would as a body refuse its continued collaboration in this kind of backstairs Presi- dential oratory; an alert public would demand that the President say what he had to say openly. Sometimes one cannot tell whether the President's ideas wander over the landscape to such an extent that no man could make his words consistent with one another or the correspondents are guilty of incredibly bad reporting. Recently a band of American tourists shepherded by Sherwood Eddy, late of the Y. M. C. A., returning from Moscow were reported to believe "that this country should recognize the Russian Government." The newspapers at once made of the tourists a "commission" and of their first casual utterance a "re- port." The wires hummed, the correspondents foregathered, and — presumably — the Spokesman spoke. With the follow- ing results — all in one day: The Associated Press Paul Smith's, N. Y., Sept. 14. — Indications were given to- day at the summer White House that the Washington Govern- ment would give no special attention to the report of the Sher- wood Eddy commission favoring recognition of the Soviet Government. . . . President Coolidge understands, it was said, that the commission . . . has no more, if as much, information on conditions there as has the State Department. There was no indication that the position of the President has changed. The United Press Paul Smith's, N. Y., Sept. 14. — Whenever Russia is will- ing to honor the loans made by the United States to the Keren- sky Government the way will be quickly opened for negotia- tions looking to recognition by this Government. This is the reaction here to the report of the unofficial commission headed by Sherwood Eddy of the Y. M. C. A. . . . The American posi- tion toward Soviet Russia has been widely misunderstood. Originally . . . there was objection to the Soviet form of pro- letarian dictatorship, in addition to the debt question. . . . But gradually the emphasis shifted from the attack on the Soviet form of government to the question of debt repudiation. In- ternally the Soviet Government is solidly intrenched, according to information here. This Government, however, will not yield in its insistence that the debts be honored, although liberal terms of payment would be granted. . . . Coolidge has been more sympathetic to Borah's position on this question than is generally known. The New York Times Paul Smith's, N. Y., Sept. 13. — The Administration's atti- tude toward the recognition of Russia has not been modified as a result of the report of the commission headed by Dr. Sher- wood Eddy. . . . President Coolidge stated his attitude on Russia in a conference with newspapermen late in 1923. . . . These statements are just as true today as when they were uttered, according to officials here. ... It was also asserted that American business men who have had big enterprises in Russia are opposed to recognition of Russia until the latter's form of government changes. . . . They do not want to do busi- ness with Russia directly while the Soviet system exists. The Universal Service Paul Smith's, N. Y., Sept. 13. — A gentler tone toward Russia in the future by the Coolidge Administration was seen today as one of the results of the Sherwood Eddy commission's recommendation of recognition. . . . President Coolidge, having inherited the Hughes policy of alarm, has for two years watched developments there with growing interest. . . . Russia is today doing vastly more business with the United States than under the pre-war regime of the czars. . . . National business leaders . . . complained to the State Department that the absence of even trade relations with Russia has added tremendously to the cost of doing business. . . . They complained that Germany and England were acquiring profitable business which otherwise would fall to the United States. The New York World White Pine Camp, N. Y., Sept. 13. — President Coolidge is expected to review his position on recognition of Russia as a result of findings by the Sherwood Eddy commission. ... It is not believed the report will lead to any immediate change in policy, although it has been felt for some time that the Presi- dent was moving in the direction of recognition. The New York Evening Post Paul Smith's, N. Y., Sept. 14. — Mr. Coolidge has not yet received the report of the Sherwood Eddy commission. . . . The Administration is interested in the findings of such a repre- sentative and able body of men . . . but Mr. Coolidge's position . . . has not changed. . . . The Eddy report may result in a softer attitude toward Russia, although the State Department still stands pat on the Hughes principles. There you have it — clear as mud. The President is opposed to recognition; he is moving toward recognition. The report will have no effect; it will cause the President to review his position. The President's position was clearly stated three years ago; it is widely misunderstood. It is unchanged, and it has considerably changed. The Presi- dent supports the Hughes policy; he is more sympathetic to Borah's position. The President will pay no attention to the Eddy report because the State Department knows it all ; the Administration is interested in the findings of such

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 287 representative and able men. American business men are opposed to recognition and refuse to trade directly with Soviet Russia; American trade with Soviet Russia lias grown enormously and national business leaders complain that non-recognition cuts into their profits. The State De- partment stands pat on Hughes's principles; the policy has shifted since the days of Hughes. The report will have no result because the Administration will not yield; the report may result in a softer attitude and a gentler tone, a mere nod from Moscow may quickly bring negotiations. . . . Well, anyhow, the President has not seen the report. And so it goes. The identity o\' the Spokesman, whether he be "Mr. Paul Smith" or the Man in the Iron Mask, is unimportant. What did he say? The Greatest Afewspaper in the World THE New York Times has been celebrating its seventy- fifth birthday, and it has a right to be proud, for it has become, under Adolph S. Ochs, the greatest newspaper in the world. The criticism which The Nation and others have heaped upon it is in a measure a tribute, for it has made itself the standard by which news-gathering is judged. As a record of current history it might be but it is not surpassed. There are newspapers in Japan and France and Great Britain, and tabloids in America, with twice or three times its circulation, but these journals of vast distribution are today amusement-sheets rather than chronicles of the world, and in its chosen field the New York Times has risen steadily to the top. The London Times, which was once indispensable to men who watched history boiling in far-off corners of the earth, has fallen sadly; the Manchester Guar- dian, a greater force as a maker of world opinion, can hardly compete with the New York Timcs's world-wide telegraphic news service; and no other American newspaper begins to rival it in amount or quality of daily news. It "covers" the world. For this preeminence Mr. Ochs, whose genius has also given it its present financial impregnability, is largely re- sponsible. He has hired able executives and given them responsibility. He has made his motto "All the news that's fit to print," and within his lights he has usually lived up to it. But this makes the T ivies something outside the great tradition of journalism. Mr. Ochs believes in journalistic impersonality; he features no names; his idea of a good book review7 seems to be a hack summary which expresses no opinion and gives no judgment upon an author's impar- tiality or success. A good editorial, by the same test, is rather a summary of the background of the daily news than a penetrating analysis or a call to action. The Tit by its own theory, does not attempt to mold history; it pleads no cause and wages no war; it simply reports. The result is that although able men have collaborated in it the Times's editorial page is one of the dullest and most wab- bling in America. Dull, because it never knows the passion of an ideal; wabbling, because after a period of impar- tiality any crisis is sure to find it upon the side of the pos- sessing classes. When the coal strike of 1925 was in the offing the Times printed as editorials excellent analyses of the chaos which made industrial conflict inevitable ; when the strike arrived, it forgot its own wisdom and poured denunciation upon the miners alone. In the 1919 steel strike it was one of the most impassioned Red-hunters; during the war its unfairness to diss* id rs of every de- scription was notorious. Mr. Ochs's pledge to "invite in- nt discussion from all shades of opinion" went by the hoard. In any crisis of world moment it can he counted upon to abandon neutrality and expose itself as at heart an organ of property. A paper has a righl to be impersonal and conservative, but not to claim impartiality at the same time. Nor does the Times always reach its goal of impar- tiality in its news columns. Again and again its dispatches from Paris, Berlin, and Geneva have plainly been molded by editorial policy — sometimes only its policy of printing everal accounts of the same events has saved it from the mistakes into which its zealous correspondents would have carried it. Its Russian news was for years a paragon of misinformation, a hodgepodge of rumors from all the refugee capitals of Europe and Asia. That has, in response to criticism, been corrected — today, with Walter Duranty as its Moscow correspondent, the Times has the most reli- able Russian news printed in any American daily paper. And in China, which is today, perhaps, the world's chief source of fantastic fables, it has in Thomas F. Millard a singularly penetrating recorder of national moods. Its Phil- ippine news is still a reflection of the mood of the small American community in Manila, and at home the Times seldom of its own initiative discovers that there is a labor side of a strike, although it is readier than other papers to print press releases sent to it by minority or opposition groups. It is encouraging that such a paper as the Times has forged steadily ahead at the same time that the tabloids are discovering new depths of emotional sensationalism. But just as the "clean" character of its news gives perhaps a false picture of the world in 1926 so its "impartial" politi- cal and economic news is distorted. It reflects the rule of America by Big Business, accurately, uncritically, unpene- tratingly. There is still a place in journalism for something more. The House on the Prairie AMY LOWELL, rather desperately defending her aristo- cratic contentment with the traditions and establish- ments of the East, once spoke to this effect: "I, too, have traveled through the Middle West. I have read the novels and poems '-'hich come out of Chicago and the flat farms along the Mississippi Valley. I have tried to like that country. And I am forced to declare it hideous. The little towns I saw from the train depressed me terribly, they were so disordered and dull; in one of those meaningless farmhouses I am sure I could never take a breath, let alone compose a line." The- bard of Brookline was perhaps the last person in the world to speak with authority upon the inner qualities of Edgar Lee Masters's land, or George Ade's, or Theodore Dreiser's, or Carl Sandburg's, or Vachel Lindsay's, or Willa Cather's, or Sherwood Anderson's. Yet none of her hearers could deny that her taste in externals was good ; none but was forced to admit that something out there required defending. The most affectionate son of the Middle West., return- ing by motor or train from, say, the pleasant places of

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288 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 New England, confesses to a bit of disappointment as he surveys the dwellings of his favorite folk in field and vil- lage. The larger towns and the cities are much like others in the modern world. Tall, square hotels rise in standard elegance from the edges of asphalt streets, and suburban avenues are lined with stucco, brick, or clapboard creations which in many cases are respectable even if they arc not by any definition original. But out in the country our returning son rubs his eyes. He had not remembered that most of the houses there looked too small for their purposes, as now indeed they do. He had supposed, too, that they were built of sufficiently good material, like the hearts of his countrymen. Now he sees that the material was in many cases sadly skimped. The weatherboarding is thin, the po ches frail; and the whole structure has a lamentably temporary air. The paint — too seldom white — never got its last and finishing coat; its color, never pleasing, lias grown Iusterless and drab. As to design, that is almost invariably absent. The facade, the gables, the windows and doors do not complement one another as expressions of an idea; nor is there an idea in any one of these things by itself. The lines are without significance. Dormers are where no dormers should be; a tall, thin gable rises nut of a low mass; porches detach themselves from eaves and stand weakly, awkwardly; even when the controlling line is good the eye is likely to be disturbed by a cheap molding or other ornament that runs at cross purposes with the fust idea; and the windows are pretty sure to stare b'ankly at the speeding train. The farm buildings, having all level spare in which to dispose themselves, are uninterestingly grouped. Perhaps no trees have been planted. There are trees in the little towns, yet even they do not correct, an impression of sprawling — an impression that the village only litters an otherwise ordered landscape. The returning son is not disappointed in the land- scape. There is not only grandeur but charm in flatness; and, rf course, the flatness is nowhere unrelieved. Knolls rise here and there; streams wind slowly between rows of oaks and willows; groves of original hardwood, trimmed for cattle and sheep, cast heavy shadows on forty-acre fields of corn and grass. The prairies have always been beautiful, and in spite of what man can do they must re- main so. Thus far, however, man has done little to im- prove them or to set them off. His houses do not fit in; his plantations have not been for the benefit of the eye. The returning son remembers New England, where the hills dominate the roofs and the roofs command the meadows; Maryland and Pennsylvania, where the habitations of farmers, a little stiffer and erecter, have something to say to the fences and trees; England, where man has literally created a landscape of his own; France, Spain, and Italy, where houses seem to grow out of plains and mountains as naturally as forests or wild flowers do. He remembers all these — letting his mind go out to Egypt with its white angles under the sun and to Arabia with its tents like shadows on the sand — -and he wishes that his Middle West had not been filled so fast with people who had to have some kind of house, however cheap; that the first generation of builders out there had not practiced in the sickliest period American architecture has thus far known; that the frontier touch were gone; that the owners of Illinois or Indiana land still lived upon it and planned to make it look as if someone with pride lived there. He may not know the reason for his discontent; but he is discontented. How long, he wonders, will it be until the valley lives in style? An American style, of course, and a new one; but one about which books can be written, and one that there will be no doubt or shame about. College or Country Club? RECENTLY the colleges— particularly the Eastern ones — have been telling their troubles to the news- papers. Two things, it appears, are worrying them: first, the tendency of athletics to become the chief preoccupation of those youths who are sometimes ironically called "stu- dents" and, second, the fact that more people are clamor- ing for entrance than the colleges can possibly, for their own good, attempt to educate. Various criteria for selec- tion, ranging all the way from the relative attractiveness of the candidates as revealed by their photographs and family trees to rigidly prepared psychological examinations, have been suggested but all have their defects. And yet the double dilemma is much like that which faced the legen- dary Pullman porter who discovered one morning that he had two pairs of mismated shoes: one need only put the two problems together to find the solution. If, for example, Harvard really wishes a small and select group of students who are attracted only by the fame of her professors and the opportunities which she offers for the acquirement of learning and culture, then let her simply abolish intercollegiate athletics for four years by way of an experiment. No one can doubt that the imme- diate result would be the reduction of the freshman class to a manageable size, and no one can maintain that any hard- ship would be done. It is highly probable that there are many worthy students of unlovely feature and unimpres- sive ancestry; it is also highly probable that psychological tests do not furnish a perfect criterion of that complex of qualities which make the scholar or the genius; but no man who refuses an opportunity to go to college because he is denied the privilege of enjoying the hysterics induced by a cheer-leader can maintain that he is being denied his inalienable right to the development of his mind. And as to the sound mind in a sound body, there are other and more efficacious ways of cultivating it than are afforded by intercollegiate football. The fact is that the colleges have brought their prob- lem upon themselves and that they have no good excuse for complaint. They have themselves elaborated the social aspects of college life, they have deliberately made the uni- versities as attractive as possible to those who have scant interest in things intellectual, and then they bemoan the fact that they are besieged by hordes of not very serious- minded youths. What, we wonder, do they expect, when they pay five times as much for a coach as for a professor and spend ten times as much for a stadium as for a labora- tory? The game which one takes is bound to depend upon the bait which one uses, and a man who opened a golf course would not be surprised to find that those who came to play were not particularly interested in metaphysics. Obviously the way to attract a group of students capable of profiting by a college education is to run a college, not a country club, and we are willing to wager that at the pres- ent moment the classrooms and the faculties of American institutions are amply sufficient to give such an education to all who really want it.

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 289 / / Drai»n fc.y Hcndrik van Loon The Birth of a New Idea

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290 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 George Washington — The Image and the Man By W. E. WOODWARD* I. Schoolboy and Swain NOWADAYS men are morose with living in a world that has grown too large for them. Morose and bit- ter, or defiant and gay. One need not be a clairvoyant to detect a sense of foreboding beneath the exultation over what is called modern progress. We are the victims of our own inventions; we see civilization strangely shattering before the driving power that we hoped would save it. -£ -A" •& "A" "■'■" The world into which young Washington came was very different. It was by no means too large. Henry Adams, with his instinct for compact phrases, calls it a "small and cheerful world" — but both its smallness and cheerfulness were relative. People were dissatisfied, as they have always been; but then they tnought they were able to lay their hands on the things that made them unhappy. Life was almost devoid of theory. If they were without poetry, they were also without hopeless dilemmas. They were a prac- tical people, the colonial Americans. They lived under conditions that made practicality a cardinal virtue. Now, in this small and cheerful wrorld we see the small Washington getting a small amount of education. There was no regular school near Augustine Washing- ton's home, or so it seems, and George at the age of six or seven was turned over to a Mr. Hobby, sexton of a nearby church, to receive whatever sluggish pothook instruction the sexton could give. Mr. Hobby's business was not to teach people but to bury them; and he was without renown in the field of book- learning. No matter. In a primitive society queer shifts are made. A man may be at one and the same time a horse- shoer and a dentist. To the sexton-teacher George goes, his horn-book in his hand, wearing buckles on his shoes and a little coat of the color of plum. In this churchyard school he learned the alphabet and how to make crude, curly letters. No doubt he heard the rambling story of many a departed soul and spelled the mossy headstone names while the sexton mused on the fate of some poor country Yorick. But there was no moody Hamlet in this boy. To him a dead man was a dead man; a house was a house; and a spade was a spade. He was firmly planted in the everyday practicality that makes nations and then ruins them. The imagination that breeds vice was not in him; nor was the imagination that breeds fear. Pretty soon the sexton was dried up ; he had taught all he knew; there was no more water in that well. George had acquired a sort of vague capacit" to read, a little arith- metic, and the foundation of the fantastic system of spelling that bedeviled him to the end of his days. He was never able to get the i's and the e's right in such words as "ceil- ing"; he always wrote "blew" when he meant the color * This is the first of three instalments from a forthcoming book, used esy of the author and the publishers, Boni and Liveright. Another instalment will be printed next week. blue; lie was "lye"; and oil was "oyl" in his orthographv, Down in Westmoreland County, near the old home of the Washingtons, a Mr. Williams presided at a more gen- erous fount of knowledge. There George was sent, and as the school was thirty miles or so from his father's home he lived with his half-brother Augustine — the one nick- named "Austin" — who had grown up and had a home of his own in Westmoreland. The colorless Mr. Williams, who exists to us only as a name, appears to have specialized in mathematics. It was he who taught George the round bold handwriting that makes Washington's letters so legible. In the science of numbers he had an apt pupil in little George, who loved arithmetic as many another boy has loved Shelley. At his tongue's end were all the weights and measures — avoirdupois, pints and gallons, cords of wrood, peck of peas, long division, subtraction. I doubt if we can find in history any other character of the first importance who had a passion for counting equal to that of George Washington. During his whole life he kept his eye on the number of things. Every penny he owned and every foot of land was set down, over and over again, in the most orderly and meticulous manner. The enumeration of things seemed to afford an outlet ■ for a sort of mental voluptuousness. At one time when he was managing five plantations and several hundred slaves he calculated laboriously the number of seed in a pound Troy weight of red clover, and found that a pound contained 71,000 seed. Then he calculated the seed in a pound of timothy, and learned that there were 298,000. Large num- bers these, but he got into astronomical dimensions when he set out to calculate the number of seed in a pound of New River grass, and discovered the total to be 844,800. There is also, in his handwriting, a memorandum giv- ing the number of windows in each of the houses on the Mount Vernon estate, and the "no. of Paynes" in each window. He was never too busy to spare the time to do this counting and measuring. In 1786 he measured the exact altitude of the piazza at Mount Vernon above the high- water mark of the river, and found it to be 124 feet 10% inches. These are the gestures of a man who loves material possessions with an intensity that is almost passionate. His counting was limited to the enumeration of the things he possessed or which might bear some tangible relation to his possessions. In his various enumerations, treasured in the archives, there is no list of authors or of historical events or of works of art. I cannot find that he ever wrote out his ideas in logical sequence for his own guidance as Lincoln did, and as Jefferson did. He was not an idea-man but a thing-man. ***** In the queer mess of human destiny the determining factor is Luck. For every important place in life there are many men of fairly equal capacities. Among them Luck decides who shall accomplish the great work, who shall be

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 291 crowned with laurel, and who shall fall back into obscurity and silence. Ability counts in human affairs, but Luck counts too and as one approaches the summit in any sphere of effort Luck counts more and more. The proverbial saying that there is plenty of room at the top is the reverse of the truth. There is never any room at the top, though there is plenty at the bottom. Men who reach the top arrive there through a linked-up series of fortuitous circumstances in which capacity and chance are combined. The turning-points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved. One of the important turning-points of George Wash- ington's life was his meeting with Lord Fairfax. It is entirely probable that he did not realize its importance' at any rate, he never said anything to lead us to believe that he did — but we can see it clearly now, in historical perspective. This nobleman, who was a bachelor and past the age of fifty when he met young Washington, possessed in Vir- ginia an almost incredible estate of five million four hun- dred thousand acres. He owned more land than there is in the State of New Jersey. It was all in a single tract, in the Northern Neck of Virginia; twenty-one counties have been made of it. This is a larger area of land than has ever been owned by any individual before or since in the history of the United States. ***** He [George Washington] became a youthful favorite of Lord Fairfax, but who knows why? He could ride splen- didly and shoot well. Lord Fairfax liked that. Fox-hunting occupied his time, and that of his neighbors, to an extent that is almost unbelievable. There were no theaters, no fashionable assemblies, no daily papers — and but few of any kind — no elegant shops, nothing to read, and nothing to do but play cards and hunt game. Some one writes from Belvoir to Mount Vernon: "His Lordship proposed drawing Mudd Hole tomorrow, first killing a Fox; and then to turn down a Bagged Fox before your door for ye diversion of ye Ladys. . . . We took the Fox yesterday without Hurt." Young George Washington was dependable, forthright, and honest. No doubt Lord Fairfax liked that, too, for he had come from a land of sinuous lickspittles where Mr. Snake would, before long, flourish in "The School for Scan- dal." And, moreover, young Washington said very little. He did not ask the keen and searching questions which make wealthy elderly gentlemen uneasy and wonder what the world is coming to. At that time Washington was only sixteen, but he looked much older. He was about six feet tall, with gray- blue eyes and reddish-brown hair. His hands and feet were so large that they seemed enormous. Thirty years later Lafayette said that Washington's hands were "The largest I have ever seen on a human being." George Washington Parke Custis, his adopted son, de- scribes his walk in this marvelous sentence : "His lower limbs, being formed methodically straight, he walked, as it were, on parallel lines." The noble Fairfax thought the time was ripe to have his land surveyed and his titles put in order. It was high time, indeed. Farmers were coming down from Pennsyl- vania and settling in the Fairfax wilderness, without rhyme or reason, as bold as you please, jusl as if the laud were not already owned by somebody else. lie gave the job of surveying the lands behind the Blue Ridge— in the Shenandoah Valley to his relative, young e William Fairfax (son of the William of Belvoir), who was assisted by George Washington and an experienced surveyor named Mr. Genn. This is, I think, the first op- portunity that George had ever had of making any money. The pay he received was large- at least so it seems to me — for he says in a letter about the job that "A Uubbleloon is my constant gain every Day that the weather will per- mit my going out and sometimes Six Pistoles." At that time a doubloon was the equivalent of about $7.20; and a pistole was worth $3. GO; approximately. ***** Early in life Washington began to fumble with love. It was really fumbling, for he was never at ease in the technique of love and love-making. Like the art of swim- ming, the art of love is one of the simplest arts within human range, if one understands it. On the other hand, when it is not understood the course of love runs through a foot-tripping labyrinth in which strange, insuperable ob- stacles appear. Washington, I think, always found it something of a mystery. In the presence of women he would often lose his sim- ple forthright manner and turn himself into a pompous and mouthy sentimentalist — or else remain spellbound and silent. My impression is that he idealized women; and most women, in their hearts, detest idealization. With good reason, too, for it puts them in a very uncomfortable posi- tion. To live every day on a plane of lofty and rather ethereal ideals is a discouraging outlook for a woman of spirit and sense, especially when the ideals have been invented by a man. The idealization of women is one of the well-known traits of highly masculine men. They do not understand feminine thought and feeling. To them women are strange beings of a superior order. Washington was intensely masculine. In 1748, about the time of the Fairfax surveying ex- pedition, he wrote to somebody whom he calls "Dear Robin" about an amatory experience of his own. The affair is hazily anonymous, unfortunately. A draft of the letter is in the notebook which he used to record his survey of the Fairfax estate. As it is quite lengthy and deals with other matters, I shall quote only a pertinent extract : My pkice of Residence is at present at His Lordships* where I might was my heart disengaged pass my time very pleasantly as theres a very agreeable Young Lady Lives in the same house (Colo George Fairfax's Wife's Sister) but as thats only adding Fuel to fire it makes me the more uneasy for by often and unavoidably being in Company with her revives my former Passion for your Low Land Beauty whereas was I to live more retired from young Women I might in some measure eliviate my sorrows by burying that chast and troublesome Passion in the grave of oblivion or etarnall forgetfulness for as I am very well assured thats the only antidote or remedy that I shall be relieved by or only recess that can administer any cure or help to me as I am well convinced was I ever to attempt any thing I should only get a denial which would be only adding grief to uneasiness. * He means Lord Thomas Fairfax. — [Author's note.]

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292 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 This "Low Land Beauty" has become as famous among the biographers of Washington as the Man in the Iron Mask is among French historians. She has been identified at haphazard with half a dozen young women of Westmore- land— among them Mary Bland, Lucy Grymes, and Betsy Fauntleroy. (She could not have been Miss Fauntleroy, as that lady was only a child of eleven in 1748.) The most convincing conjecture is that the Lowland beauty was Miss Lucy Grymes, who afterward married Henry Lee and became the grandmother of General Robert E. Lee. Whoever she may have been, it is evident that she had left our hero in a state of despair. There is an air of impending deliquescence in his utterance. He is about to m It away. He is through with women — at sixteen. All is vanity; all is ashes, Whereas was I to live more retired from young Women I might in some measure eliviate my sorrows by burying that chast and troublesome Passion in the grave of ob- livion or etarnall forgetfulness. What mooning and moping! But such maladies soon run their cours". ^he remedy for woman is woman. Strange ailment, strange remedy. In the same notebook that records his desolation we find, a few pages further on, this cryptic entry: 'Twas Perfect Love before] But Now I do adore \ s. Young M. A. his Wife It would appear from this sentimental note that he was adoring somebody's wife. Young M. A.'s wife. Then we come to an acrostic in George's handwriting. Here it is: From your bright sparkling Eyes I was undone; Rays, you have; more transparent than the Sun, Amidst its glory in the rising Day None can you equal in your bright array; Constant in your calm and unspotted Mind; Equal to all, but will to none Prove kind, So knowing, seldom one so Young, you'l Find. Ah ! woe's me, that I should Love and conceal Long have I wish'd, but never dare reveal, Even though severely Loves Pains I feel; Xei xes that great, was't free from Cupids Dart, And all the greatest Heroes, felt the smart. You will observe that the acrostic spells "Frances Alexa — " obviously Frances Alexander. She has not been identified. The Alexanders were numerous in colonial Vir- ginia. The next page of the notebook has been torn out, so that the last lines of the acrostic are missing. It would be as absurd to lay much stress on these frag- ments as it would be to reconstruct an unknown prehis- toric animal from a single bone. All that they can prove is that he was thinking of love, and that he was a young man of some little experience in such matters. Although we know very little with certainty as to Washington's relations with women, there are some facts which we know very well. One of them is that he was never obsessed by them. He never had an overwhelming love affair. In his history there is neither a Josephine nor a Beatrice. He never took his opinions from any woman, and never went out of his way to fashion his life to make it fit any woman's conception. However, there was one who stood large in his young life. . . . I have mentioned a George William Fairfax who accom- panied Washington on the surveying trip. He was the son of William Fairfax of Belvoir, and Lawrence Washington had married his sister. On the survey he was as lovelorn as Washington, but the result was more happy, for on his return he married Miss Sally Cary, the eldest daughter of Colonel William Cary. Washington spent most of the winter of 1749 at Bel- voir, as a guest of Young Fairfax and his wife. Persons in the vicinity who were skilled in predicting and recording emotional disturbances mentioned the occurrence al that time of numerous perturbations at Belvoir. These seismic emotions were slight, hardly worth setting down n the larger annals, but sufficiently thrilling nevertheless to warrant local attention. Naive folk declared that young Washington was in love with Mary Cary. This young lady is mentioned in the letter to "Dear Robin" — quoted above — as staying at Lord Fairfax's house. Alas! It was not to Miss Mary that he had given his affection, but to her married sister, Mrs. Sally Fairfax, his friend's wife. It was then all in germination, awaiting the flow of days and too nebulous to be placed in a definite category. But we shall hear of it later, with the passing of years. It was in this period that he had another experience with girls which was dramatic enough, but not at all senti- mental. One day he was taking a swim in the Rappahan* nock and two girls of low degree ran off with his clothes. Only fancy! The Father of our Country standing by the river's brink in the golden sunset clad only in humor- less dignity — for, although he had plenty of dignity he never had any humor — clothed in dignity, and wondering how to get home. Eventually he got home somehow, and had the girls arrested. One of them was convicted of theft and was punished with fifteen lashes on her bare back. ***** If he was precocious in love, he was also precocious in land, and of the two passions the desire for land was the stronger. In 1748 this boy of sixteen acquired his "Bullskin Plantation" — so named because of its proximity to Bull- skin Creek. The place consisted of five hundred and fifty acres of wild land in Frederick County. He paid for it by doing work as a surveyor. In 1750 he bought four hundred and fifty-six acres of one McCracken; a cultivated farm probably, as he paid one hundred and twelve pounds for it, which would have been a very high price for uncleared land. Two years later he bought five hundred and fifty-two acres more, paying a hundred and fifteen pounds. Before he was twenty-one years of age he was the owner of 1,558 acres, all of which he had obtained by his own efforts. The money for these purchases was earned by him as a surveyor. In 1748 he was recommended by Lord Fairfax for the post of official surveyor of Culpeper County, and was appointed after he had gone down to Williamsburg to take a sort of post-graduate course in the art and mystery of measurement. The county records of Virginia contain hundreds of his surveys, all drawn and annotated in his neat, clear manner.

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 293 Eliot: Iconoclast and Builder By GLENN FRANK rjllli: NATION has asked me to speak of Dr. Eliot pre- A. sumably because I am a very recent recruit in the ranks of university presidents ami might be expected to speak in terms of a first fresh contact with an educational system and situation upon which this great gray savant. more than any other American of the last halt" century, left the mark of his mind. My only personal contact with Dr. Eliot was confined to a few letters, written in his precise longhand, that lie in my files. Something of the Olympian sweep of his spirit crept even into these letters. Despite his apparent austerity and aloofness he could precipitate a deal of human warmth and power on the white paper of a letter. So that, despite my casual and tenuous contact with him, 1 feel that I knew him. But I shall not undertake to re- capture in this brief paper the strength and savor of his personality. That may be safely left to pens dipped in a devotion more intimate and informed by a know more personal than mine. I shall speak of him imper- sonally as an idea, a force, a symbol of a definitive epoch in the evolution of liberal education in the United States. I cannot, however, turn to this impersonal task without venturing the opinion that one quality, more than any other, marked him off from some, at least, of his con- temporaries. Dr. Eliot possessed transcendent and tri- umphant courage. He never soiled his soul with idolatry before the traditions either of his class or of his calling. In a profession — the university presidency— that makes for timidity and trimming, Dr. Eliot remained an execu- tive who was not afraid to differ from his directors when necessary. He was great enough to be more interested in the progress of his purpose than in the permanence of his position. I have sometimes thought that no man should accept the presidency of a university unless he could feel his free- dom guaranteed by either of two things — an unbreakable courage or assured economic independence of his job. No man should be a university president who wants to be a university president. The call to compliance is too insidious to be resisted by the man who needs the job or is wedded to it for his own sake. No man is spiritually fitted to head a great American university, such as Dr. Eliot ad- ministered, unless he could surrender his presidency on twenty-four hours' notice without a pang rather than render either to alien interests or to academic inertia. I am sure that, at any moment, Dr. Eliot would have resigned from the presidency of Harvard before he would have sold out to a tradition or submitted to a demand that his intelligence had indicted. Dr. Eliot was the ideal democrat because he was the ideal aristocrat. He put his superiority of mind and char- acter unreservedly at the disposal of the nation. His aristocracy was an aristocracy of social power rather than an aristocracy of social position. Born into the charmed and charming circle of New England's social aristocracy, he was a member of it, but not a minion of it. He kepi his mind free from automatic conformity to the dominant polit- ical, social, and economic ideas of his class. He was a modern representative of the ancient Greek conception of an aristocrat as a man deserving high honor because he had done some socially essential job in a superior manner. Dr. Eliot was an apostle of the disinterested he excellent performance dedicated to the service of the com- monwealth. In short, he was the aristo-democrat who fore- wed that scientific democracy which must, sooner or . supersede that sentimental democracy which so often its vote for bad English and baggy trousers in prefer- ence to utilizing a leadership that is wise enough and courageous enough to differ from it when necessary. But I am doing the thing I said I would not do — I peaking about Dr. Eliot as a person. I promised to speak of him as a symbol of a definitive epoch in the evolu- tion of liberal education in the United States. This I will do by presenting, in the barest and briefest outline, a few considerations that must, as I see it, enter into any realistic attempt to "place" Dr. Eliot in the history of liberal education. We must, I think, clearly distinguish between the in- fluence Dr. Eliot exerted upon the college of liberal arts in particular and the influence he exerted upon the university in general. The influence he exerted upon the graduate and professional schools of the American university will stand as a permanently valuable contribution of educational statesmanship. His influence upon the development of the American college of liberal arts, on the other hand, will, in my judgment, ultimately be considered as having been tem- porary. With respect to university policy, he was a states- man for the future. With respect to college policy, he was the courageous pilot of a transition. Along with Gilman and others, he brought to the de- velopment of graduate and professional schools that ex- tensive scope of material and that intensive specialization of method that must always distinguish the graduate and professional schools from the college of liberal arts, in which the objective is the general enrichment and discipline of the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral capacities of the student. Dr. Eliot's contribution to university policy is, I think, unquestioned; I shall therefore leave it undiscussed. I want merely to suggest a point of view respecting Dr. Eliot's influence upon the American college of liberal arts. When, as a lad of thirty-five, Dr. Eliot assumed directive responsibilities in American education, he found the subjects of the college curriculum few and required. When, as an elder statesman of seventy-five, he ended his career as an active administrator, the subjects of the college curriculum were many and elective. He found the college curriculum standing, like a walled city, with most of the creative intellectual activity of the time going on outside its walls among the natural scientists. He made a breach in the walls and asked the scientists in. The many new subjects introduced into the curriculum were, for a time, sniffed at by the old subjects. They were the nnuveavr riches of the academic world. Greek, Latin, and mathematics, the aristocrats of the curriculum, were not happy over having to associate with such social climbers as modern languages, modern sciences, and the like. But finally the new inclu-

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294 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 siveness won the day over the old-fashioned exclusiveness. This was an epoch-making service. Somebody had to break the shell of the self-satisfied and inadequate curricu- lum of the old college. I do not mean to say that Dr. Eliot did all this single-handed. He was as much creature as creator of the movement for variety and freedom in college studies, but he played his part with such boldness and decision that for all time this epoch in college evolution will be named after him. It is casting no slight upon Dr. Eliot's statesmanship to say that certain unhappy results have followed his college reforms. He did the thing that was needed at the time. Progress follows not a straight line but a zigzag course. It was better that Dr. Eliot should swing the pendulum to an extreme rather than leave it at a dead center. His chief service to the American college was that he broke up its old curriculum. I doubt that his building of a new curriculum will fare as well at the hands of the historians of American education. The policies of the utmost variety of subject matter in the curriculum and of the utmost freedom of election by students have not panned out according to the promises of their promoters. There is no automatic wisdom to guide students to a wise choice of studies. As I have said else- where, and as many others have said, the system of extreme elective freedom and extreme variety of subject matter has placed the immature student in the position of a child, ignorant of food values and the chemistry of food combi- nations, faced with the problem of selecting a nutritious and well-balanced meal from the bewildering offerii gs of a cafeteria. In both cases the result is likely to be indiges- tion, if not something more serious. Following the appli- cation of the principles of variety and freedom, we have reached a point at which we find ourselves citizens of an intellectual world broken into fragments. In the modern college we are suffering from a suicidal specialization by teachers and a suicidal smattering by students. The pendulum must swing back. The danger is that it will swing back to an artificial synthesis of modern knowl- edge. There is a vast deal of synthesis and correlation that can be done and should be done by educational leadership. But it may be doubted that it is within our power to effect any formal and comprehensive synthesis of the whole of modern knowledge. We are already crowding too much into the college curriculum. If we try to get away from the smattering and inconsecutiveness that have resulted from the extreme variety and extreme freedom of the Eliot era by attempting to base a new curriculum on a comprehensive new synthesis of knowledge, we may find that we are trying to confine the ocean in a tin cup. We do not want our colleges to become retail stores for conclusions, even the conclusions of our ablest scholars. We are facing the chal- lenge of a post-Eliot period in the evolution of the Ameri- can college. I venture to guess that this challenge can be answered only by some radically new approach to the process of liberal education. I believe that the curriculum as we know it must go. The strictly college education of the future must, in my judgment, be greatly simplified and informalized. We shall more and more get away from the study of established precepts and devote more time to the study of evolving processes. A hundred years from now I suspect that little will be left of the rigidly departmental- ized college that teaches a variety of separate studies. But all this is another story for another time. Dr. Eliot did valiant service in breaking up the old college; he did valiant service in building up the new uni- versity. Upon these two pillars his fame must ultimately rest. At a Workers' Vacation Camp By MICHAEL GOLD WHEN I was a boy growing up among the stones and heat of the East Side no one that I can remember took a vacation. The rich Jews went to the Catskills, of course, and played pinochle and discussed operations on hotel porches; and workers who had contracted consump- tion in the clothing-shops went to sanitariums. There were also the long heart-breaking spells of unemployment, but these were not times of joy and relaxation. No, no worker not actually dying ever dreamed of taking a real vacation. I myself never passed a single night in the country until I was nineteen years old; I was always working. My mother and father, twenty years in America, had never seen any greener, wilder places than the meadows in Bronx Park. My father earned about. $12 a week, and had three children, which is the reason we never took a vacation. And the other Jews worked fifteen and eighteen hours a day in sweatshops, lived on bread-and-herring diets, and paled, sickened, and died piously, in the traditional Ghetto manner. No vacations. Sometimes uplifters, settlement-house ladies, C. 0. S. officials, and other foreigners made benevolent raids and carried off a few of us for vacations. But there were and are half a million Jews on the lower East Side, and the few hundreds who were thus uplifted helped little in the vital statistics. The babies went on dying, the men and women withered and decayed in the shops. And my mother longed incessantly for the country; she had been raised with flowers and cows under the blue sky of a Hungarian village; and my father and his friends spent long summer nights reminiscing about the peasants and the sweet, slow peasant life in the old country. But no one ever dreamed of escaping the city for a vacation; no, that was for the rich and for the deathly sick. There has been a revolution on the lower East Side in the past decade. I am a young man, but I have witnessed a social miracle with my own eyes. The sweatshop, once the dark symbol of the utmost in proletarian degradation in this country, has become the source of the finest labor move- ment in America. There are now about 150,000 organized needle-trades workers in New York, and they are militant, high-spirited, and intelligent, the vanguard of every pro- gressive movement in this country. They average better wages now than school-teachers, they have infinitely more democratic control of their jobs than have newspapermen, and they have built up a richer and intenser mass culture than that of bank presidents or Greenwich Villagers or even Theater Guild audiences. The Jewish workers have

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 295 climbed at last from the Ghetto, and have cast off the self-pitying, melancholy helplessness of the Ghetto, which many minor poets consider so spiritual, but which ha a curse to the Jews for centuries. Their revolution has taught them to be their own saviors. Among other li they now take vacations. I have just come back from two weeks spent cooperative camp run by and for Jewish workers. left wing in the needle trades has built this camp, which is called Camp Nitgedaiget, meaning literally Camp No Worrying, or Camp Sans Souci. The camp is on the Hudson a few miles below Beacon, N. Y. It is a beautiful spot — a stretch of rolling earth in the midst ol' > mountains by the noblest river of America. There are accommodations for seven hundred workers in tents. There is a great dining-room and meeting-hall, a club- house, an outdoor stage. It is not easy to feed and house seven hundred people, but the workers have learned to make things run smoothly. The camp is simple and rather primitive, but everyone is comfortable and happy. No one can come to this camp who is a boss or who owns a business of any kind. But any wage earner, and this includes intellectual workers, can come at the low rate of fifteen dollars a week. He is given clean linen and two woolly blankets and can climb to his tent among the trees to rest until the camp gong brings him down for dinner. He can sleep. He can roam the hills. He can sing in the moonlight. He can swim, take sun-baths, listen to lectures, sing in the mass chorals, act in proletarian comedies, read in the library, talk, laugh, play games, go about all day in nothing but bathing trunks until his body is brown as a faun's. At seven-thirty, when the mists are melting before the sun, the camp is waked by a wild Indian yelling and whistling. It is Yossel, the tanned athlete who is physical director, rousing the sleepy-heads. "Get up, you hounds! Jump into your clothes! It's healthy to be up early, it's nature!" This is one of the camp jokes; when someone stubs his toe on a rock or contracts poison ivy or is bat- tered up in soccer the others console him by saying: "Never mind, it's nature." Yossel takes the sleepy needle-workers for twenty minutes of calisthenics, then for a plunge in the cold mountain pool between the rocks. Then to breakfast. After breakfast, baseball and other summer sports. Dinner, and more fun. Supper, and still more. The meals are excellent — honest food, almost entirely vegetarian. All the milk you can drink, good eggs, butter, cheese, black bread, fresh fruits and greens, and Jewish dairy dishes. No coffee or tea, however, and no cakes, puddings, or other heavy desserts. A simple diet, but one builds muscle on it. And no scamping or profiteering in the kitchen — this is a cooperative, not a money-making, camp. Yiddish is the prevailing language, though English breaks out at strange moments, and half of the lectures are in English. I cannot tell how queer and new it seems to an East Sider who has grown up with a kind of prejudice against Yiddish to hear and see a baseball game conducted in Yiddish. Yes, the needle-workers play baseball at camp. Some of them even become good players. They don't know all the rules; they sometimes protest when they should rejoice after the umpire has called ball instead of strike; they sometimes run in a straight line to second instead of to first; but they throw themselves into the game with passion. Anyway, these strike pickets, these readers of .Marx and Tolstoi and Lenin and Gorki play as joyously as sandlotters. The teams are made up of all i and both sexes, girls and men and children, anyone who ran learn to swat the ball. They play a rough game of !■ too; it is the second most popular game in the vvork- amp. And there is push-ball and basketball, all as unfamiliar to them as they would be to Chinese peasants. We Jews are an ancient race, but we are a young race, too, for we are just coming out of the Ghetto and wage slavery. This is the first generation of Jews that has begun to use its body again, has begun to fight, laugh, and sing as lustily as did the armies of David. It is a revolution that has taken place. There are many superstitions about the different races — there is the superstition that the Negro is a clown; that Latins are treacherous. And Jew\s are said to be physi- cal cowards. But in the swimming pool or at the sun- bathing field at the camp one can see heroic scars and wounds on many of these pale bodies, the souvenirs of hard-fought strikes in the workers' interest. Another superstition is that all Jews are money-mad; but at Camp Nitgedaiget I never heard a word on that American subject, money. Every Friday night at a camp-fire assembly Nicholas Buchwald, the dramatic editor of the New York Freiheit, and Jacob Fenster, a young Yiddish poet who is working as waiter at the camp, read a burlesque weekly called the Camp Yot, or, in English, the Camp Wise Cracker. The fire throws a great yellow blaze, the dark sky curves over the dark mountains and river, and the seven hundred needle- workers sit in old camp togs on the hillside chuckling at the Camp Yot. Jewish humor is rough and direct, and everyone from the camp manager to the camp dogs comes in for a salutary drubbing. After the Camp Yot is read, volunteer tenors and sopranos sing the folk-songs of Israel and of the working class. Once someone sang a group of Italian folk-songs. Another time two guests who were grand-opera singers rose and sang Verdi and Wagner. There are recitations, choruses, and improvised dialogues. Jacob Schaefer is one of the leading writers of choral music in the country and conducts the Freiheit chorus of 600 voices, all of them Jewish workers. Next season they are to sing Alexander Blok's revolutionary poem, The Twelve, which Schaefer has composed as a dramatic mod- ernist mass-choral. At the camp Schaefer takes a group of vacationists each week, improvises a play with them, and teaches them a few songs, the work lyrics of Abraham Raisin, Winchewsky, and other Yiddish folk-poets. There is a concert on Saturday night, where the work is per- formed for the other campers. It is amazing how these workers respond to Schaefer's direction. They learn intricate four-part harmonies in this short week, they learn to modulate, to weave strange and thrilling effects. Once Schaefer, in less than a week, drilled sixty campers in a mass recitation, a most difficult technical job. It was a success; the whole audience was shouting with the mass-declaimers at the end; the hall was a throbbing, electric unity. The Jewish workers are taking bigger things as they climb from the Ghetto, but I am glad that, with the rest, they have taken the vacation idea too.

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296 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 In the Driftway FOR many hours the Drifter has watched his friend the Editor select manuscripts. With every mail they pour in, and if all of them were to be printed the Editor would publish each week a magazine as thick as the advertising section of the Saturday Evening Post. So he has to sift out what he can use and return what he cannot find place for. Each manuscript returned is accompanied by a little note of thanks, so the Drifter observed, and he determined to help the Editor in writing those little notes. His best effort so far has been a short letter, steeped in Oriental politeness: Exalted Child of the Sun: Our insignificant paper has been honored by the receipt of a manuscript from your preeminent pen. Deeming our- selves unworthy to be the purveyors of your profound thought to the public, we herewith return your honorable manuscript, trusting that a medium fitting its surpassing virtues may be found. Words cannot convey the sense of honor and exhilaration we feel at having been singled out for the unusual distinction of reading it. Gratefully and humbly we kiss your hand ! The Editor * * * * * BUT this did not work. It was so ingratiating that the recipient at once sent in another manuscript and the Editor's troubles began all over again. Now the Drifter has another idea. It is a formula from across seas wh'ch the Drifter ventures to translate: Dear Friend: We are returning your manuscript with many thanks, because 1. We are at present overloaded with materials. 2. We have in your city a steady correspondent to cover the subject. 3. We do not at present wish to enlarge our staff of correspondents. 4. Your article is too long for the space available in our paper. 5. Your article is no longer up to date. G. Your article deals with a subjeet well known to our readers. 7. Your article covers a subject on which we have ordered an article from another writer. 8. Your article deals with a field in which we are well supplied with materials. 9. Your article is merely advertising. 10. Your article is written illegibly. 11. Your article does not fit present-day circumstances. 12. Your article does not agree with the policy of our paper. 13. Your article arrived too late. 14. Your article is not suited to our readers (a) be- cause of its subject matter; (b) because of its manner of presentation. 15. Your article does not, in our opinion, consider suf- ficiently the demands of a paper both in make-up and manner of writing. 16. Your article is more suited to a magazine than a newspaper. 17. Your article would give offense to some of our readers (a) in a political; (b) in a moral; (c) in a religious wTay. We ask you not to consider our rejection as implying any criticism of your work and to honor us in the future with your manuscripts. The Editor NOTHING could be more convenient and at the same time make a show of great thoroughness and exact- ness. The Drifter imagines the system working like this: Here comes a manuscript entitulated "Pre-Silurian Fingle- fangles." Numbers 6, 8, and 9. Another calls itself "In- spired Idiot or Irritable Genius?" Numbers 11, 12, and 17a. Another bears the title "Khufu, Khorsu, and Kuru." Numbers 1 to 8, 10 and 17c. BUT one thing gives the Drifter pause. He fears that some day the Editor will forget to mark the pertinent numbers and a good friend of his will be overwhelmed with seventeen reasons why his article cannot be published — ■ which would certainly be fatal. The Drifter therefore re- considers his proposal. He will not help the Editor to a shortcut so pregnant with disaster. The Editor will have to walk safer, if more irksome, paths. The Drifter Correspondence Meat- Eaters on Vacation To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Tomorrow I go to Geneva to observe Europe at the League; it is a pleasure to watch cats discussing the beauty of vegetarianism. Dhan Ghopal Mukerji Lausanne, Switzerland, August 30 Justice to Hindus To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have read with profound interest and sympathy A Woman Without a Country in your issue of August 4. No person who looks into the matter can deny that a serious injustice has been done to many worthy persons — Hindus and others — by the Cable Act which deprives any American woman of her citizenship if she marries an alien who is ineligible to citizenship. An American man may marry any foreign woman he pleases without losing his citizenship. Why should an American woman be discriminated against? An injustice to an even greater number of Hindus has been done by the decision rendered some two years ago by one of the judges of the United States Supreme Court, that high-caste Hindus do not belong to the white race. During the last session of Congress Senator Copeland introduced a bill ("to amend Section 2169 of the Revised Statutes"), which, if enacted into law, will change this, placing Hindus among the various peoples of the world who are classed by American law as white. This classification not only is in accord with the best scientific scholarship everywhere, but it is in harmony with the definite recommendation made by the immigration commission appointed in 1911 to investigate the subject; also it is what American courts had always accepted up to 1923. By the passage of the Copeland bill several forms of in- justice will be righted, among which are these: (1) Hindus who have been long in America, who by proper naturalization have become American citizens, and are in every way loyal will not then be unjustly and without cause deprived of their citizen- ship and of the protection which citizenship insures, as is now the case. (2) American women, by birth Americans, will not then, on marrying Hindus, have their citizenship taken away, and thus be made "stateless" and without legal protection, as is now the case with a considerable number. I know a highly

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 297 cultured American woman who married a Hindu scholar and author who, when the marriage occurred, had for ten year- been an American citizen. Of a sudden, like bolts out of a clear sky, came these two retroactive government acts, taking away the citizenship of this American woman, whose ancestors have been American since the year 1 TOO, and of her husband, and placing them in the cruel condition of possessing no citi- zenship anywhere and no rights to protection by any nation. Mr. Copeland's bill has no effect on Hindu immigration into this country. It will cause the admission of not a single additional Hindu. It simply aims to correct a great wrong that has been done perhaps inadvertently. Poughkeepsie, X. ¥., September 2 J. T. Sunderland Why New England Prospers To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Nelson Antrim Crawford might have gone further in enumerating the lines of rural industry which are enjoying a renaissance of prosperity. He appears to have overlooked the manner in which the once almost abandoned apple orchards of New England are coming into their own again. For many years there has been practically no market for the product of these orchards and they have been allowed to lapse into desue- tude, but now all this is changed! At a cost of no more than two or three dollars a barrel of cider may be obtained, which with the necessary and not at all intricate manipulation may be converted into eight or nine gallons of absolutely pure apple-jack, selling without difficulty at $15 or $16 per gallon and even more. Orchards are now spoken of as yielding so many gallons per acre instead of so many bushels. Washington, D. C, Augtist 28 G. F. Weeks In Horthy's Hungary To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: With the recent conviction of Matthias Rakosi and 54 other Communists and left-wing Socialists by the Bethlen- Horthy Government, the number of prisoners who are being held in Hungary solely for their political views reaches several hundreds. These political prisoners are chiefly left-wing Socia- lists, Communists, and Liberals. The Government has been ruth- less in the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press. Vilag, the best Hungarian-language paper, has been suppressed and its editor, Charles Feleky, imprisoned because of a single article which did not meet with the approval of government officials. Socialist and even conservative papers have been outlawed for criticizing Horthy or even the old Hapsburg family, a bit of Bethlen strategy calculated to win royalist support. Authors of newspaper or magazine articles are being sen- tenced to prison terms of from one to five years under a law entitled "A Bill for the More Efficient Protection of the Coun- try's Interests." Count Michael Karolyi, Professor Oscar Jaszi, and other statesmen and scientists have been indicted under this measure. Rakosi and the 35 of the others recently tried in Budapest were sentenced to terms varying from eight and a half years to ten months. The families of these prisoners are in desperate need. No relief is officially permitted. Dominant sentiment is hostile to any movement in behalf of political prisoners or their kin and the relief distributed through foreign agencies has to be man- aged with discretion. This committee is, however, in contact with trustworthy agents in Hungary who are able to distribute relief to prisoners' families. A correspondent has recently written to the committee: We have men and women released from prison from time to time and they need immediate help for mind and body. Last week l distributed parcels of food to SO fami- lies of political i" modi tell how I need funds to Unemployment Is fearful and il prIsom find it almost Impos- sible to gel work. Sonic are former teachers now barred from schools Others nd journalists, arc black- listed. We can't let these fun . c. if people in America knew some of th< I help, I'm sure they would send funds at or Will those of your readers who are interested to help, send contributions to the International Committee for Political Prisoners, Room 410, 2 West 13th Street, New York City? New York-, August 24 r0Gkr N. Baldwin Norman Thomas Elizabeth Gurley Flynn John IIaynes Holmes Wilbur Thomas So- So Figures To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In The Nation for September 15 appears this: In Brandfort the monthly death-rate for children, multiplied by twelve, reached the ghastly figure of 1,918 per 1,000, and in Bloemfontein the monthly death-rate for women, similarly multiplied, produced an annual figure of 1,554 per 1,000. How come? Can the parts be greater than the whole? Can some children die more than once apiece? A mere teacher of law — how can I hope to comprehend such statistical subtleties? I can't! I can think only of Carolyn Wells's wise-crack: There was a young lady of Skye With a shape like a capital "I." She said, "It's too bad, But then — I can pad," Which shows one that figures can lie! Do The Nation's figures lie? If so, how so? If I saw them in the Sun they would be so, of course. But, being in The Nation, are they merely so-so? Or aren't they so at all? Lawrence, Kansas, September 12 Thomas A. Larremore [Our figures were so; our expression of them only so-so. Each month more than a twelfth of the prison population died. The annual death-rate was therefore more than 100 per cent — high enough to wipe out the prisoners in less than a year. — Editor The Nation.] Professor Sam, Militarist To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your interest in Uncle Sam as a professor of mili- tarism prompts me to send you the following dispatch from the Paris Herald of June 8, 1926: Washington. — A startling development in the Tacna- Arica situation may be expected shortly. It will show the United States in the versatile role, it is said, of endeavoring with one hand to mile | tween two nations which have been on the brink of war for two generations and employing the other hand co sell machines of war to at least one of the Powers involved in the historic controversy. The War Department, it appears, has granted four months of absence to nt .lames H. Doolittle, of the flying corps, with permission "to go abroad." Lieu- tenant Doolittle either is in Chile already or is on his way there. His mission is to demonstrate and sell to the Chilean Government the latest type of pursuit airplanes used in the American arm;.-. These pursuit planes are the fighting planes of the air. They have a speed of 180 miles an hour and are the principal weapon of defense and offense in aerial warfare. Paris, France, August 31 Florence Bayard Kane

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Books and Plavs Dream of the Corn By HAL SAUNDERS WHITE Above these frozen furrows The glancing gold of the sun Is the dream of the corn. Under the snow The close black greeting; The ultimate song. Under the snow The ageless tremors meet In uncreated harmony ; Seeds tick thin earthquakes to the pressing soil; Ever the dumb, sad pulse beats slow; Thin, blind, white fingers tremble And twitch an endless music on Under the snow. ... Harvest has song here : Through an unborn dawn goes the song of the reapers Under the snow; Through a night unending, Processional and dim dance Of corn-blades, liquid under the moon. In the tick of the seed, strong song of the reapers. Ageless and dark runs the harmony of harvest ; The gold of the sun is the dream of the corn. Sleight of Hand The Story of Philosophy. By Will Durant. Simon and Schuster. $5. jX/fR. DURANT'S book is probably no worse than its fellow *■ •'outlines, but it commits the typical sins. Its many spon- sors have been thrilled, excited, awakened, and refreshed by the apparition Mr. Durant has given them of philosophy made as humanly familiar and as readily intimate as a street- walker. They were left cold by their college courses and their college texts when philosophy was conventionally "dry as dust." They have now been startled to enthusiastic warmth by the anecdotal richness of Mr. Durant's treatment, by the lightness of Irs touch in the handling of ponderous problems, which too often is sleight of hand; by the superficial clarity, the punning humor, and the real charm of his style. But they would again be frozen to disinterest, averted, perhaps even maddened by the vision of philosophy unhumanized, in the austerity of its logical structure, starkly complex and persistently dialectical. They would not see this beauty naked. Instead they would see eristic and technical obfuscation, bloodless abstractions, and colossal irrelevance to life. They would hardly call this magnificent, as Mr. Dorsey did "The Story of Philosophy"; but it would be philosophy, and there are some who find ' lovely to behold. In this the book's central blindness lies, that philosophy is conceived in a manner which would be rudely uncongenial. if not directly heretical, to the minds of the philosophers Mr. Durant has chosen to sketch sympathetically. Where he has achieved sympathetic insight into a philosophic system it has been largely on the side of its vital motivations rather than in terms of its dialectical intent. His implicit acceptance of the pragmatic attitude toward the history of philosophy is the one exception, an exception which makes his lack of appre- ciation for antithetical viewpoints the more distressing, since the pragmatic conception of philosophy is the unacknowledged, pervasive doctrine of the book, underlying its exposition of thinkers to whom pragmatism would have been unintelligible. This doctrine commits the fallacy of genetic interpretation. It assumes that ideas are to be exhaustively understood and their validity estimated in terms of their origins; that philoso- phies are most significantly revealed as biographical items in a socio-politico-economic context. Greek mathematics "grew with increasing complexity of exchange, astronomy with the increasing audacity of navigation." Aristotle, we are told, associated himself with the Macedonian group in Athenian poli- tics, and it is "only with this situation in mind" that we shall "understand Aristotle's political philosophy." This kind of genetic criticism is extremely flexible and reversible. We are introduced to Spinoza by an elaborate delineation of the essen- tial Hebraism of his nature, necessary for comprehending his thought; and then later we find that "he had a northern hunger for truth rather than the southern hunger for beauty." Schopenhauer expresses Europe's reaction to the devastation of the Napoleonic wars in his philosophy of quietism; whereas Hegel, his contemporary, prepares Europe for its next war by stressing the indispensability of strife and conquest in develop- ment. Whether such statements be true or false makes no difference to the point of criticism. Mr. Durant has been so anxious to interlace philosophy with life that he has completely missed the possible contrary perception that philosophy has had an isolated intellectual status, uninfluential in the social and economic nexus, and uninfluenced thereby. The thinker may be described biologically; thinking may be a psychological process, susceptible to various psychoanalyses; but thought itself — and here is Mr. Durant's blindness — has a logical struc- ture disengaged from life and a life of its own in discourse which is purely dialectical. In this very fact lies the joy of philosophy, the delight which Mr. Durant continually tries to convey to his readers without ever really enjoying it himself. The character of the errors in many cases forces one to suspect an uncritical reliance on secondary sources. From the viewpoint of philosophical clarity there is no difference between Mr. Durant's chapters on Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant and similar sections in the usual textbook treatments; but Mr. Durant is more readable and therefore more dangerous. One meets not only with obtuseness but with inconsistencies in the exposition. James, we learn, began with psychology, "not as a metaphysician who loves to lose himself in ethereal obscuri- ties"; his "Principles of Psychology" is "a fascinating mixture of anatomy, philosophy, and analysis; for in James, psychology still drips from the foetal membranes of its mother, meta- physics." There are lapses of another kind, in historical accu- racy, in the unqualified report of questionable anecdotes, and in the general historical perspective. The book includes a table of philosophic affiliations which is most amusing on the con- temporary level, Santayana deriving from French and British epistemologists and out of relation to Plato, Aristotle, and Spinoza; Russell and Dewey both stemming from Spencer, Dewey, the brilliant young Hegelian out of all relation to Hegel, and Russell, the student of Leibniz. Leibniz is not even men- tioned. The most offensive, if the least important, of all Mr. Durant's sins is the vaudevillian character which informs the whole work. One can almost forgive him the bad taste of his punning and his little jokes; but one cannot brook the bald and blatant bombast of innumerable summaries of this sort: "Here [in Aristotle's works] is the Encyclopedia Britan- nica of Greece: every problem under the sun and about it finds a place; no wonder there are more errors and absurdities in Aristotle than in any other philosopher who ever wrote"! It is not inharmonious with what has gone before to add

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 299 that "The Story of Philosophy" is ;i very good book of its kind. But what of its kind? Plato was clear on this point. The poets were banished for writing stories about the gods. Diogenes and Mr. Durant would have been exiled with them for telling stories about the philosophers. Not that gossips and collectors of opinions could have harmed the real philosophers who ruled the perfect state; simply that lack of insight into the relation between discourse and truth would have offended them. Mortimer J. Adlf.r The Now Asceticism Tarr. By Wyiuiham Lewis. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. WHEN first published some ten years ago this newly re- issued novel was not less than prophetic. Here, before the appearance of Mr. Joyce's major work or Mr. T. S. Eliot's eland." was fully displayed the temper if not the tech- nique of the most significant work which has appeared in Eng- land since that time. Not only did Mr. Lewis detach himself without apparent effort from all the preoccupations, sociological or sentimental, of the contemporary novel but in his hero Tarr, a lonely and savage intelligence fighting ruthlessly to keep him- self free from the shabby emotional compromises of his fellows, he created a type which has appeared again and again, not so much because Tarr has bet-n imitated as because he is a gen- uinely typical figure, the inevitable embodiment of a prevalent mood". Something of the novel's boldness, of its straightforward analysis of characters and situations which lie outside the beaten track of fiction, may be due to "Dubliners" or "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"; but more is doubtless due to the fact that Mr. Lewis was not a novelist but a painter and that he could go directly at his material without ever being diverted for an instant into the grooves which novelists have worn. It is against the background of "artistic" Paris— that shabby international bourgeois bohemia into which there drift a hundred disorganized nondescripts for one genius— that Tarr is projected, and the background is observed through eyes made keen with hate. Yet it is not upon this background— impor- tant only because its chaos permits the development to logical extremes of temperaments which a patterned society tends to hold in check— but upon Tarr himself, together with his messy- minded foil, Kreisler, that the interest is focused; and if the chief problem with which Lewis and his hero have to deal is the problem of sex, there is, nevertheless, no touch of that banality into which the sex novel in the romaniico-sentimental vein of H. G. Wells has fallen. Here is no bourgeois pother about the "right to love"— a right which no competent intellect, accustomed to moral self-determination, has, during the last half century, failed to avail itself of as often as it thought desirable but instead the struggle of a robust mind to think its way through the maze of nature to freedom. Now, if we set aside the ascetic ideal, there are two ways in which the artist— and within the meaning of that term should be included whoever has a plan of his own for life which he sets against the banal plan of nature — may deal with sex. The* first of these is what may be called the romantic way. Its aim is to sublimate and infuse; it surrounds sex with a mystical poetry, and while it makes of love an art it inevitably tends, at the same time, to devote art to love. It recoils in horror from the crude stuff of animal passion, but it nevertheless mak the most important fact of existence and it so diffuses the sex impulse as to invest everything with a subdued and perhaps disguised eroticism. Its painting, its fiction, its music, and even its religion, though they may be delicate and even prudish, are as saturated with sex as the pictures of Greuze or the novels of Thackeray. This was the Victorian way, and this, only slightly modified, was the way both of the lurid nineties and of the solemn age of H. G. Wells. But there is another way which, for better or worse, has revealed itself in much that is most significanl in contemporary literature and which '.presents an effort to escape from the wearisome omnipre of love. There are men — artists at least in the broad sense defined above— who resent this erotic tyranny, who, with no religiously ascetic ideal, demand some intellectual realm, some domain of art, which shall be free from this eternal preoccu- pation and who revolt against the ideal of romantic love !><■, romanticization has involved, or at least made possible, this universal diffusion. Th y feel no need to battle against the flesh, they have no desire to waste their energies in a futile straggle against the demands of the natural man, and they preach no stern denials; they would make of love a game, a joke, or even a ribaldry in order that it may be kept in its place, that it may be reduced to an incident. Such, I take it, is the meaning of the obscenities which crowd the pages of such intellectual writers as Joyce and Eliot, and such, I deduce, is the philosophy of Tarr. Nothing could be less elevated than his re- lations with the women he knows; but (or rather, as he im- plies, therefore) "The tendency of my work, as you may have noticed, is that of an invariable severity. Apart from its being good or bad, its character is ascetic rather than sensuous, and divorced from immediate life. There is no slop of sex in that." It is, indeed, curious how few of the moralists who, seizing upon a fashionable word, sing the praise of "sublimation" seem to realize that sublimation implies an almost universal diffusion. It can hardly be said that Tarr, for all his efforts, achieves to any remarkable extent the inward peace for which he strug- gles, and in general a cynic might remark of the whole school of writers here described that if their aim was to decrease their preoccupation with sex the evidence of their books would point to a singular lack of success. But our present concern is with nothing except an elucidation of the thought underlying a specific novel and a judgment upon it as a piece of fiction. "Tarr" is not quite easy reading for the very reason that it does not contain a single cliche, but there is not a page which does not reveal a fresh observation and a keen mind. Joseph Wood Krutcii Comparative Superstition This Believing World. By Lewis Browne. The Macmillan Company. $3.50. TTERE is a book that should give the fundamentalists fits. *■ *■ About five years ago they laid down five points: the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible; the Virgin Birth and the complete deity of Christ; the resurrection of the same body that was buried; the substitutionary atonement of Jesus for the sins of the world; the second coming of Jesus in bodily form, according to the Scriptures. Mr. Browne effectually discounts these points by showing that they are more or less common to all religions. Thus the Koran to the faithful Mo- hammedans is inerrant and infallible; legend recounts that the god Attis was conceived immaculately in the womb of a virgin; the kindred myths of Adonis, Dionysus, Orpheus, and Osiris spread through the Mediterranean basin the notion of the resurrection; substitutionary atoriement existed in the widely extended cult of Cybele and in the rite of Tauroboleum, or salvation through blood; while the second coming of a Messiah was found in Zoroastrianism and Persian Mithraism as well as in Judaism. Mr. Browne nowhere specifically attacks the peculiar type of Protestant mind which considers that it possesses the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He is not contro- versial but comparative in his methods. He insinuates his dev- astating information, and as a study in ethnic religions his book is most effective in discussing the historic origins of dogma. It properly begins with the prehistoric religions, and here, in the dark backward and abysm of time, it finds the fount of

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300 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 many of man's most cherished beliefs. As Book I shows, it all began in magic. To the cave man objects were animate — sticks, stones, storms, and all else. The primitive savage had fears still common to the animal mind of modern man, those idols of the tribe which persist in the belief in unlucky numbers, in ghosts, in telepathic messages, in malicious magnetism, in prophetic dreams, and the like. These fragments of ancient occultism, still surviving in the borderland beliefs of the numerologists, the theosophists, and even the New Thoughters, the author ingeniously traces back to primitive animism, sha- manism, and fetishism. The reader might amuse himself by searching for further modern analogies of kindred supersti- tions. Thus the taboo against kindling fire on a holy day may still be found in New England farmhouses, where it is con- sidered wrong to serve hot victuals on a Sunday, while the con- ception of agriculture as a phase of religion was exemplified on' .' last year when the crops were blessed in the episcopal diocese of Fond du Lac. Further taboos, from foods to holy days, are to be found in restaurants on Bleecker Street and the Sunday opening rumpus at the Sesquicentennial. Book I, How it All Began, is perhaps the most interesting of all; but Book II, How Religion Developed in the Ancient World, is also an eye-opener. There were the Celts, who gave us the merry mistletoe and also the Maypole dance, "reminis- cently very naughty." The Babylonians were likewise not all they should have been. As to the Egyptians, more might have been said as to "Isis unveiled," considering the strange revival of the cult of this mother goddess which caused the New York police to run certain of her modern devotees out of the city. The treatment of Greek religion is decidedly weak. For one thing the Homeric religion was scarcely "a shallow, light-hearted cult," as Gilbert Murray shows in this year's edition of his "Four Stages of Greek Religion," not mentioned in Mr. Browne's bibliography. With Rome as the melting-pot of ancient faiths we gain significant contacts with early Christianity and dis- cover that continuity of pagan thought which has persisted in the church until the present day. There are "tell-tale ata- visms" in the Saturnalia of December 2.") wit.li its giving of gifts; in the holy day of Diana in August, which has become the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin; in the ma^ic rites of Mithraism with the comforting conclusion that the mere consumption of the supposed flesh and blood of the god assured the partakers of life everlasting. Thus the early church borrowed, assimilated, and succeeded, but like the later policy of accommodation to native rites in Mexico and South America it was a costly triumph for Christianity. As the author sums the matter up: "What happened to Buddhism when it set out to conquer the Far East now happened also to Christianity in the West. It became an official and successful institution— and so degenerated." Woodbridge Riley A Catholic Vicar of Bray Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor Reaction. By James Arthur Muller. The Macmillan Company. $4. BEHIND the unceasing strife of Christian creeds there lies intact a certain fund of respectful sympathy entertained by eminent clergymen for the prelates of other Christian de- nominations— something like a pan-Christian feeling of soli- darity. I suggest, as a fascinating possibility, that this senti- ment may even cross the boundary-lines of the Christian faith. Who knows but that the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his soul, may look upon the Dala; Lama as a somewhat wayward but none the less well-beloved cousin, not to be men- tioned disrespectfully to a laity always ready to encroach upon the privileges of spiritual peers? Be that as it may, it is certain that modern Anglican scholars, in their historical writings, fre- quently show an affectionate respect for the priestly statesmen of the dark ages and a sympathetic understanding of their doctrinal, political, and personal difficulties. This retrospective class-consciousness is by no means without its uses — the psy- chological insight into motives and impulses which it bestows has enabled many a learned clerk to write an excellent mono- graph on some priestly worthy of old times. It has inspired Mr. Muller, for instance, to write one of the most amusing and instructive of biographies. Stephen Gardiner was born the son of a fairly well-to-do cloth-maker at Bury St. Edmunds in 1497, in the reign- of Henry VII, and died in 1555, in the reign of Bloody Mary. Between these two dates he managed to squeeze a pretty lively and on the whole amazingly prosperous career — he went to Cambridge and became Doctor of Canon Law just at a time when skill in canonical chicanery was a recommendation to Henry VIII in his matrimonial troubles. Being notorious for that very skill, he was made Henry's ambassador to the Vati- can, and — after his return from Rome — archdeacon, bishop, chancellor of his alma mater, and minister of state. Through- out his entire adult life he was an orthodox Catholic, a hater of Protestants, and, secretly or openly, according to the drift of the times, a devout believer in the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. But the most unwavering of his convictions, before which his other tenets had to yield, concerned his god-given right and title to a prosperous, comfortable, office-holding existence removed from the dangers conjured up from time to time by the secular and spiritual broils of his own day. As long as his dread sovereign paid court to the Holy Father, Gardiner was humbly glad to have his own convictions con- firmed by royal authority; when Henry set up as supreme spiritual head of his loving subjects Gardiner wrote a book in defense of this new position, and stood by his book under the reign of the Protestant boy-king Edward; under Mary he swore off and became once more a Papist; in short, whoever was on top, Stephen Gardiner remained Vicar of Bray. To make such a hero interesting and humanly presentable is no mean feat. Mr. Muller has actually achieved that feat — or would have achieved it had he not given in the frontispiece a contemporary portrait of his well-beloved Bishop. Such another compound of threatening tiger and frightened hare, let us hope, no picture gallery of spiritual peers can show. James Fuchs Life and Times Francesco Petrarca. His Life and Correspondence. A Study of the Early Fourteenth Century (1304-1347). By Edward H. R. Tatham. Vol. I: Early Years and Lyric Poems. Vol. II: Secluded Study and Public Fame. London: The Shel- don Press. New York: The Macmillan Company. "T)ERHAPS there is no greater gap in the knowledge of ■* European history possessed by the average educated man than that between the Fall of the Western Empire (476) and the Fall of the Eastern Empire (1453), or the period commonly known as the 'Middle Age'." If the Middle Ages are to become vivid to us, "we must call in the aid of Historical Biography, and try to recover from contemporary documents the details of a single life, intellectually in advance of its time, and passi d in the most enlightened region of Europe. In this way only can we be made to realize that the men of the four- teenth century — when the seeds of the new times were ger- minating— were, despite external differences, more like ourselves than we had been apt to suppose." With Petrarch for subject Canon Tatham projects a four-volume essay in "Historical Biography," two volumes of which have now appeared. On the evidence of the first two stalwart volumes, it is difficult to discover in what essential Canon Tatham's "His- torical Biography" differs from the more familiar formula of "The Life and Times." Canon Tatham starts off with forty-two pages of Historical Survey wherein he sketches the state of Italy and the Tapacy at the time of Petrarch's birth in 1304 — a pro- cedure urged by the peculiarly close connection, both direct

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 301 and indirect, between Petrarch's life and the whole coui contemporaneous European events. The papacy at A medieval university life, the welter of Italian politics, the conflict between church and state- — theocracy against growing nationalism — the revival of ancient learning: these are among the topics that come in for extended consideration. And their treatment is more conspicuous for erudition than for edge. This "historical" aspect of the biography is relentless in its scholarship. The more strictly biographical part is best when Canon Tatham lets Petrarch speak for himself, and the two volumes contain far more of his letters than does any other English work. Canon Tatham's comments about Petrarch, especially in the chapter called His Misplaced Passion — who was "Laura," would seem to indicate that his very extended learning had been acquired at the expense of any very first-hand contact with the springs of human character. Canon Tatham in one place speaks of Petrarch's "passion for books as books," of Petrarch's being "the first, since the decline of Rome, to possess the literary — as apart from the creative — instinct.' Herein is the most striking compatibility between Petrarch and his historical biographer. Canon Tatham's is a work tempered for scholars with a passion for books as books. Those persons who are scandalized by biographies with the clarity, the com- pactness, and the unblushing decency of Joseph Wood Krutch's "Poe" are assured a long and safe seclusion from any dis- quieting impacts within Canon Tatham's tomes. In volume II, however, there is a diverting stretch of unintended gaiety; The Crowning of the Poet is prolific in matter for a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. These first two volumes do, indeed, humanize Petrarch; there is a god's plenty of fact. But Canon Tatham's is the scholarly rather than the creative instir.ct: splendid industry and accuracy, but no flare. His veracity is impeccable; but in order that his veracity be transmuted into truth, scholarship is not enough. Canon Tatham has told everything — and the bones of Petrarch lie buried under monumental superfluity. Raymond Weaver Books in Brief Western Australia. A History from its Discovery to the In- auguration of the Conunonivcalth. By J. S. Battye. Oxford University Press. $8.35. Dr. Battye's scholarly work not only meets the need for a comprehensive history of Western Australia but also adds another important item to the list of special studies of the constituent parts of the British Empire, which has been grow- ing rapidly of late. Beyond a full and thoroughly documented account of the development of the colony from the days of dis- covery and belated exploration to 1901, when Australia became a member of the Australian Commonwealth, the reader will find a wealth of information regarding the land question, the beginning and end of convict labor, and the hard and exciting struggle for the opening and exploitation of the gold fields. The land question in particular, apparently much more difficult and complicated in Australia and New Zealand than in any of the other British overseas possessions, illustrates in striking fashion the intimate connection between a land system and the growth of settlement and social institutions. An appendix of elaborate statistical tables, covering all important phases of the economic life of the colony, should be valuable for reference. The only regret is that Dr. Battye, having done so much and done it so well, did not include at least a summary of events since 1901. Av Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. By William Godwin. Edited by Raymond A. Preston. Alfred A. Knopf. Two volumes. $5. No better book could have been chosen as second in the series of Political Science Classics being reprinted under the l editorship of Professor 1 ii "Political Justice," out of print since the exhaustion of the edition of represents the logical extreme of late eight ntury rationalism anil individualism. The Student of literature finds it absorbing because of its influence on Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, lla/.litt, and Shelley, and the political historian sees in its sudden • ignificant evidence of the force of the British reaction against the French Revolution. The reprint sidy followed "the naked boldness of the first edition." I nfortunately there has been some abridgment, involving the lopping oil' of certain quaint appendices which illustrate admir- ably the pitfalls of uncompromising intellectualism. Its present form, however, offers the modern reader surprising forecasts of nineteenth- and twentieth-century political, ethical, and nomic changes, anil still unrealized ideals of philosophical anarchy. Organized Labor and the Law. By Alpheus T. Mason. Duke University Press. $2.50. This book describes the legal status of organized labor in the United States. The common-law <1 dracy and restraint of trade are traced from their English origins, and the American development treated. Emphasis is placed upon the Sherman and Clayton acts, and their judicial con- struction in labor cases. The book is not reliable as a legal treatise, being neither complete nor professional. If it is in- tended for labor-union officials or students of the labor move- ment, it must be taken with a liberal dose of salt; for the author assumes, in the face of the chaos of the decisions, that there is a predicable state of labor law. The truth is that labor law today is so indefinite and subjective that Mr. Mason's neat summaries are meaningless and misleading. The book will prove useful, however, as a convenient, well-organized reference book, especially on the historical development of labor's legal responsibilities. The Industrial E 'volution of India in Recent Times. By D. R. Gadgil. Oxford University Press. $3.50. Indian industry is still in its infancy. According to Mr. Gadgil, in 1911 "industry," which includes the raising of special products such as tea and coffee, employing 810,407 persons, engaged 2.1 million people or 7 per mille of the population. He may well say, therefore: "Even today agriculture is so over- whelmingly important in India that the periods of prosperity of the country as a whole depend almost entirely on the nature of the agricultural seasons." And the nature of the agricultural seasons depends almost entirely on the monsoon. The indus- trial evolution of India has so far been mostly a supersession of the products of ancient handicrafts by the products of Western machine industry. Mr. Gadgil carries his survey down only to 1914, excusing himself from a consideration of the suc- ceeding years on the ground that the period during the war and since is too abnormal for an examination of it to lead to reliable conclusions. This is a doubtful position. He has already surveyed decades of great abnormality, such as that of 1891-1901, which was marked by general and severe famines. In any case the results of the war are with us, and mere wishing will not restore the order of 1914, either now or in the future. This period, in fact, was one of nerceptible industrial growth that seems likely to continue rather than to cease. Letters to Judd, an American Workingman. By Upton Sin- clair. Pasadena. Published by the Author. It is a great gift to be able to believe as strongly in any- thing as Upton Sinclair does in the impending social revolu- tion, despite all evidence to the contrary. He is taking care of his health in the expectation of seeing the glad day of its com- ing, and now he has written and published a little uncopy- righted book of sixty-four pages, which he invites anyone inter- ested to reprint from his plates in order to help the common people understand, and thus to hasten that day. As such a bit

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302 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 of propaganda it is a good book, containing most of the old socialist catchwords, illustrated by facts, near-facts, and sta- tistics. As an explanation of the existing economic scheme and how it actually works, it is an incredibly bad book. The Oxford Book of Scandinavian Verse. XVII Century— XXth itury. Chosen by Sir Edmund Gosse and W. A. Craigie. Oxford University Press. $3.75. The latest of that excellent series called the Oxford Books of Verse. This tasteful little volume will do good service in the hands of lecturers on Scandinavian literature — providing such persons still exist. The selections are well made, but one misses, among the Danish authors, Jeppe Aakjser, and among the Norwegians, Arne Garborg. Emphatically, these should have been added. Drama Miss Rambeau Enjoys Herself UNFORTUNATELY the stage attracts innumerable people who, their firm belief to the contrary, have not even the desire — much less the capacity — to act. Acting is a rare and difficult art which involves the submergence of personality and the creation of character; it has, however, a false and seductive counterpart in the make-believe of children and the posing of adults. Most little girls like to imagine themselves queens, many women get their chief delight in life from dramatizing themselves as misunderstood or wronged, and upon such the theater exercises an- irresistible fascination. They fondly imagine that they feel the call to act, but what they really want is some more concrete embodiment of the fantasies of their ego. They long for some play whose heroine will body forth more definitely than their imagination has ever been able to do the role in which they fancy themselves. They want to be in the visible trappings of the queen, the heroine, the vampire, or what not they deem themselves to be, and they long, too, for an audience both larger and more appreciative than that which their circle of friends has been able to furnish. Acting they call it, but megalomania is what it really is. Fortunately most of those who actually reach the stage are taken in hand by the managers and the directors whom they hate. Not many of them can play leads, and they are fitted in here and there where their "personalities" correspond to the thing for which a particular play happens to call. But let one of them — and they have of course their male counter- parts— become an independent star, let him or her have a major voice in the choice of plays, and unless we are in the presence of that rare thing, a real actor, the theater will be turned into a theater not for art but for the display of the inner vanities of the player. Hence it is that when an actor or actress appears in a series of plays as persistently and consistently bad as those to which Miss Marjory Rambeau has recently lent herself, one may generally be sure that the performer himself has had a hand in choosing them. No one may very much enjoy seeing her in any of these recent roles; to the mere spectator the fact that they permit her to be emotional to the top of her bent and the limit of her tragic laugh is no satisfactory excuse for their banal artificiality; but however little pleasure they give to others, they obviously give a great deal to her. Her plays have been bad in various ways, but they have been alike in one thing. All enable her to be the noble and resplendent woman who suffers for others and who suffers with a smile. Wor- shiped by the world, and yet unspoiled by praise, not even an indiscretion sullies the perfection of her character; and yet in this unjust world she pays and pays, taking up the burdens of others with a brave little laugh and accepting with a forgiving shrug the ingratitude with which they reward her. Grant her the emotional indulgence attendant upon appearing before the public in such a role, and Miss Rambeau will accept anything. Very likely she thinks herself devoted to her art. I have no doubt that she is one of those actresses who "feel their parts." But it is exactly here that the trouble lies. She feels them too well and too joyously to realize how preposterous they are. As for the particular play at present in question, "Just Life" (Henry Miller's Theater), little need be said. It con- cerns a very noble and once very famous opera singer who gives up everything for a scoundrelly husband and for a daughter whom she considers ever so much more important than her career. She begins her sacrifice by selling her pearls, proceeds with it to the point where she desecrates her vocal cords with jazz in order to earn money, and does other things still worse. There is, it goes without saying, the faithful servant who offers to contribute her little savings, and there is besides a more lavish and impartial distribution of platitudes to all the characters involved than in any play seen here for a long while. All the virtuous female characters refuse cigarettes and all the vir- tuous male characters refuse high-balls; one might gather a large bouquet of such faded flowers as "I could never accept my happiness at another's expense" or "Love is the biggest thing in life"; but obviously the concoction is of no importance to anyone except to the lady whom it enables to play so personally satisfying a role. The pity of it is that Miss Rambeau, though she could never be a first-rate actress, might prove effective enough under proper direction. She has stops in her voice, gestures in her arms, which, if employed at the proper moment in some toler- able play, might move an audience; but if she insists upon ruin- ing her career to gratify a desire for womanly nobility in the same fashion that Miss Elsie Ferguson ruined hers by an in- flexible determination to play anything which would enable her to be "queenly," she has only herself to blame. A successful actress must have brains — either her own or a director's. "Queen High" (Ambassador Theater) and "Naughty Etiquette" (Cosmopolitan Theater) are musical comedies, the first based upon the once popular farce "A Pair of Sixes," the second closely resembling all the operettas ever written in Vienna. Both are decidedly mild, but 'Naughty Riquette" has as its prima donna Mitzi (concerning whom tastes differ) and as its chief clown Stanley Lupino, a first-rate comic. Joseph Wood Krutch D THEATER □ Modjacot Shpeel Yiddish Marionette Theatre— 95 Second Ave.— Orchard 7162 '/.. Main!. Y. Cutler, J. Tworkov, Directors Now playing every evening — Sat. and Sun. matinees THE DYBUK PUPPET DANCES i e by Z. Maud by J. Tworkov THE MERCHANTS OF PEPPER An operetta by V. Cutler MEETING FREETHINKERS' SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 220 West 58th Street The first meeting of the season will be held Sunday, October 3, at 3:00 P. M. At this meeting Mr. Joseph Lewis will deliver an address entitled "CALLES, NERO OR HERO" Admission Free Questions When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section France in Algeria and Tunisia By ELIZABETH KNOWLTON ALL of North Africa is restless today. From Morocco through Egypt, there is uprising or threat of uprising, open insurrection or rumbling underground. The Great Powers have been compelled to realize that their North African dependencies are outgrowing their period of tute- lage; and wherever this recognition has come in time to ward off actual rebellion, as in Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia, there have taken place substantial concessions to native desire for self-government. But the best of these measures are only palliative, only the beginning of the solution of a highly complicated problem. Of all the nations that, following the prevailing fashion for colonies, took over during the last century the control of North African Moslem lands, there is none that has quite so much at stake as France. France is by far the oldest settler, having first gone into Algeria in 1830. She dominates the greatest extent of territory, some 349,000 square miles, not including the deserts south of Algeria proper. Much of this territory is favorably comparable to Egypt in agricultural possibilities, and, especially in Morocco, it is rich in mineral wealth. In any consideration of the shifting kaleidoscope of in- stability that North Africa is today, it may be taken for granted that France will consider no rearrangement that might weaken her hold there. Her African possessions are to her of the most vital importance, the keystone of her whole colonial empire. For military reasons alone, they are almost a necessity to her. The French fighting force is now reckoned as the number of Frenchmen plus the colonial troops; and the pressure of conscription at home is greatly relieved by the import of man-power from Africa. Algeria and Tunisia, for example, have furnished almost all the troops used to subjugate their co-religionists in Syria. These colonies count, also, not only for the Arab* fighting men they themselves can supply but as points of export for the black hordes from French Equatorial Africa, which it is expected will soon be linked up to the Mediter- ranean seacoast by a railroad to Algiers. Incidentally, those black soldiers on the Rhine, so much discussed some years ago, were stationed there not to insult the Germans but to reassure the French as to their numbers and avail- ability. France looks also to Algeria and Tunisia for a sure grain supply in emergencies. Grains and cereals are now among North Africa's chief exports; easily accessible, just across the Mediterranean from Marseilles, it offers a source impossible to cut off in time of war, except by an opposing power having complete control of the seas. An even stronger reason, perhaps, for French tenacity is a psychological one. Her North African colonies in- carnate most vividly to the homeland her dream of colonial empire. She thinks of them as giving her room for ex- pansion, for surplus population — a constant hope for the future, still cherished in spite of the stern reality of tha decreasing birth-rate. At present her efforts to populate these regions with Frenchmen seem anything but success- * Throughout. I use "Arab" as the French generally do, not ethnologi- cally correctly, but as a convenient term for all native North African Moslems. fill. In Algeria for twenty years she has (lone all thai a government can to encourage permanent settlers on the land. Still her colon* have come only slowly and scatter- ingly; and the French smaller landholders are now show- ing a disconcerting tendency to sell out to the Arab and drift into the towns, so that today Algeria's French urban population is increasing much faster than her agricultural population. In Tunisia her efforts seem to lie even less productive; it is said that all government encouragement is practically useless until France starts great irrigation projects necessary for any extensive cultivation. The final result of years of endeavor in Algeria and Tunisia is a total count of some 977,000 Europeans — only about half of whom are of French blood, the rest being mostly Italians, Spaniards, Maltese, and Jews — as against 0,816,000 natives, with the native population increasing much faster than the European. As the climate, which has proved healthy for Europeans, is obviously not to blame for this poor showing, North Africa seems to make it plain that the French are not the stuff of which great colonizers are made. The love of the family and the native soil is perhaps too integral a part of French nature to be overcome by governmental desire. In spite, however, of such meager success, France clings tenaciously to her vision of herself as a colonial Power, equal in this to all the other Great Powers. And if she cannot import her own people, she will dream of mak- ing Africans into Frenchmen. The French ability as ad- ministrator of alien races has long been proverbial, and even recent mistakes have been only the exceptions proving the rule. With the minimum of friction, France in Algeria and Tunisia long ago accomplished all the usual colonial transformations. She has built roads and railroads and bridges, dredged harbors, opened up mineral wealth, intro- duced modern methods of agriculture, stimulated com- merce, brought in modern sanitation, erected schools and hospitals, and given European government methods to lands of despotism and corruption. In short, she has laid at the feet of the outwardly acquiescent Arab all the benefits of modern Western civilization. Her officials show themselves on the whole uniquely adept at delicate surface contacts, at graceful interest in the ideas of the conquered race — of which such incidents as the recent opening of a Moslem mosque at Paris are symptomatic. But those superficial smoothnesses and mutual accep- tances, that deft avoidance of open trouble, have made many Frenchmen dream, as no stiff Britisher, for instance, would ever dare dream, of a final assimilation, by means of a series of only minor adjustments on both sides, an absorption of these very definitely Eastern peoples into the civilisation francaise. The French too readily ignore the fact that the great majority of the Moslems show very little interest, one way or the other, in the civ Hi. sal ion francaise, or in the feast of benefits, material and intellectual, of modern West- ern life, which has so persistently been spread before them. They are either unable or unwilling to use modern agri- cultural methods. They do not readily learn the simplest manufacturing processes. They do not send their children to attend the schools which the French have started for natives. They continue to prefer drowsing and dreaming in the sun, or philosophizing together in coffee houses, to the European ideal of economic productivity. The fact is

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304 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 that these white-robed, slow-moving, meditative followers of Islam are of the East Eastern in all their thoughts and feelings and interests; and the true direction of their de- sires, the very orientation of their whole lives, is buried deep in the mystery of race, far beyond the understanding of any casual Western conqueror. Meanwhile things may move in a quite different di- rection. Against the present French desire for peace and the status quo, three forces are pressing, nationalism, Islam, and foreign communism. Nationalism — a new be- lief of the cultured Europeanized few, to which they are trying to convert the many; Islam — the embodiment of the unifying racial culture of the masses; French communism and Russian bolshevism — outside influences encouraging na- tive revolt. In the presence and interaction of these three forces, the situation in Algeria and Tunisia roughly paral- lels that in Egypt, India, or even our own Philippine every land, in fact, where a somewhat backward people of different racial culture is under a Western government. Although Islam appears politically chiefly as a racial tradition, binding together those peoples who have already a common temperament and point of view, yet its distinctly religious aspects cannot be entirely discounted. In North Africa, and especially in Tunisia, Mohammedanism is today a living belief. Religious feeling runs high everywhere, and is stimulated by a network of Mohammedan secret so- s which covers Algeria and Tunisia, with branches in all but the smallest villages. Definite facts about their size and strength are unobtainable by non-Moslems, but it would be dangerous to underestimate their importance. Nine dif- ferent organizations are believed to flourish in the city of Algiers alone. Mohammedan missionaries are also busy ex- tending the power of the Prophet southward, making con- among the blacks of the Sahara. Islam's experiences and success elsewhere are closely watched in North Africa, and the illiterate nomads of the desert, meeting in village coffee-houses, discuss with keen interest such points as the recent Turkish law against the fez, or the present situation in Syria or Morocco. That other parts of the Moslem world qually conscious of the tie that binds them to their North African co-religionists, and even look to these regions for future religious leadership, is shown by a proposal after the Turkish abolition of the Caliphate to make the Sultan of Morocco Caliph, and a rather more recent one to choose for that oflice the Moroccan insurrectionist and conqueror of Europeans, Abd-el-Krim. As far as non-Moslems may know, the Mohammedan religious activity in French North Africa is not, at present, aimed directly toward political ends, but it is feeding a fire of unity and fanaticism, from which other forces may kindle a general conflagration. Such another force is nationalism. The nationalist leaders, as in so many other Eastern countries, have re- ceived their teaching and inspiration from their European rulers. Almost all of tin m in Algeria and Tunisia have had an education either in France itself or in some such French- founded institution as the Lycee Carna a.t Tunis. And from France also come their dreams of political liberty and a democratic government. The Young Tunisians are the most important national- body. Now between fifteen and twenty years old, they are theoretically non-existent, since their complete suppres- sion after the revolt of 1922. In that brief and little-known ■ the Arabs of Tunis, roused by Young Tunisian agita- tion, poured out in a body to the Palace of the Bey to beg him to drive forth the French invader and resume his ancient power. That crisis was handled in a typically French way, by a combination of the iron hand, which with a prompt show of force broke up the mob and arrested all the leaders, and the velvet glove, which smoothed things over by some concessions to Arab desire for self-govern- ment. Of these the most important took the form of a limited representation in the consultative council which directs local affairs in Tunisia, under the veto of the French Resident General and the aegis of the Moslem Bey. More recent Young Tunisian activities have, of necessity, been completely underground, but occasional newspaper agitation, followed always by prompt suppression and arrests, bears witness to a present heat of rebellion beneath. The Young Algerian movement, modeled after the Young Tunisian, has never been so large or active. In fact, it has hardly been in evidence at all since the beau geste of the French administration in Paris in giving to the Moslem natives, in recognition of their services in the war, various political privileges, including a much widened franchise. This particular gesture of the home government, having re- sulted in increasing the number of native voters to 421,000, as against 12(1,000 French, has been greatly deplored and bitterly resented by the colons on the spot. And the Al- gerian Europeans, although numerically unimportant, repre- sent, after all, the economic wealth of the colony, having in their hands practically all the banking and commerce and the large-scale farming enterprises. But this much-pro- tested act, in giving the educated nationalistic Arabs the new toy of political power to play with, and also, if we are to believe the colons, the old familiar Arab tools of secret corruption and graft to work with, does at least seem to have resulted in keeping them out of more destructive mischief. In Tunisia are other conditions making for unrest. Of these perhaps the chief is the fact that in the Protec- torate the Italians, with their dreams of national glory, and with Tripoli next door, are in the majority over the French of 84,000 to 54,000. This situation, and the French sup- pression of Italian culture there, are continual thorns in the side of Italy. Tomaso Tittoni, in a semi-official article, quotes approvingly a French remark calling the Tunisian question "the principal element of discord between France and Italy." The Italian schools in Tunisia provided a special source of controversy, until the matter was satisfac- torily settled under Herriot's regime. Feeling, however, still runs high on both sides. In this condition of tension Mussolini's imperialistic utterances and Mediterranean aspirations are the opposite of reassuring. There are then, in general, more reasons for immediate disturbances in Tunisia than in Algeria. But its inhabi- tants provide less hopeful material for prolonged and suc- cessful native revolt. "The Moroccans are tigers, the Al- gerians are men, the Tunisians are women," so says a native proverb; and the instability of the gentle, indolent, fanati- cal, easily-influenced Tunisian Arab, plus the lack among even the educated of any natural ability for organization, would seem to be safeguards against elaborate rebellion. How imminent, however, would be any danger of seri- ous trouble in either country in the natural course of things, is hard to say; for the internal forces of unrest have power- ful and active outside allies in French and Russian Com- munism. In accordance with the avowed policy of the Third International of centering attention on the world's

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 305 H. G. WE i^/ THE WORLD OF WILLIAM CLISSOLD, A Novel at a New Angle by H. G. Wells, is being published in England in three volumes, one month apart, beginn September. In the United States it is pub- lished September 30th in two volumes complete, by George H. Doran Company. As a sheer piece of writing it is Mr. Wells' masterpiece. As a novel, it must rank as one of the very great novels of our day. A first large printing is completely absorb- ed by advance orders from booksellers who are prepared now to receive your order for delivery on publication day. We urge the early placing of your order. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, Publishers. NewVork and Toronto Was Jesus a Myth? ttf^ EORG BRANDES, the world- ^J famous Danish author and critic, has once more flung a dial I in the face of established ideas. The thesis of his new hook is that Je as wholly fictitious and legendary a I I erodes, Prometheus 01 William Tell." — The World. J E S A MYTH by GEORG BRANDES Translated from the Danish by Edwin Bjorkman ^ T T IS argument, as might be expected from so -■- -*■ learned and able a critic, is eloquent and powerful." — New York Sun. .00 at all bookstores or from the publishers, Address I)ept.: A Albert & Charles Boni — 66 Fifth Avenue, New York ra«— ggggroa . ■. . Lewis Browne's New Book This Believing World A Simple Account of the Great Religions of Mankind Romaastic He has written his narrative with transparent clearness and some- times with romantic eloquence. He has brought the entire procession of the world 's faiths upon one canvas, illuminated with order and clarity. — Will Durant, New York Herald Tribune Notable This is a book not to be criticised but to be read, and those who do this will be amply repaid. It tells people what many desire to know, the character of the great religions of the world. The writer has a rare gift of making his subject interesting. _. J. Foakes Jackson — F. New York Boston Chicago Vivid The substance of the matter is here. We get the essential out- lines of the picture. Mr. Browne's book, for all its brevity, is as ac- curate as it is vivid. —John Haynes Holmes, New York World Graphic Graphic, vivid, informed with a fine sense of drama, gently ironic and penetrating. This re- viewer for one can testify that no recent novel has held him into the late watches of the night as has this book of Lewis Browne's. — Henry Hazlitt, Neiv York Sun Complete There is strong meat, here, nourish- ment for real people, both mental and spiritual... The real test comes not only as you read it and see the way it is done, but also afterward. You can think of no- thing to add to it that you really want to know. There is nothing. —Thomas L. Masson, N. Y. Evening Post Obtainable at all — S3. 50 THE MACMILL&N r kNY Atlanta Dallas San Francisco When writing to advertiserB, please mention The Nation

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306 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3195 sore spots, French Communist agitators have long been active in North Africa. They have frequently in the last years roused Arab workmen in Algiers and Oran to First of May demonstrations; and it is thought by the French Government that of the two it was French Communists and not Arab nationalists who were the chief instigators of the brief Arab revolt in Tunis. Russia first put in her finger in 1921, when the Congress of Eastern Peoples, called at Baku by Russian Communists, enunciated that doctrine so encouraging to North African patriots, "First Egypt. Then Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco." Along with the talk in 1924 and 1925 of Bolshevist propaganda in France, and Herriot's expulsion of agitators, there went similar talk of activity in French North Africa, especially in Tunisia. A year ago last November, a special commission was ap- pointed to study the Bolshevist menace there, and to deal with it by the regular French combination of repression and concession. It is the general opinion of European residents who know the Arab, that the Communist who hopes to make not only trouble for the rulers but permanent converts to his doctrine is preparing for a bitter disappointment. For they say that the Arabs are not the stuff of which Communists are made that the whole spirit and philosophy of that party is uncongenial to the native temperament. If there seems to be an alliance of these two forces against the powers that be, it is the various nationalist movements of Islam that are using bolshevism for their own national ends, and not the reverse, whatever may be the self- deluding hopes of Moscow. "That Film" THE following interesting if unfavorable opinion of a widely heralded American film and the leading motion- picture comedian of the world appeared recently in the Haagsche Post (Holland) : I nave seen a miserable film, one that earns millions — "Gold Rush," written, directed, and played by Charlie Chaplin. Nobody with the slightest self-respect can derive any pleasure from this stupid product. Mankind must be childish to regard this as a world success. Chaplin's vaunted healthy humor turns out to be merely American sentimentality that has be- come a habit. Charlie Chaplin has acquired a new mannerism, a new success-mannerism, that is all. This is the recipe: Humor equals one laugh plus one tear, presented by a clown with a soulful face and a pair of soulful legs. But now we are also aware that all this is worn without any psychic neces- sity and that in its foundation there is not an atom of deeper humanity. The recluse of "Gold Rush" is not tragic, though such is the presumable intent; it is Charlie Chaplin trying to make propaganda of the legend that his seeming foolish- ness is derived from, or overshadowed by, a pure human melancholy. . . . Such a tasteless and childish business, this whole scenario of Charlie Chaplin. A puppet of Madame Tussaud goes to Alaska to dig for gold (dressed in an undertaker's mourn- ing coat). lie is not funny, he is only an exaggerated improbability. And why does he go to Alaska? To make the acquaintance of a young damsel with a bad reputation but a good heart, something that could readily have been found in Hollywood. Only in Hollywood they are probably more human than in the cold of Alaska, for in this dame all indi- viduality seems to be frozen. She is neither fish nor flesh, a puppet operated by strings. Then Charlie Chaplin pulls a string and in sudden love she falls into the arms of the new millionaire. . . . JOHN DAY a?tnounces the publication of its first group of books MY HERESY The Autobiography of An Idea By Bishop William Montgomery Brown The story of a man who lost a religion and found a faith. The central figure in the most famous ecclesiastical tragi-comedy of modern times tells the story of his life and "heresy" in an apologia that does not apologize. $2.00 net. THE MUSIC FROM BEHIND THE MOON By James Branch Cabell With eight full-page illustrations from ivoihl engravings by Leon Underwood. The chronicle of Madoc of Netan and the pallid witch, Ettarre. Edition limited to three thousand copies. Printed on Vidalon velin paper, from type hand set by William Edwin Rudge. Out of print. Boxed; $6.00 net. LESS THAN KIN By Charles Caldwell Dobie The story of the Sinclair fortunes and the Sinclair pride; of Adrienne, strong in her rebellious youth; of the infamous Selina Parsons and the group of people she entangles in the web of her vengeful ambitions. $2.00 net. THAT LAST INFIRMITY By Charles Brackett A new chapter in the social comedv by the author of "Week-End." $2.00 net. Ready in October NEW SCHOOLS IN THE OLD WORLD By Carleton Washburne and Myron M. Stearns A study of twelve modern European schools with special reference to American educational problems. Dr. Washburne is superintendent of schools in Winnctka, 111. $1.75 net. THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR By George Creel Challenging the position of tradition-bound historians, Mr. Creel offers a new view of Mexico. Starting with the Toltec and Aztec civilizations he follows the violent current of Mexican affairs down to the present day. $4.00 net. TPIE BLACK ANGELS By Maud Hart Lovelace The adventures of a crew of laughing, singing vagabonds, who set forth in an ox-drawn covered wagon in Minnesota to make their fortunes as a concert troupe. $2.00 net. AT ALL BOOKSELLERS. THE JOHN DAY 25 West 45th Street COMPANY New York When irriting to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Sept. 29, 1926] The Nation 307 True food is the foundation of Good health Health Food Whole Wheat Products Satisfying Diet for Diabetics /rufbod &ETARIA] RESTAURANT1 153 West 44th St., East of Broadway Open Daily Until 12 P. M. BOOKS FOR LESS THAN TWO CENTS A DAY utile Library makes a specialty of new books. Novels. Travel. Drama, Biographies and new books upon all topics of the day. SUBSCRIPTION $5.00 $3.00 - per year six months MERCANTILE LIBRARY Astor Place & 8th St. Opposite Wanamaker's. I \1 I. VACATIONS weekend Enjoy a week or two, or a •with your friends, at THE INN at Phillips Cove, Cape Neddick, Maine ON THE SEA — 65 acres— old fashioned farmhouse — catering to private house parties of ten or less of professional people — excellent table — hunting and golfing — private beach— isolated — a writers' retreat. Accessible overnight from New York. Rates $30 per week per person or $5 a day. FOR RENT MANHATTAN BEACH HOTEL, N. Y. LIVE in a modern, fireproof hotel by the seashore for less than in the crowded city. Homelike comforts, moderate priced restaurant, maid, valet and telephone service. Winter rates : — $12 per week for two. 37 minutes from Times Square, B.M.T. Phone Esplanade 3000. WILL share my charming two-room, kitchenette apartment West 68th St. with young pro- fessional or business woman. Rate very reasonable. Call mornings before 9 :30. Trafalgar 2790. WANTED — A young woman, cultured, intelli- gent, companionable, to share attractive apart- ment. Cost reasonable. Write or phone Jerome 2122, Box No. 550, c/o The Nation. FOR SALE APARTMENT near Lincoln School. Columbia, for sale, strictly modern cooperative house, seven rooms, facing Morningside Park ; rent $75. Must sell at once. Mrs. Cotton, Plaza 4700. IM'PPIES FOR SALE COLLIE Puppies that will bring joy to the kid- dies and the grown-ups as well. Handsome, pedigreed dogs with character, disposition and in- telligence bred in them. 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YOUNG lady desires unfurnished room in Manhattan. Must be light and inex- pensive. Box 548, c/o The Nation. MISCEI LANEOUS American Telephone and Telegraph Company And associated Companies BELL SYSTEM One Policy, One System, Universal Service Privately Printed for Subscribers The fte&l | RENDERED INTO ENGLISH i BY E. POWYS MATHERS Literal Translation by Dr. J. C. Mardrut Limited Edition Now Nearly Exhausted THE Thousand Nights and One Night rendered from the literal and complete version of Dr. J. C. Mardrua and collated with other sources by E. POWYS MATHERS. Privately Printed lor Subscribers Burton's translation has hitherto been the last word. But it is n» longer. Dr. Mardrus began in 1899 his new French translation and this English translation of his completed work has been privately printed for subscribers. Of it The London Times Bays : "In the "THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS' the tale after all is tha thing, and the tale is better told by Mardrus than by Burton. But let not thoac who are jealous of every word suppose he has attained this result by the method of a sub-editor. For artis- tic presentment the abhorred shears are not necessary. All the superfluities have also a value. Burton cut out a great deal. The Mardrus version is very much fuller in detail." The London Spectator says: "The simplest and most vigorous translation into a European language is that of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. Mr. E. POWYS MATHERS has published a translation and we have an unexpurgated English text that will be for many years the best." Each of these handsome volumes on hand-made, water-marked paper. Frontispieces in four colors from Per- sian illuminations. Sixteen volume* bound in four 614" by 9J4" by 2" thick. Bound in French boards. Ori- ental motif, gold tops, gilt backs, colored end papers. The English Review of Reviews sayi of this remarkable set: "It is incom- parably the best we have ever had — a revelation of new beauty." More than two-thirds of the 700 sets printed for American subscribers have already been sold. The price of $50 will be advanced to $60 after Novem- ber iirst. Mail the coupon for descriptive brochure DINGWALL-ROCK, Ltd. 41 West 45th Street, New York City Dingwall- Rock, Ltd. Dept. 19. 41 West 45tll St.. New York City Centlemen: Without obligation or cost to me, kindly forward information in detail about ' The Real Arabian Nights." Name Address City State When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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308 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 31951 And all this proves again the axiom that the public accepts everything, swallows everything, enjoys everything if it has been for some years manipulated with a certain business dex- terity. Even if a man, from persona1, conviction, has come to the conclusion that it is disappointing — as in this case — he feels called upon to praise it. The hero worship gets the better of him. When the hero, Charlie Chaplin, tumbles from his pedes- tal, he is ready to return him to the elevated place. The film public no longer believes in God; it believes in an Olympus where the god-millionaires sit enthroned, those gods called Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and innumerable Aphrodites like Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford. Probably the time will come when from this will be born a new religion; that is as soon as it pleases one of the above-mentioned super- human celebrities to die. Then Charlie Chaplin will arise as the sun god, another Helios, and the Americans will bring him offerings consisting of cooked films. And in the sight-seeing bus they will drive to Mary Pickford's palace, to pray to the image of this holy Mary. For the present Charlie Chaplin is still the infallible pope. F. II. Contributors to This Issue W. E. Woodwaru is the author of "Bunk," "Lottery," and other volumes. Glenn Frank is thi lent of the University of Wisconsin. Michael Gold is one of the editors of the New Masses. Hal Saunders White was a teacher of English at Yale University last winter. MORTIMER J. ADLER is a lecturer in psychology at Colum- bia University. Joseph Wood Kri ociate editor of The Nation, is the author of "Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius." Woodbridge Riley is professor of philosophy at Vassar College. Tames FUCHS is known as a writer for the liberal and radical press. Raymond WEAVER wrote "Herman Melville, Mariner and and "Black Valley." Elizabeth Knowlton wrote Digging Up Carthage in The Nation of October 29, li)24, and Iceland's New Birth in the issue of October 8 of the same year. REAL HARRIS I IPUNS °? ircct from i he Makers >' Manufacturer's Price j; I Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Price $2.20 per Yard. Postage Paid ; I NEWALL, ISO Stornoway, Scotland. Write (or paite-ns staling shades desired if Your Fall Problems ;ii want to rent a house or an apartment or if you have to rent -or sell, advertise in the classified section of I he Nation, read by honest landlords and desirable tenants. Kates on application. Special three-time rate. Dept. F. P.. The Nation. The Nation 's Fall Book Number October 13 .. ■ - The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers a fifteen months' course of graduate study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Centers. The Fall Quarter begins October 4, 1926. For further information, address the Director, THE TRAINING SCHOOL JEWISH SOCIAL WORK tho National Conference of ^10 WEST tttst STREET Jewish Social Service) NEW YORK CITY Bn WaS!ase Thompson's RAINBOW COUNTRIES OF CENTRAL AMERICA there arc combined romantic history, vivid description, and plentiful information. It is a book to lure you from a northern win- ter into this accessible, neglected wonder- land at your very doors. $5.00 E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., New York THINKING An Introduction to its HISTORY AND SCIENCE By FRED CASEY THIS is the first authorized American edition of a text-book in logic, based on the work of Joseph Dietzgen, which has been exceedingly popular in England. Thinking has for thousands of years been a theological or meta- physical mystery. This book shows how the methods of modern science can be applied to it, and bow the process of thinking can thus he improved. Cloth, $1.25 postpaid. We also publish Dietzgen's PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS and his POSITIVE OUTCOME OF PHILOSOPHY, each $1.50 postpaid. CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago rVTenrlham Road MORRISTOWN AURORA HEALTH FARM ( Not a sanitarium; not a boarding-house NEW JERSEY Beautiful country: elevation 700 ft : only one hour from New York. Open all year. Suitable fur those requiring diet, electro- and hydro- therapy, [deal for rest and con Persona! medical super- vision. Homelike atmosphere. In. contagious or mental Roue r Schulman, "1. !>.. Medical Director. 1 1 . Assoc la e Physician. Telephone— MO N 1 8 2 0. GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation 18 6 6 Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1926 No. 3196 ^ , , resale of Eupen and Malmedy by Belgium. In return Ger- ^OniLIllS many was to pay for the Saar and for Eupen and Malmedy —about $100,000,000; to assist in mobilizing the Dawes lDiTOK'rALsfARAGRAPHS obligations so that they could be used now to stabilize the H.iKh c..per Touches a Dream ?]|, franc ; and to relinquish the protection of the transfer Bad Manners at Geneva «j- ;* _, . ,. . _, Tin- Greatest Fake of the Century clause of the Dawes Plan. The immediate gains to France Tak?nK "ufe sel'iouTiy" . . sl ' would be enormous — she would obtain cash in hand beyond MY black brother mafeking. By Wynant Davis Hubbard ,, paTiacjties of her tax collectors The military iruard george washington-the mage AND the man: tne capacities oi nti tax collectors, me military kuaru ii Gunpowder ami Petticoats Bj \\ e. Woodward 317 on the Rhine has long ceased to be a matter of military CALLES IS GAINING IN MEXICO. By Carleton Beala 320 . the answer (To Rudywd Kipling). By Harry Kemp 322 strategy and become chiefly a matter of prestige, and pres- thk workers build their own. By James Rorty 322 tige in these days comes high. France knows now that she correspondeTnceY' n>' the. "."".". .::::: ::::::::::::" : : : : u. can never persuade the Saar folk to vote for French rule books and plays: and must ultimately lose them, and little Eupen and Mal- Vanguard. Bv I on Jennings i» i i i »i,/-, First Glance. By Mark Van Doren S26 medy have a mainly sentimental value even for the Ger- Cook's Tours Through Art. By Thomas Monro 320 rn si u* u u i • i- The story of Psychology. By Joseph jastrow 827 mans. To a Cabinet whose overwhelming preoccupation Bar^ ^^ce^e^t^onf^^" ///..'.' :::.:'.: .'.:::'.' :.'.'. ia finance the advantages of the plan are obvious. Books " in Brief 329 Drama : Broadway. By Joseph Wood Krutch 330 international relations section: fT^O GERMANY, TOO, the plan has its attraction — it British Labor in Transition. By Scott Nearing 331 Color and World Migration 332 JL widens out the Western frontier at two sore points, regains the Saar coal, and gets rid of the irritating foreign OSWALD GARRISON VILLA RD. Editor ui_u.ii. i u ,, „,. T, troops who hold the post-war watch on the Rhine. It means, Associate Editors lewis s. gannett in essence, discounting the payments on the Dawes Plan in arthur warner Joseph wood krutch the American market. Ultimately something like a billion managing editor LIBRARY EDTroR dollars' worth of bonds would have to be floated— and of FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN . Contributing Editors course there is no market but the American capable of john a. hobson ludwig lewisohn h. l. mencken absorbing anything like that amount. The loan would have N0RMALrnH<^L a CARL m™* D°REN to be absorbed at an enormous sacrifice— at present the talk DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager r is of offering the first issue of 5 per cent bonds at 75, and Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States tne bankers' Commissions WOUld have to be deducted from and Mexico ; to Canada, j.5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union. $6.00. the 75 before Germany would get her cash. The transfer THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, i , ,, „ . . X.-A.V. „i i„ i New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 south Dearborn street. British Agent of clause of the Dawes agreements has hitherto guaranteed LondornPwnacanid B^tand"*' Miss Gertrude M" Cross' 13, Woburn s<fliarc- Germany against large transfers of reparations payments '■ when they might affect the stability of the mark, and this "Did it ever occur to you" [Bruce Barton asked] "that would have to be renounced before the bonds could be sold you might be President when you grew up?" abroad. Foreign investors would demand regular interest ". . . I do not recall that anyone in whose judg- payments. The program is predicated upon the assumption ment I would place much reliance ever told me in my that Germany's financial recovery will continue and that ^oonae^d-AstsocaitatedShpressbe PreSident" [tinswered Mr" she will be able to meet the Dawes Plan payments as they become due. Thus far the Dawes Plan has worked; Ger- A CANNY child, young Calvin built many has this year even increased her payments by $75,- No White House in the air; 000,000 in return for future concessions. But can Germany No battery of flattery keep it up? And will American investors believe in her Could catch him unaware. capacity sufficiently to make the gamble? The ultimate decision will be made neither in Paris nor in Berlin, but in Wall Street, New York City. When uncle said to Calvin, "You'll be President or bust!" The boy replied, with modest pride: "Your judgment I distrust." PEACE— REAL PEACE— on the Rhine moves nearer and nearer. There are rumblings and grumblings — M. Poincare has just made a speech about German responsi- bility for the war which does not help matters — but eco- nomic pressure is making itself felt with the force of an avalanche. Gradually the outlines of the tentative agree- ment reached by M. Briand and Herr Stresemann on the shores of Lake Geneva become clearer. France was to agree to evacuate the Rhineland in 1927, to return the Saar coal region in 1928, and to withdraw opposition to the THE CAT CAME BACK. The World Court had been laid on an extra high shelf by a Senate which did not quite have the courage either to take it or leave it. The theory, unavowed but clear, was that the nations which are signatories to the World Court protocol would either get down on their knees and accept the American reservations, or refuse them out of hand, in either case bothering the Senate no more. But the assembled nations did neither. They followed the Senate's own technique : they accepted the reservations, with reservations. And now the reservations to our reservations must go back to the Senate which, in its infinite wisdom, may find that the only way to maintain peace, in the Senate, is to accept the reservations to our

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310 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 reservations, with further reservations. The merry game goes on. The best legal minds of Geneva were set to wo^rk upon the Senate's reservations, a few of the obiter dicta of the Presidential Spokesman in the Adirondack fastnesses being supplied to help them out. The Geneva conferees agreed to three of the five Senate reservations. They accepted the American veto upon amendments to the Court's statute with the proviso that the signatories might by a two-thirds vote withdraw their acceptance. They struck a snag in the question of advisory opinions. The Senate had insisted that the Court refuse to give any advisory opinion without Washington's consent upon matters in which the United States might claim an interest. The Spokesman explained that the Senate meant by this merely to put us on a par with the members of the League's Council. The Geneva reply is that the Council members have no such veto power, and that accordingly they will be pleased to give us an equal voice but no more. And the Senate is now entitled to say whether the Spokesman was right in explaining what the Senate meant. FLORIDA SEEMS to be bent upon alienating as soon as possible the sympathy which rightly went out to her because of the hurricane. In the New York Times we read the following dispatch from Miami, dated September 23: Conscription of all unemployed persons to aid in clearing away wreckage and to speed the work of rehabili- tating the Florida storm-swept area was adopted every- where in that area today. Militiamen and police, aided by several hundred members of the American Legion who have been specially deputized, patrolled all streets and highways, apprehending all persons who could not show that they were employed, and putting them immediately to work. It is conceivable that such conscription of labor, although forbidden by the federal Constitution, might be upheld by the courts if ordered by a governor or legislature to meet an extieme emergency. But in Florida the decree appears to have been a mere municipal fiat and the emergency nothing more urgent than a desire to restore the attractions of Miami in time for the winter tourist season. It was easy to predict, also, that the order would be applied only to poor Negroes — not to white idlers of adequate means. A day after the above dispatch it was stated that "two marines" had been shot while trying to force a couple of Negroes to join a labor gang. What business, we should like to ask, had "two marines" to be assisting in an illegal attempt at municipal peonage? The Negroes, it seems, had only recently arrived from Nassau, and therefore were probably British subjects. If so, His Majesty's ambassador may be able to obtain for them redress which as mere American citizens they would not stand a chance of getting. STUDENT PROTESTS at the College of the City of New York against compulsory military training have borne their fruit. The incoming freshman class is now to have a choice between military training and "civilian drill" under the direction of the departmt nt of hygiene; upper- class men, however, who have already begun military train- ing will not be permitted to relinquish it. Thus the authori- ties save their faces and at the same time respond to what was a rather troublesome protest. The intrepid young men of City College who quoted from the army manual used in the drill course last year must feel amply rewarded for their pains. They heard themselves called "traitors," "cowards," "bolsheviks," "parlor pacifists"; they were assured that the faculty would of course pay no attention to the pratings of mere students, and that City College was second to none in zeal for its country and its flag; they fought on. And somehow the student protests carried sharper barbs than President Mezes and his associates would confess to. One wonders just what did happen. Did it occur to someone that colleges might be made for students instead of the other way around? Probably not. Whatever happened, compul- sory military training in colleges has received another set- back. Its sponsors, however, are busy and alert; the fight to eliminate from the schools this unwelcome immigrant has only begun. We count upon the students who have waged so effective a struggle against it from City College to Wyoming to carry on. THE STATE OF KENTUCKY has lately shown a com- mendable courage in preventing lynchings, but there have been a number of trials which have appeared to colored residents as little better. Last January a Negro in Lexington was sentenced to be hanged for murder and rape after a trial of sixteen minutes, but a month later in the same city a white man, charged with assaulting a colored girl, was declared insane. In April three Negroes were arrested in Madisonville charged with assault upon a white woman. The evidence against them did not seem conclusive to many persons, but race feeling ran high and the Courier-Journal reported in advance that the men would be convicted and hanged. Two were, in fact, speed- ily sentenced to die and the third got twenty years in jail, but the sentences were later upset by the Court of Ap- peals. Previous to the trial, however, the Leader and the News, Negro newspapers of Louisville, protested that the men could not expect a fair hearing in the atmosphere of Madisonville. The Leader spoke of certain recent trials as "legalized lynchings." Later the editors of the News and the Leader, William Warley and I. Willis Cole, were charged with creating race hatred, but when it was discovered that the law making this a crime had been repealed they were indicted for libeling the judge at Madisonville. The out- come of this case, involving as it does both the freedom of the press and justice for the Negro race, is highly important in the annals of Kentucky. THE ORGANIZATION of the textile workers of Passaic, New Jersey, under the auspices of the American Fed- eration of Labor, has been the signal for a final lawless effort to crush the strike. Since the strike began some nine months ago it would seem that the employees had already been sufficiently fertile in inspiring illegality, having led the public officials of Bergen County to prohibit lawful meetings, to break up legitimate picket lines, and to exhaust the workers' funds by demanding excessive bail. But now that the mill-owners can no longer cry "Bolshevik" and "Communist" at the workers they are trying to connect them with recent bomb explosions. A score of strikers have been arrested, held incomunicado for several days, and in some cases subjected to the third degree. Meanwhile Henry T. Hunt, counsel for the strikers, declares that all available evidence indicates that the various bombs were "planted" by detectives in the pay of the mills. This seems quite in keeping with the ethics which sponsored a spurious

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Oct. 6, 1926] The Nation 311 breach-of-promise case against Albert Weisbord when he was leading the strike. Neither is it surprising that the charges against Norman Thomas were promptly dismissed liy a grand jury when after five months' delay under bail of $10,000 it was finally possible to get a hearing before such a body. We are glad to see that Mr. Thomas, who courage- ously consented to lead in a test case of Bergen County's illegal application of the riot law, plans to bring suit for false arrest. WE SINCERELY HOPE that the outcome of the Dempsey-Tunney light is as much a triumph of mind over matter as it has been represented to be. Mr. Tunney has been heralded as the only heavyweight champion who ever read "The Way of All Flesh," and in these days when the taste of Presidents runs to vaude- ville and detective stories it is something to have the cause of culture triumph in the prize-ring. Unfortunately, certain cynical reporters insist that, his reputation as a highbrow notwithstanding, the new champion hesitates a little over all words of more than three syllables, but others represent him as deeply versed in metaphysics and according to one story a spectator in the arena remarked that this extraordinary boxer "could discuss Kant with ease." To this a companion replied: "Then he must be good, because that's more than Kant could do," thus illustrating the fact that in these days even the fans are contemplative men. In any event Mr. Tunney's fist seems to have appealed to Mr. Dempsey with all the force of a categorical imperative. Hugh Cooper Touches a Dream DURING the last years of his active life Nicolai Lenin was probably the busiest man in Europe, but some- how he managed to find time for day-dreams. His pet dream related to millions of kilowatts of electrical energy. It envisaged Russia's immense storages of coal and heat and water-power — particularly the potential 65,000,000 horse-power running to waste in Russian rivers — har- nessed to work for the communal society of his vision. When Soviet troops were holding a dozen fronts, and ad- venturous Czarist generals, financed by our best civilized governments, were hemming in the Soviet armies, when Russia apparently lay in ruins and starvation stalked across the steppes, when in the city a bushel-basket of paper rubles would hardly buy a few crusts of bread, Lenin found time in the course of his overcrowded 24-hour work- day to preach his dream of an electrified Russia, and he even drafted the foremost engineering authorities of the country to produce the most ambitious plans for federal superpower development that Europe had ever seen. Mat- ter-of-fact persons indulged in considerable ribaldry about the little visionary in the Kremlin and his paper electrification. Now Lenin lies dead under the Kremlin wall these several years, but his dream is assuming reality. On the peat fields of Moscow province, along the racing Volkhov east of Leningrad, in the coal basin of the Don, on the marshes of Balakhna near Nizhni-Novgorod, in the Cau- casus, in a half dozen other places where before was nothing, great regional power-plants of concrete and steel have risen. The other day news dispatches from Moscow set forth that Hugh L. Cooper, whose designs have added more than 1,500,000 kilowatts to America's hydroelectric- power development, was returning to the United States to lay before his financial associates the terms of a concession from the Soviet Government for the construction on the Dnieper River, in Soviet Ukraine, of the most powerful hydroelectric development yet attempted in Europe. The power plant which is the center of this plan is to have an ultimate capacity of 455,000 kilowatts. It will feed power to a good part of the southern mining district of the Soviet Union, which furnishes 75 per cent of the coal mined in Russia, 70 per cent of the iron, and a large proportion of the manganese, and also contains heavily developed chemical and dye industries. The pro- ject involves collateral plans for the irrigation of four and a half million acres and the construction of a consider- able system of inland waterways. The cost will be $75,- 000,000. Colonel Cooper was attracted to the plan during the visit of a commission of five hydroelectric engineers from the Soviet Union last spring. They came primarily to study the larger power developments of the United States, but incidentally they carried in their briefcases the plans for the Dnieper project, so fully worked out that they commanded the high admiration of some of our fore- most hydroelectric authorities. The Dnieper project, still in the paper stage, is but one link in the superpower chain already under way in the Soviet Union. The building began in the days when the country was still struggling with starvation. In 1917 Russian electric-power stations engaged in general public service had a total capacity of 396,000 kilowatts. Factory plants and others not in general public service provided about a million kilowatts more. In all Russia there was only one plant rated as high as 20,000 kilowatts. By the close of this year plants engaged in general public service will be producing close to a million kilowatts, an increase of 150 per cent. Virtually all this gain has been made in the past three years, during which time the federal Government has squeezed $100,000,000 out of its budgets for superpower construction. The budget for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 1926, appropriates nearly $50,- 000,000 more. During the next two years ten existing superpower plants will have their power capacities in- creased by 260,000 kilowatts, and three new stations will add another 70,000 kilowatts. This is exclusive of the Dnieper plant. Last year electric power consumption in the Soviet Union reached 3,000,000,000 kilowatt hours, and per capita consumption in Moscow was 202 kilowatt hours or 225 per cent of the pre-war figure. Thus Lenin's dream gathers momentum as one by one the dark Russian villages blaze into sudden light. Increasing orders for turbines and generators and other high-power electric apparatus flow to London and Berlin and Prague. The consuls and commercial agents from these capitals in Moscow miss no tricks in keeping in advance of this lucrative business — while members of our hard- headed "business administration" in Washington still peer timidly under their beds for synthetic bolsheviks invented during the merry days of Palmer and Daugherty to distract public attention, while they try to sell Muscle Shoals and other American power projects to gentlemen whose primary interest is to make money out of them.

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312 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 Bad Manners at Geneva VISCOUNT CECIL was about to deliver a glowing tribute to the new spirit of peace which had cast such a radiant glow over the September sessions of the League Assembly when the Chinese delegate arose. He asked permission to speak four minutes, obtained it, began with the smiling announcement that the Chinese Govern- ment intended to present the League with a Chinese ency- clopedia, and then, while the delegates were still beaming with appreciation, proceeded to inform the League of the kind of peace waged by Viscount Cecil's Government on the Yangtze River in the heart of China. On July 9 and August 2 and 29 [he said] several Brit- ish merchant ships sailed up the Yangtze River at full speed, swamping a number of native boats, drowning more than 100 passengers, soldiers, and military officers, and de- stroying much merchandise. When the authorities sought to make inquiry a British cruiser appeared and interfered. It threatened the villagers on both shores with cannon. The Chinese authorities were obliged to detain the British merchant vessels, taking the matter up with the British consul at Chungking. Unfortunately, before the matter was settled, British cruisers arrived at Wanhsien, September 5, and opened fire on the town, destroying a thousand houses, killing a thou- sand civilians, and a hundred gendarmerie. . . . The incident has assumed international importance, threatening the peace of the Far East. Consequently I am making the facts known to the Assembly. The Chinese delegate sat down. Viscount Cecil arose. "In heated terms" he denounced "this strange course of procedure." The Chinese delegate, it seems, should have informed the British of his intentions beforehand. Chao Hsin-chu's course was "undiplomatic." Scant attention was paid oy Viscount Cecil or by the assembled delegates to the questions, What had been done on the Yangtze, what could be done to prevent further slaughter, whether the prevailing state of "peace" in the Far East was in fact menaced. The Geneva state of mind was probably accurately described by the serious correspondent of the New York Times who reported that There is no question in the mind of anybody that the Chinese have the right to present to the League any situa- tion which they consider dangerous to peace. But it is con- sidered bad judgment on their part to break the rules of the Assembly and beg four minutes' time on the agenda imme- diately before the British delegate's reading of a carefully prepared statement on disarmament and make a discourse on a matter which they do not intend to follow up. The prestige of Chao is held to be irreparably ruined. And there you have the vice of the Anglo-Saxon mind in a nutshell. It does not matter what one says or does, but one must do it in the best form and according to the inter- national book of etiquette. Chao Hsin-chu was right, we believe, in shocking Geneva. The world needs a little shock if it is not to suffer a big shock in China. When an American tourist is killed by Mexican bandits in the hills of Morelos, it is front-page news; when the fact leaks out that an American explorer was killed by Eskimos ten years ago, that is worth a three- column head on the front page; when seven Englishmen are killed in a battle in which a thousand Chinese are slaugh- tered, the Englishmen's death is cabled round the world while the murder of the Chinese remains hidden in the obscurity of the back pages until an undiplomatic Chao Hsin-chu, egged on to his violation of the rules of etiquette by an excited delegation of young Chinese students, inter- rupts the pacific benisons of Viscount Cecil with a warning that the East is angry. America in particular needs a shock. We bask in the comfortable belief that we are conciliating China while the Navy Department orders more and more warships to Han- kow, 600 miles up the Yangtze, where the anti-foreign feel- ing is today at the boiling-point. An international navy is gradually assembling at that center of trouble, and the official American policy of cooperating with the alien Powers in China means that any trouble between British or Japa- nese and Chinese may readily be transformed into trouble for America too. According to recent reports the Japanese now have two cruisers, two torpedo-boat destroyers, and nine gunboats in the Yangtze; the British, in addition to their regular flotilla, have detached twelve warships from the Mediterranean fleet and sent them steaming for China, as if determined upon trouble; our own gunboat Pigeon was fired upon, with three American sailors wounded, when passing Hanyang, above Hankow, on September 19; two additional destroyers, the Truxton and the Peary, reached Hankow on September 24, escorted through the danger zone by the destroyers Pillsbury and Ford; and the American merchant ships, persisting in the attempt to do business as usual at whatever human cost, have drawn fire in the Upper Yangtze, with some casualties among the Chinese crews. And this international naval concentration, be it remembered, will, whatever its official excuse, be regarded by the Chinese as in support of the British demand for redress for the seven British "heroes" killed at Wanhsien, where British guns razed a thousand Chinese homes and mowed down men, women, and children alike! What is the League of Nations for, if not to hear such protests as that of Chao Hsin-chu? What does diplomatic procedure mean if it closes the ears of the world to news of the bitterness which is brewing in China? The menace of an inter-continental war, of a gigantic inter-race conflict is no longer the plaything of wild dreamers; it is being driven closer to reality every time the Western Powers unite to force awakening China to her official knees. China is no longer the China of Boxer days, or even of the days of the Washington Conference. It is a nation of four hundred million people, torn by civil wars in the course of which it has been learning to fight, and embittered by decades of white arrogance. The days of the Western flotillas in the Yangtze River are numbered; for the new China will not tolerate such intrusions of Western power into the heart of the nation. Hankow has just been taken by Chiang Kai-shek, gener- alissimo of the forces of the Nationalist Government of Canton, and his Southern army is winning new victories in every direction. Part of its success is no doubt attribu- table to its superior military training; most of it is due to the fact that it is the one army in China which is loyal not to an individual but to a cause. The Canton Government has for a year and a quarter mainfained a boycott of British

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Oct. 6, 1926] The Nation 313 goods in the rich markets of South China and has sapped the strength of the British merchant fortress of Hongkong: it sweeps northward because it has expressed the new national pride and the Chinese people recognize in it a loyalty to China which they cannot find in the armies sub- sidized by Britain and by Japan. Let America, before she permits herself to be drawn into the coming conflict, profit by the warning of Chao Hsin-chu. The first step is to with- draw our navy from the Yangtze. China seems a remote land of perfumed romance, less important to us than the Macedonian minorities or the Polish corridor. Geneva — and the rest of us — may wake up soon to discover that while studying etiquette it neglected something more important — the peace of the world. The Fake of the Century IT was advertised by the daily newspapers, without charge, as "the fight of the century." The New York Evening Post, heir to the journalistic ideals of Alexander Hamilton, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Villard, and Carl Schurz, sent nine sport "experts," artists, and feature writers to report the stupendous event. The New York Times (which had leased a house for its staff, under a special city editor, to cover the Hall-Mills murder) was not to be outdone; it sent ten men, one of them an out- sider hired for the emergency. The other papers dis- played similar zeal and initiative. The World War was not so thoroughly reported, because, apparently, it was not "the fight of the century." The Dempsey-Tunney bout was that. The New York World got out a "fight extra," so labeled in 60-point type, about this commercial event. It devoted to it five pages and an editorial — it sent up "huzzas for the new champion," although the "likable" and "picturesque" Dempsey had "become a sort of legend with us, a superhuman colossus of brawn." The World would refuse its news columns to any other commercial enterprise. George Ed Smith paid a pretty penny for the radio rights, as a means of advertising the Royal Type- writer; yet neither Heywood Broun nor Ringside Lardner nor Hype Igoe nor Dudley Nichols nor Benny Leonard nor Gertrude Lynahan nor George Daley nor any of the anon- ymous drudges who helped these luminaries describe the fight for the World gave the Royal Typewriter as much as a line. The Times devoted 5,000 words to a supposedly verbatim report of the radio account, without mentioning George Ed Smith, whose money paid to get the account into the Times office. Yet the newspapers helped Tex Rickard sell to a gullible public for two million dollars a thirty-minute exhibition of inefficiency by "the Manassa Mauler." They spoke of Rickard in terms of adulation not unmixed with awe. He was "the master mind," the "greatest fight promoter," as the World said under an eight-column headline. The Herald Tribune joined the chorus. The others told us to what a high plane this merchant of uppercuts had brought his business. All announced, a week before the fight, that Dempsey himself was unable to buy seats for his friends, when, as a cub reporter could have learned had he wished, there were thousands of seats for sale up to the last moment. These included what Rickard called "ringside" places, forty rows from the arena. On the day of the fight speculators were hawking tickets on the streets of Philadelphia, some at a discount, and there were plenty of others to be had at the box office. HoVi dO( Mich a merchant get free space in the news- papers? The Times, for instance, boasts of its scrupulous supervision over its paid advertising. It printed the story Dempsey's inability to buy seats; why is it less meticulous about such free — and false — advertising? The answer may lie in the fact that Rickard stages occasions which make possible a huge temporary factitious inflation of circulation. The newspapers promote Rickard's pro- motions in order to promote their own sales, whereby they may fatten their charges for paid advertising. In reporting the fight the Times was not perceptibly worse or better than other papers, including the picture tabloids. But it has emitted recently such a vigorous blast about its preeminence as an impresario of real news that it has earned the right to special attention. Its first page told us that Tunney flew to the match in an air- plane; a similar headline noted that the Geneva conference had accepted, with reservations, the American reservations on entering the World Court. Its first page reported with equal conscientiousness the fact that Tunney wore a "scarlet-trimmed blue dressing-gown" and that the loss from the Florida storm was $165,000,000. The main headline upon the fight consists of three eight-column "banner" lines; when the armistice was signed, ending the World War, on the same day that Berlin was seized by revolutionists and the Kaiser fled to Holland, the Times gave four eight-column "banners" to these world-shaking events — one more line than to the prize-fight. Such is the pattern held up by our Petronius of the press. We do not regard prize-fighting as more brutalizing, say, than football. Probably both should be reported with- in reasonable bounds. But when we find choice first-page space being given over to worshipful drivel about biceps and dressing-gowns, when newspapers lend themselves unanimously to plain fakery, they deepen the distrust and suspicion of the press already dangerously prevalent. Crime and Punishment HE had always been a good son, a faithful student, a hard worker — the judge said as much at the trial. He owed his firm $168 — not a sum to set empires shaking; he was such an utter fool as to try to repair his losses by holding up cheap restaurants in the middle of the night. Seven hold-ups; an old army pistol — though "he wouldn't ever have shot it at anybody"; proceeds, less than a hundred dollars. He was to have been married on September 29; instead, at the age of twenty-three, he is in Sing Sing, serving the first days of a sentence of twenty-five to forty years in prison ! And the republic is saved from another predatory and rapacious character. The judge who pronounced this cruel sentence was within his legal rights. The new Baumes law permits heavy penalties for robbery with a pistol. Under the same law one of the "cry-baby bandits," who have figured so largely in the New York newspaper headlines, is now serv- ing a term of twenty-five years, at the termination of which he will begin a life term, and the other five will complete terms of seventeen and one-half to thirty-five years and then begin additional sentences of from forty years to life.

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314 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 Grotesque — except that these years have to do with human beings; incredible — except to the men who will watch the days turn past with the slowness of prison days ; those for- tunate enough to be out of jail will never see and probably never give a thought to the men inside. They will pay board for them, to be sure; but that burden on the tax- payer will be absorbed along with all the other burdens. And the republic, we repeat, will be preserved, because these desperate and bloodthirsty men are not at large. The imposition of sentences like these plainly shows that the "crime-wave" stories and the blaring editorials in the newspapers charging the courts with laxity are getting on the nerves of the judges and legislators. And when the "crime wave" is not checked by sending young criminals to prison for life, as it assuredly will not be, there is no telling what lengths fear for their jobs and perhaps also honest concern for the safety of the commonwealth will drive our worthy law-enforcers. A few months ago Judge Mancuso, who has done his share of sentencing, discovered a panacea that would cure banditry forever. Let every citizen be armed, said this second Solomon, and we shall have no more crime. Without in the least intending to do so, His Honor put his finger square on one of the chief causes of lawless- ness. Let every policeman be disarmed, and let no citizen find it possible to purchase a revolver, with or without a license, and there is no doubt that the number of hold-ups and murders will be more than cut in half. To enter a shop, demand the contents of the cash register, and depart unscathed with the spoils has become an easy matter — when done at the point of a pistol. Unarmed, how many "bandits" would risk the chance of a broken head for a few dollars? The armed man has the bravery of a coward; and to resist him is as foolhardy as it is dangerous. But the policeman carries a gun too. The robber feels obliged to be at least as well protected as his most persistent enemy. There would still be a few automobile thieves who would get away because the policeman could not shoot at them; but fewer innocent bystanders would be the victims of argu- ments between criminals and the police, fewer policemen would be killed in the line of duty, fewer members of a gang sent to the electric chair because one of them had made a fatal mistake with a gun. There is, of course, another side to the business of sentencing men to jail. A few years ago there was a simple formula for dealing with criminals: steal a loaf of bread and you were hanged ; steal a kingdom and you lived to enjoy the spoils. Nor is this so far from true today. The unfor- tunate young man whose seven hold-ups netted him less than a hundred dollars will spend half a lifetime behind bars; the New York milk inspector who accepted a bribe of $2,000 and permitted a shipment of untested cream to be admitted to the city and sold to unsuspecting customers will languish in Sing Sing for from three and one-half to ten years. Of the two, which did more harm, which committed the greater crime? Further, the gentlemen high in the offices of the government who were clever enough to give away hundreds of millions of dollars of government property — Teapot Dome, for example — far trom being in jail, are enjoying life as much as the proceeds from their generosity permits them to do. Foolish bandits, who do not recognize these things. There are those, of course, who maintain that all "bandits" are foolish — that they are even a little defec- tive mentally. That bad food and poor surroundings and a crowded home and an insufficient education and no training for any sort of honest living make "bandits" as surely as stables make flies. But these persons are doubtless cranks. It is as plain as the nose on your face that what we want J is to treat criminals rough; then we won't have any more criminals. At least we are having ample opportunity to test this splendid theory. Taking Life Seriously ENGLAND takes its Gilbert and Sullivan seriously. Forty years have made "The Mikado" as sacred as Parliament or Ale, and when a new production, costumed in novel fashion, opened recently at the Princess Theater, London, the sounder members of the audience raised hor- rified hands to heaven and asked what the world was coming to. A few light-minded persons pointed out that the piece was not, in itself, marked by ethnological exacti- tude and that the original costumes treated the Japanese mode with some freedom, but those who had the good of England at heart refused to be distracted by the imperti- nence of the giddy. Time makes even jokes solemn, and your true conservative likes to know where he is even when he laughs. Is it unreasonable to suppose, they seem to feel, that he who would approve a break with the tradition of "The Mikado" would look with favor upon revolution in church and state as well? Only a few weeks ago the newspapers seriously discussed a mad proposal that the rules of cricket be modified, and who could doubt that these two phenomena were inspired by the same sub- terranean intrigues? Open treason can be seen and dealt with; it is in those insidious influences which sap the spiritual foundation of a nation's greatness that the real danger lies. What would the outward forms of Parlia- ment and navy avail an England deprived of her beer and beef, vulgarized by a too American cricket, and corrupted by a Gilbert whom impious hands had perverted? As Lady Bracknell once remarked, "It reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution, and everybody knows what that unfortunate movement led to." Since we in these United States have fewer traditions we are less watchful of them, but in other respects we are quite as keen-eyed as our brothers across the sea. Sooner or later some Japanese-American Chamber of Com- merce or some League of the Loyal Sons of Nippon will, doubtless, enter a righteous protest against the affront which the piece must cause to every right-thinking mem- ber of that race. Already certain Jews have demanded 'that Shylock be banished from the stage, and ministers throughout the length and breadth of the land have pro- tested— not always in vain — against the insult hurled at them by the play "Rain." The Mikado is a figure sancti- fied by religious as well as political affections and no Lord High Executioner ever comported himself in a manner even faintly like that suggested in the play. In a country as sensitive as ours has come to be, should such a wanton affront to the feelings of a sister nation be permitted? How would you feel, the Legion might inquire, if some dark-skinned man should make equally free with figures sacred to us— with Mr. Bryan, say, or Mr. Coolidge? Doubtless, frivolity and cynicism might make even them seem, to people devoid of reverence and ignorant of the facts, ridiculous or fantastic.

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Oct. 6, 1926] The Nation 315 My Black Brother Mafeking By WYNANT DAVIS HUBBARD IT o\V old are you, Mafeking?" "Inkos?" "How many Christmases have you'.'" "I know not, Inkos. My father is so young he kills elephants for Letia. I cannot eat whole grain; I have no teeth. My son has white hair. I am an old man." As a matter of fact, Mafeking was probably about forty-five years old. He was a magnificent Negro, chest like a bull, small hips, straight legs. He stood about five feet ten. On his face he had tattooed spearheads in blue ink. Down his nose ran a straight line of navy blue. For over a year he had been my chief hunter. It seems longer, but it was a little over a year ago that I hired him. He had been working for a man on the next farm to mine at Tara in Northern Rhodesia. On a Sunday afternoon Mafeking came down to my house with several Barotse natives and danced. I have never seen any- thing like it before or since. It was a pantomime. The story of an old woman left alone with a young child. As the giant Negro revolved and danced it was clear even to me that the old woman was alone, that she hunted and dug roots for the child, brought them out and after pounding them made a gruel for the child which kept it alive. The sobbing child quieted down. The old woman, shriveled and worn, gazed at the fire. Then she too lay down. Perhaps it was the soft singing of the natives and the haunting music of the n'piras, but I could see it all. Even the little fire glowed before my eye. Such was the dance of Mafe- king, the greatest hunter I have known. We moved to Choma in October. It was a farming community of about thirty souls, counting the women and all the children. Game is scarce and wild close in, but Mafeking averaged three duiker antelope a week. He was so regular that we counted on his meat as on a store. A year later I decided to make a trip into Portuguese East Africa. We were to go from Choma to Shamwa in Southern Rhodesia by rail. From there it was a four- hundred-mile walk overland to the Ruia River. I wanted to take some of my old natives with me as cooks, nurse- boys, trackers, and hunters. The problem was to sort out the very best. Of all the sixty then working for me, only a dozen were unsuited for the trip. But they all wanted to go. I could not afford to pay the railway fare for sixty natives no matter how much I liked them, so I put a proposition up to them. If they wanted to go with me to Portuguese East I would take five of them with me on the railroad and would wait outside Shamwa for any others who would walk overland to join us. It was more than a thousand miles, over mountains and through swamps and across the Zambesi. Sixteen were game and decided to make the trip. Mafeking offered to lead them, so I gave him tobacco and salt to trade for food on the journey, a little money, passes for them all, and my best dogs, includ- ing four puppies three weeks old. Thirty miles outside Shamwa on the Mazoe River we set up camp and prepared to wait. Three weeks passed and I began to wonder if anything had happened. Another week passed and I sent boys up toward the Zambesi to meet Mafeking and tell him I was waiting. They returned with- out word, but with bad news of the country. Starvation was rampant everywhere. The valley natives were living <hi wild roots and grass, the old women had been driven out of the villages to fall a prey to hyenas. I sent Manjineera into Shawma with telegrams to all the Native Commissioners to be on the lookout for sixteen natives. I guaranteed to pay any money which might be advanced to Mafeking to help him along. Still I had no word. Then one day a telegram came telling me that my boys had turned up in Sinoia, sixty miles away. They had been told where I was and sent on. I was jubilant. My faith had not been misplaced. They were coming. How I needed them. Boys for safari work were hard to get and time was pressing. Soon the season of the year when water was scarce would be with us. The boys' arrival would mean that we could start. Five slow days dragged past. Then one afternoon Tickie rushed to the tent. "Inkos, Inkos, they are coming." He did not need to tell me who. I dropped my work and rushed out. There down the dusty lumber trail came a line of laden natives. But they were not singing. Some- thing was the matter. There was a droop to the shoulders and a weariness about them I never associate with my Barotse. Silently they filed into camp and stood in front of me. Tears coursed down my cheeks. I understood. Dilated eyes stared at me from shrunken and fallen cheeks. My husky boys had vanished. Instead, sixteen emaciated, trembling natives wearily slung their loads from blistered, bleeding shoulders and without a word turned toward the camp. There were five dogs left. Only the strongest had survived that trip. Skin and bones were all that were left. Then a little crate caught my eye. I walked over. Two of the puppies! Mewing and whimpering they cuddled against each other in a vain effort to find food and comfort. I let them out. They could not walk. I looked at the other bundle, nothing but mats. Where were all the blankets, the extra coats, the calabashes which I knew the boys possessed? "Inkos, we have arrived." It was Mafeking. What a world of weariness and patience in his voice ! A lump rose in my throat. His coat no longer seemed to be bursting at the seams. What was left of it hung in ribbons on a frame gaunt with hunger. Where were those tremendous shoulders I had so often envied? His hands trembled as he played with the bat- tered remnants of a sun-helmet. I spoke to him. "I have looked for you and looked for you. It is good that you have come. I have shot a sable. There are no rations tonight. Tell the boys to take all the meal and meat they want." "Thank you, Inkos." That would have been all, but I called them up in the evening and listened to Mafeking's story. "Inkos, it was far, it was very far. When you had gone Bwana Stanley took away all the tobacco and salt which you had given us for food on the road. He said we were thieves. He said that we would not come to you."

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316 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 "What? Bwana Stanley took all the n'pasha I gave you? What was the trouble?" "There was no trouble, Inkos. He said we had stolen, so he took it for his store." "What did you do?" "We came. At Shamaruba we killed an ox. It was one of nine, very fat. We walked and we walked. The mountains, we climbed like this. (Holding his arms straight in the air.) From the top we saw the Zambesi. Six days later we reached the water. There was no food. All the men were in the bush looking for leaves to eat. At a village two handfuls of meal for a ten shilling blanket." "Did you go to Bunybunyama?" "Indeed, Inkos. It is not good there. Lions walk in Jhe paths. Elephants walk everywhere. All the time you see elephants and buffalo. It is very hot. It is not a good place." "How did you cross the Zambesi?" "A boy brought us over in a dug-out. Very expensive. One boy one shilling. This side no food. We walked and we walked. No food. We ate grass. For ten days we ate grass and water. Two dogs died there. All our blankets were gone. We sola them all. We arrived at Sinoia. We told the Bwana we wanted food. We worked in the stable. For one day's work we got one cup of meal." "Did you tell the Bwana you were my boys? I beat on the wire and spoke to him. He knew that you were coming." "He told us that you were far, that it would be better to work at Sinoia. Another Bwana came and offered us a pound a month to work for him. He wanted Barotse. He told us that you would not wait for us." "Why did you not work for him? I can only pay you ten shillings?" "Inkos, you are our father. We like you. We have stayed a long time with you. We are your boys." "How long did you stay at Sinoia?" "Four suns. Then we came to Sh.amba. We went to the station. The Bwana told us that you had taken a wagon and gone to the Mazoe. He did not know that you had stayed. Perhaps you had gone again." "Why did you not go to the Native Commissioner?" "We said perhaps he would want us to work in the mine. We spoke with the natives. One told us that Man- jineera had come for the post two days before. We knew then that you were waiting, so we came here." "Tomorrow come back. If you have sold a blanket for meal, I will give one to replace it. If you have sold a shirt, I will give a shirt. If you have sold money, I will give money. Also tomorrow I will pay you. You have done well. You are indeed my brother." A week later we were ready to start on our long over- land journey. The Barotse had recovered some of their strength. It had been a hard spot in which to collect natives to carry. We had only some sixty-odd all told. They were the riff-raff of the country. Scoundrels and loafers, too bad or too well known to get work in the mines. But I knew that with the Barotse as a special guard and driving force the safari would go. The Barotse are well known for their habit of strangling men until their eyes pop out. All of my men were huge. They were devoted and I knew that rather than see me go under they would die themselves. It was a terrible trip. The country was stony and impossible. The natives were unfriendly. When we ar- rived at a village the women hid the waterholes and would sell us water only at the enormous price of a yard of calico for one pot, three-quarters full. One night we tried to best them. We located the water, but it was the cattle drinking- pool. We shared it with them. It tasted awful. It smelled worse, but when boiled up with tea we made believe and gulped it down. Food was very hard to get and when ob- tainable ruinous in price. At one village I forced a woman at the point of a pistol to go into her hut and bring out the meal I needed so badly. At the Portuguese border we entered a country so wild and so little known that white men we met later would not believe we had traversed it. The first night across the border we camped at a vil- lage at the edge of the Luia River. During the night the crash of elephants pulling down trees resounded on all sides. A lion roared. Leopards were coughing and grunting in the reed. It was a wonderful spot for game. So I decided to spend a day and see if we couldn't shoot meat to trade for meal. Our cash was giving out, our cloth had long ago gone. Mafeking went one way, I went another, and scat- tered over the rest of the country was every native who claimed he could handle a gun. I hunted all morning. Buffalo were numerous. I plugged at them until about one o'clock. Then the sun hit me and I collapsed. Mafeking went down to water and met five lions, but you can't eat lion, so he didn't shoot. He too spent all his time after buffalo. They were too cute for him. The only man to get anything among all the eight of us was Sieve. He shot a waterbuck cow. I tried to trade some of it for meal, but the head man of the village would have none of it. Among sixty natives an antelope weighing four hundred pounds doesn't go far. We divided it as equally as we could. Even the skin was cut up into strips and handed out. The boys went off. There was an undercurrent of mutiny in the air. I called up the head man again. "What do you want for your meal? I have sugar, that I will sell you." "Inkos, the women will not sell. They have not enough. Perhaps if the Inkos had cloth they would sell a little." I conferred with my wife. Cloth? We had no cloth. We had sold the last of it days before, but there were sheets. Good linen sheets. We tore them up and sold them at the price we would sell the cheapest calico. For them we got a little meal. I was trying again to sell the sugar, but Shilling, one of the Barotse, heard me. "Inkos, don't sell that sugar." "But, Shilling, perhaps I can get meal for you. I have no more cloth. There is very little money." "It does not matter, Inkos. If we have no food we die. But it doesn't matter. We are black boys. The Inkos and the Missus and the little Bosses must not die." The old man drove off the head boy and returned to his fire. I was sitting in my deck chair wondering what to do. Behind me in the two tents slept my two little boys, one- and-a-half and three years old. My wife was sitting on her bed. On one side of the huge fire were grouped my twenty-one Barotse. Suddenly one of the forty natives got up and coming over stood in front of me. "Inkos, I want to leave." "What is the trouble?" I asked wearily. "There is no food. It is far to Tete. There are many lions on the road. I do not know these natives. Perhaps they will kill me on my return."

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Oct. 6, 1926] The Nation 317 "Pocket, I cannot keep you, I am too tired to give you a hiding. Go." He started toward the gate leading out of the little inclosure of the camp. No sooner had he disappeared into the darkness than I heard a yell. Back through the gate Pocket came flying. After him were Saiman, my huge animal tamer, and Manjineera, my ex-cannibal gun-bearer. They caught him and dragged him in front of me. "Inkos, did you tell this baboon, this son of a hyena, that he could leave?" "Yes. He gives so much trouble that it isn't worth while to beat him. I threw him out." All the natives had jumped to their feet. They crowded around me in a menacing circle. I heard murmurs about hunger, the lack of meal, the distance to Tete, and threats that all forty would decamp. I looked at my Barotse. They stood glowering and sullen behind me. Pocket broke away from his captors and made a dash for the door. Pan- demonium broke loose. Jack grabbed a stone as big as his head and nearly broke the boy's arm as he dodged out the gate. Manjineera threw a knobkerrie and caught him square in the back. Down he went and Manjineera, pounc- ing on him, proceeded to beat him up. That was the signal. The forty natives rushed us. Into them piled the Barotse with knobkerries, spears, sticks, stones, kettles, picks, any- thing they could use as a weapon. It was a savage free- for-all. Into the fire they milled, yelling and cursing. I piled into it. Somebody hit me on the jaw. I found Johnnie and Peter strangling a native against one of the huts. I separated them, not forgetting to land the mutineer a hearty wallop of my own in the process. Suddenly there was quiet. The forty natives cowered, beaten, in a corner. In front of them stood Mafeking. He held up his hand. "Baboons, I, Mafeking, Mafeking the Barotse, speak to you. Do you want to leave our Boss, our Missus, the lit- tle Bosses alone? Who is going to carry the packs which you drop? Is it that you have no food that you would do this? Listen, Mafeking, the Barotse, talks to you. I have not known the Boss for a long time. One year only have I worked for him. But he has been my brother. When I was sick he gave me medicine. When I needed money for my hut tax he gave me money. When I wanted food he gave me food. Then he left the place where we were work- ing. He said to me, 'Mafeking, I give you my dogs, and I give you these sixteen boys. Bring them to me at Shamwa. I will wait for you there.' Two months we walked on the road. We ate grass like cattle. The dogs died. A Bwana offered us a pound to work for him. The big chief in the Boma asked us 'Why is it that you walk so far to find this white man? Why do you not work here, where food is plentiful?' We told him. Our Boss is not like other men: he is our brother. He waits for us at Shamwa. We must go. You know the Barotse. The men of Lewanika have never been beaten in battle. I, Mafeking, hunter for Lewanika, tell you that if you desert our Boss we will strangle you until your eyes pop out. We, the Barotse, say this." There was dead silence for a few minutes; then Sieve, the leader of the mutiny, stood up. "Inkos, we have made a mistake. We will work." It was over. The next morning the beds were taken apart, the tents rolled up, and the horses loaded quicker than ever before. We snapped out of camp and made forty miles before sunset. Such a man wa3 my black brother Mafeking. George Washington — The Image and the Man By W. E. WOODWARD* II. Gunpowder and Petticoats WASHINGTON'S defeat and the French occupation of the Ohio territory had stirred the British Govern- ment to action. They had resolved on a general war with France — the skirmish at Fort Necessity was looked upon as merely an impromptu clash — and Braddock's landing at Alexandria with two half-regiments was the first move. To this Alexandria camp came Colonel George Wash- ington, dining with the officers, dancing at the balls, and looking with a wistful eye at the preparations. He had left the service the year before because of an order issued by the British War Office to the effect that provincial officers, of whatever rank, should be subordinated to any officer holding a King's commission. It was not clever of the King's government to have done that — but the King's government was not clever in several other ways. "You make mention," Washington wrote to a colonial official, "of my continuing in the service, and retaining my * This is the second of three instalments from the book "George Washing- ton— The Image and the Man," to be published by Boni and Liveright on October 15. A final instalment will appear next week. colonel's commission. This idea has filled me with surprise; for, if you think me capable of holding a commission that has neither rank nor emolument annexed to it, you must entertain a very contemptible opinion of my weakness, and believe me to be more empty than the commission itself. Yet my inclinations are strongly bent to arms." There can be no doubt that he wanted to take a part in these military operations, but his desire to preserve his dignity was even greater than his martial ardor. Braddock's thinking was a sort of mental operation by which several antecedent prejudices were combined to form a new prejudice. He thought about colonial soldiers and had a boundless contempt for them. Nevertheless, some appreciation of Washington's soldierly qualities trickled through his airtight mind and he invited him to join the expedition. Braddock had no authority to give a com- mission higher than that of a captain, and Washington insisted on being a colonel or nothing. The matter was finally settled by Braddock making Washington his per- sonal aide-de-camp. In this position he was outside the military hierarchy and was called colonel by courtesy. # * * * * On May 14, 1755, he wrote to Mrs. Sally Fairfax from Fort Cumberland, where Braddock's column was resting on its way to Fort Duquesne, that he has found out why

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318 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 Mrs. Wardrope is a favorite with the general. The cause of the fascination she exercises, he assures his corre- spondent, is "nothing less than a present of delicious cake and potted wood-cocks." Mrs. Fairfax seems not to have replied to this letter, but in June Washington takes his pen in hand again, and says to Mrs. Sally: Dear Madam: When I had the happiness to see you last you expressed an inclination to be informed of my safe arrival in camp with the Charge that was intrusted to my care | he means the army's pay, which he conveyed to Fort Cumberland], but at the same time desired it might be communicated in a letter to somebody of your acquaintance. How stilted and formal these Virginia gentlefolk were in their philandering! Wants to hear from him, but pretends that she wants him to write, not to her, but to somebody of her acquaintance. Of course, she was a mar- ried woman — and, in that day, married women were not supposed to correspond with young men. This I took as a gentle rebuke and a polite manner of forbidding my corresponding with you; and conceive this opinion is not illy founded when I reflect that I have hitherto found it impracticable to engage one moment of your attention. A mere form of speech; he has known her very well for seven years. If I am right in this, I hope you will excuse the present presumption and lay the imputation to elatencrs at my successful arrival. If, on the contrary, these are fearful apprehensions only, how easy it is to remove my suspicions, enliven my spirits, and make me happier than the day is long by honouring me with a correspondence which you did once partly promise to do. . Mrs. Sally Fairfax was a tall, handsome brunette, and is said to have been very attractive. There is some faint reason to believe that she encouraged Washington to read books, and that she talked to him on the subjects which are of interest to cultured people. He acted occasionally in amateur plays, in which she also appeared. Mrs. Fairfax was probably a woman of virtue, though the extremely slippery nature of this quality always gives it an air of uncertainty. I think that Wash- ington had been in love with her from the time he first met her, but had never told her so. She was his friend's wife; and that alone, unless I am greatly in error as to his character, would have prevented him from revealing his affection in any definite manner. In those days men only were supposed to possess individuality or to have desires. Men owned their wives; and to be very friendly with another man's wife was not only bad morals but also bad manners. ***** Before Braddock had left England somebody in London had written to Lord Fairfax, describing Braddock as a general devoid of "both fear and common sense." By the time the expedition had reached Will's Creek — then renamed Fort Cumberland — the colonial ^ficers with the column realized vividly that the common-sense part of this observa- tion was true. They were soon to learn that the fear part was equally accurate. ***** On July 9, 1755, the first column had crossed the Monongahela, and was proceeding briskly toward Fort Duquesne, which was about ten miles away. General Gage — then a colonel — whom we shall see twenty years later as Washington's adversary on the hills of Boston, was in command of the regiment in front. With the column there was another British officer, Horatio Gates, a red-faced captain, who was destined to rise to eminence in the conti- nental army, and to become Washington's secret enemy. The route lay through a beautiful country. Beautiful then, but not so beautiful now, for the steel-manufacturing town of Braddock is built on the spot. In winter the bare trees stood on the hilltops against the cold sky like sharp visual music, but on this July day there were no bare trees. Summer poured from the hills in wind-rippled cas- cades of green. A sea of primeval silence. Platoons load and fire! Fire at what? At the smiling green woods, still smiling, with the white smoke drifting lazily over the tree tops. Here and there among the leaves appears a painted Indian face or a white French one, but only for a flash, like people peeping from windows. Down the road there is a swirl of men and plunging cattle . . . and horsemen riding rapidly. General Braddock is coming up and at his side rides Colonel Washington, lean and gaunt, sitting on a pillow instead of a saddle. He has been ill for days, laid up with a fever, and brought along in a covered wagon. A river of panic flows through the noise and smoke. But look at the Virginians! They have forgotten all they learned in the instruction camp at Alexandria. Every man of them has left the ranks and is sneaking behind a tree or a rock, or running bent-over along the ground, stalking something in the woods, like a weasel hunter. General Braddock rides among the Virginians, striking them with his sword, and shouting that they are a disgrace to the British service. He orders them to stand up in the open and fight like white men. They do not pay any attention to him; nobody pays any attention to him. He is everywhere in the confusion of the fight, shouting something or other. A man devoid of both fear and common sense. Now Colonel Washington shines. He is also without fear, but not without common sense. Of that valuable com- modity he and the Virginians appear to possess a monopoly on this occasion. Washington keeps the Virginians in hand. They hold back the enemy while the wreck of Braddock's army races to safety. A target for a hundred rifles, Washington remains on horseback . . . but not on the same horse, nor on the saddle-pillow. That first horse has long ago been shot down, and the pillow is lost forever to men and museums. He is on his third horse, and there are four bullet holes in his coat. He is unwounded, though. Those whom the gods have kissed cannot die until their destined course is run. The road is cluttered with pop-eyed fugitives who have thrown away their arms, with wounded horses, with fear-crazed cattle, with overturned wagons, with bleeding men, trampled upon while they were begging piteously to be taken along. A British officer, writing of this rout, said "the scene beggar'd description." Very likely it did; but description was not the only thing that was beggared. The opinion of Colonel George Washington as to the valor and steadi-

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Oct. 6, 1926] Tin* Nation 319 ness of British troops was reduced to beggary, or worse. A few days after Braddock's defeat, in writing to his mother, he said: "The dastardly behaviour of those they call regulars exposed all others who were inclined to do their duty to almost certain death; and at last, in despite of all the efforts of the officers to the contrary, they ran as sheep pursued by dogs and it was impossible to rally them." As for General Braddock, he was carried mortally wounded from the field and died two days later. Died of a gun-shot w-ound and a broken heart, either of which is mely unpleasant. When both come together they are usually fatal. * * * * -X- When Mary Washington heard of Braddock's disaster she wrote a letter to her son, in which she begged him not to go to the war again. This is his reply: Honoured Madam: If it is in my power to avoid going to the Ohio again, 1 shall; but if the command is pressed upon me, by the general voice of the country, and offered upon such terms as cannot be objected against, it would reflect dishonour upon me to refuse; and that, I am sure must or ought to give you greater uneasiness, than my going in an honourable command, for upon no other terms I will accept of it. At present I have no other pro- posals made to me, nor have I any advice of such an inten- tion, except from private hands. He seems to be addressing a public meeting — "general voice" — "command is pressed upon me" — "reflect dishonour" — "upon no other terms." His letter is naturally supposed to be intimate and confidential — the letter from a son to his mother — but he does not give the name of the person or persons who have told him that he might be appointed to the command. Several lines above he hands his mother a reproof. He writes "it would reflect dishonour upon me to refuse; and that must" — Then he ponders a moment and decides to put in "or ought to give," and underscores the "ought." She may not be uneasy, he thinks, about "dishonour," but he tells her that she ought to be. The haughty tone of this letter reveals, quite as much, or more, than its plain, brutal state- ments. She is informed that she is to have nothing to do with his decision, and he fails to thank her for her solicitude. It happened that, on the very day he wrote this letter, which was August 14, 1755, he was appointed commander of the Virginia forces, and he rode down to Williamsburg to confer with the governor. * * # # # Colonel Daniel Parke Custis, a wealthy gentleman of Virginia, dawdled along as a bachelor until love had ceased to be a passion and had become a duty. Then he married a girl of eighteen, produced two children and died. The memory of Colonel Custis deserves some recog- nition from our patriotic societies. He did a great deal for the Father of our Country, though what he did was done unwittingly. Nevertheless, he helped a lot, and we ought not to pass him in silence. He accumulated the largest fortune — or one of the largest — in Virginia, and obligingly departed this life. His widow, thus bereft at an early age, married George Washington and brought her fortune with her. Washington, who had been one of the Best People all along, as we have seen, thereupon became one of the Very People. lonel Custis had been dead about a year when his widow a small, dumpy young woman, with dark eyes and a sharpish nose — went on a visit to her friends the Cham- berlaynes, near Williamsburg. This was in May, 1758. She was a mild young widow, easy to control, and possessing the standard domestic virtues. The streak of romanticism which she had in common with all other women found its solace in the reading of novels about "female jilts" and daring lovers who abducted fabulously attractive young ladies and married them without their consent. Colonel Washington stopped for a bite to eat at Major Chamberlayne's — everybody was a major or a colonel — and he was in a hurry. That is, he was in as much of a hurry as Virginia courtesy permitted, for he was on his way to Williamsburg to see Governor Fauquier — who was Dinwiddie's successor — about the condition of the troops on the frontier, and he was eager to get back to his military post. Major Chamberlayne, who had gone on his horse to the ferry to meet Washington, mentioned his guest . Mrs. Daniel Parke Custis . . . formerly Miss Martha Dandridge . . . agreeable lady . . . rich . slathers of money, slaves, land. . And so, in pleasant converse, they reach the great, airy house, with its cool green blinds softening the hard white- ness of its walls. Under the veranda's tall columns there is a flutter of ladies. Tall leisurely columns and the tall Washington. Servants stand at the horses' heads, and stable boys are astir. Washington hands his riding gloves to his servant; the gravel of the driveway crunches under his feet. "Mrs. Custis, may I present my friend Colonel Wash- ington"— pause — "of whom you have doubtless heard." Yes, Mrs. Custis had heard of Colonel Washington. Everybody has. And he had heard of Mrs. Custis, too. In Virginia she was quite as celebrated as George Washington, but in a different way. If he was the bravest man, she was certainly the wealthiest woman. Only the brave deserve the rich. It was swift work. The colonel did not go on to Williamsburg that day. The governor and official business had to wait. During the long afternoon he and Mrs. Custis sat alone in a parlor of the Chamberlayne house. Love at first sight. There had been other suitors for the hand of Martha Custis; there usually are, for the hands of wealthy young widows. Stammering gentlemen, a little dazed by the bright face of gold, falling on their knees, kissing finger- tips, reciting memorized speeches, and departing in mawkish confusion. But Washington was as fearless in the face of gold as he was in the face of danger. The haze of oblivion lies over what he said that afternoon in the Chamberlayne parlor. We do not know what it was, but we know that it was effective. Next morning he went on to consult the governor. In a few days he started back to the frontier, but stopped for a brief moment at the home of Mrs. Custis, on York River. Immediately thereafter their engagement was announced.

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320 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 Calles Is Gaining in Mexico By CARLETON BEALS [The Nation will shortly print an article from Mexico presenting the impasse that has developed between church and state as seen from the Roman Catholic point of view.] Mexico City, September 16 THE church-state deadlock continues. The state refuses to recede from its position, declaring that it has no alternative but to enforce the existing laws and decrees. The priests remain on strike, but are not idle. Secret masses, house-to-house canvassing, general soliciting of funds, maintenance of the economic boycott — these are their weapons. Yet now that the emotional smoke raised by the struggle toward the end of July has been dissipated some- what and the newspapers of the United States are no longer handling an "atrocity story," some rational attempt can be made to clarifj the facts and principles involved in the present impasse. From the standpoint of mere power, the Government clearly has the upper hand. Never was the Calles Govern- ment more firmly in the saddle. The wave of fanatical fervor which the church stirred up that week prior to the "strike" on August 1 did not crystallize into an armed revolt against the civil authorities. Aside from minor demonstrations, the loss of fewer lives than in an ordinary election, the throwing of stones from church roofs by the beatas, the bubble of impending disorders — largely inflated by the American press — completely collapsed. And since that day when the priests walked out, the government seals were placed upon the sacristies, and the churches were placed in the hands of the previously appointed neigh- borhood committees of ten to be kept open, clean, and illuminated for the faithful, it becomes increasingly evi- dent that the church has lost its one-time hold on the politically organized forces of the country. Mexico has gone a long way since the bitter wars incident to the Juarez reformation, of which the present crisis is but the epilogue, or even since the days of 1913 when Roman Catholic elements contributed to the armed overthrow of Madero and supported Victoriano Huerta. Nor have the minor measures of the church proved too effective. The economic boycott instituted by the National League of Religious Defense "to paralyze the economic and social life of the country" — while cutting down retail sales of groceries and clothing, in such super-Catholic cen- ters as Guadalajara, nearly 50 per cent — has been largely abortive. Thirteen million people in Mexico have been obliged — partly because of the past attitude of the church — to observe a luxury boycott for four centuries. Three heads of large department stores in Mexico City have informed me that their sales for several weeks fell off about 20 per cent, due, in part, to their own curtailment of advertising, but had since recovered. Similarly, the circular letter sent out by the same league to all the foreign lega- tions and embassies advocating "urgent and vigorous inter- vention of our brothers, the civilized nations of the entire world," had no more noticeable response than did the efforts of the Knights of Columbus in the United States to upset order in Mexico through trying to have the embargo on arms lifted by President Coolidge. In short, the Govern- ment of President Calles has thus far successfully and energetically maintained its position against both internal and foreign dissidents. The position of the church is grow- ing weaker with every day of the present "strike." The Government insists that its activities have been merely those of law enforcement. The church replies that the July 3 decree which required the priests to register was issued by the President (authorized, it is true, by the constitution and Congress), that he exceeded his powers, that he had no right to invoke the penal code for the enforcement of his decree. Just how violations were to be handled by the authorities the church did not make clear, though at the same time it indicated that the decree would not be obeyed. The church declares the state is attacking religion. The Government denies any intention of discriminating against the Roman Catholic church. The nearest indication of any such spirit of discrimination occurred in a statement of President Calles made some months ago to the effect that foreign Protestant ministers showed greater disposition to obey the law and respect the Mexican sovereignty than the foreign Catholic priests. Even so, numbers of foreign Protestant ministers were arrested and most have left for the United States. All the native Protestant ministers have registered with the municipal authorities and hence have been able to continue at their posts unmolested. The apparent discriminatory character of the present legislation springs largely from the fact that the Roman Catholic church is for all practical pur- poses a monopoly organization and hence the one most vitally affected. The Catholics make the further claim that the closing of religious schools not only deprives chil- dren of proper religious instruction but that the govern- ment schools are inadequate for the number of children clamoring for instruction. True. But the Government replies that in a question of law enforcement expediency is not a point of issue. The Government can set off against the 129 primary Catholic schools closed the 4,000 new rural schools, the steady expansion of the city schools, and the pursuit of a vigorous school-building program. Were not the Catholic schools, in not submitting to the law forbidding religious instruction in primary schools, equally responsible in denying the children instruction? In other words — and this has been constantly blurred — there is in the present struggle, first, the question of law enforcement — the primary obligation of any serious government. Quite over and beyond this is the question as to the justice of the existing constitution and laws. There are instruments for altering the constitution; there are courts for testing the laws. And, finally, there is the whole philosophic and social problem of the nature of religion and its relation with political organization. The general fanfare of emotion, pro and con, has caused these things to be inextricably confused. One of the outstanding features of the Calles Admin- istration has been the vigorous, almost rigorous, enforce- ment, through proper regulation, of the constitution of

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Oct. 6, 1926] The Nation 321 1917. This constitution, adopted at the culmination of the reaction against the Diaz and Huerta dictatorial regimes, as a result of the constitutional revolution of Carranza, had never been put into bona fide operation. Carranza was too harassed with the problem of military pacification; Obregon, his successor, was too busy reconciling the various greedy factions and setting in motion reconstructive meas- ures to worry too much about the constitution; only with President Calles has the country entered upon a phase of technically legal administration. It is rather amazing, therefore, to hear the present Government tagged as "a reckless crew of bandits," as in a recent issue of a prominent Roman Catholic publication. President Calles has sys- tematically pushed through Congress laws not merely regu- lating the churches but carrying out almost every clause of the 1917 constitution — land tenure, petroleum, labor, irri- gation, forestry conservation, banking, taxation, rural credits, social insurance, mining, transportation. The church provisions were next in line. Calles, in his message to Congress, the first of this month, announced that other problems of the revolution had demanded prior legal attention but that the Government at no time intended to neglect to put into effect the religious articles of the constitution. An examination of the constitution and the regu- lating decree of July 3 reveals that the latter is merely a restatement, in some parts verbatim, of the constitutional provisions, most of which had been already more or less successfully enforced — some for more than seventy years — in order to make their application effective via the penal code. Provisions already established included: Exclusion of all foreign-born ministers (185 have been deported) ; national ownership of all churches, bishops' palaces, seminaries, convents, etc., these to be used for religious purposes at the discretion of the Government in accordance with the law; the performance of all religious acts within the churches; denial of the right to wear distinctive reli- gious garbs or insignia outside of the churches; no political meetings in churches; denial of the right of ministers through public writings or statements to incite the public to refuse to acknowledge the political institutions or obey the laws; denial of the right to both priests and religious publications to express political views, criticizing the funda- mental law or the acts of the authorities; complete laicizing of primary education; dissolution of all religious orders, convents, and monasteries. The additional provision — also previsaged in the constitution — which precipitated the pending "strike," is that requiring registration of the priests. President Calles in recent interviews with the Episcopate declared that this had nothing to do with the actual performance of religious acts, but was necessary if the Government was to keep tab on the administration of the church buildings which are government property. Also, this may be the only practical method by which foreign priests can be kept from resuming their offices. These represent the leading requirements the Govern- ment is in honor bound to uphold. In other words, the present Government can scarcely be criticized for its attempts at law enforcement through the medium of the penal code. The justice or desirability of the laws in ques- tion is an entirely distinct issue. I am not unaware that the Roman Catholic church — along with other foreign interests — indicts the whole adoption of the 1917 consti- tution as illegal, this having occurred at a time of grave national disturbance when the democratic election of the constituents of the Queretaro convention was well-nigh impossible. Hut three administrations have been founded upon this constitution, all of which were recognized by the United Slates; it has been the fundamental law of the land for ten years. To impose another constitution would require further force and undemocratic measures. Personally I do not feel that any man should be torn from his home, arrested, loaded on a train, deported, all in the short span of six hours, as was done in the case of some of the foreign priests. Personally I believe that the restrictions imposed upon religious periodicals with respect to discussion of political problems oversteps the constitu- tional limits and will prove unenforceable, as is already evi- denced by the considerable number of rabid, clandestine anti-Government Roman Catholic sheets that are springing into existence. Yet if the Government has proceeded dictatorially, one must admit that what popular political organization exists is all on its side and not on that of the church. Also, in addition to the immediate necessity for summary state measures, there remain the older his- torical arguments. These are the monopolistic character of the Roman Catholic church, past and present; its sup- port of reactionary, anti-republican, foreign, and oppressive governments; its hold upon the fanaticism of the ignorant native populations, without any concomitant attempt to improve economic or educational standards; the prepon- derant influence in the hierarchy of foreign priests; its close affiliation with all the elements opposing the present series of reconstruction governments (Carranza, Obregon, Calles), with the landed proprietors, the local Fascisti, the rebel de la Huerta elements, and the intrenched bureaucracy. The solution? Outside intervention? Writes the editor of the Catholic weekly America in a recent issue: Mexico is too near us for its subversive philosophy to affect our public life. Mexico's Government is far too de- pendent upon our Government for its existence for us to disclaim any responsibility for what happens beyond the border. If it were France or Germany or Italy or England, it might be different. They have an independent existence. But not Mexico. . . . The Mexican bishops have long known, and if they did not know it, the fate of American oil-men and others has taught them, that you cannot bargain with men like Calles. But this is not the traditional bitter and selfish con- flict between two petty ruling cliques that featured so many of the conflicts between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, where one side or the other could run, in a moment of defeat, to beg aid from the mother country or from the outside world. And even the Roman Catholics of Mexico would be likely to rally against any armed invasion. Will the priests gradually i-egister and resume their places? A few have done so. But there is, as yet, no general indication of a landslide movement against the orders of the Episcopate. Will the Government carry out its threat that if the priests do not resume services the buildings will be turned into schools, libraries, and hospitals? Will the church succeed in convincing Congress to pass more conciliatory laws? Though the Episcopate presented a memorial to Congress, it has as yet been unable to find a single representative willing to introduce its measures. The answer cannot be far distant.

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322 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 The Answer {To Rudyard Kipling) By HARRY KEMP At your eleventh hour of blood and flame We gave our answer to a thankless call By setting our backs with yours against the wall — Paid with your shameless, small, black words of blame, True coinage of the ingrate, after all! But let us build no more, in bickering rhyme, Old, sick mendacities of Use and Time, Nor with safe words our little hatreds wreak, SI ulking beneath the Literary Lie! . Only the unspeaking Dead have right to speak — Unless to live, through such times, is to die! . . . Youth, born for life and song, we urged embark Down to the songless, grim, unpitying Dark; While in sure traps their shortened days were caught We sang their battles but we never fought! Then, that such deaths of slaughtered youth may cease, In Life's great name, let us make songs of peace! The Workers Build Their Own By JAMES RORTY THE other day a contractor delivered some decorative stone-work at the northern edge of Bronx Park, New York City, where a big new apartment house is building. It was a somewhat unusual order and after the contractor's truckman had dumped his load he addressed one of the bricklayers on the job. "Say," he remarked. "What's this funny sickle-and- hammer stuff? This is the queerest order I ever seen come through the shop. Ain't you going to have no floral arches and urns? What sort of cuckoos is going to live in this place anyway?" The bricklayer straightened, spat, and wiped his hands on his overalls. "You want to know what sort of cuckoos is going to live in this place?" "Yes." "Well, I'm the sort of cuckoo that's going to live in this place." "Yeh?" "Yeh," replied the bricklayer with cold finality and started to lay another course. The first unit of the housing program of the United Workers' Cooperative Association will open in November with every apartment occupied. It consists of a five-story building of 337 apartments which occupies an entire city block. The second unit, already almost completely sub- scribed by union workers, mostly from the needle trades, will be ready in May, 1927, and subscriptions are already coming for the third. The association has bought and paid for six blocks and two half blocks at the northern end of Bronx Park. In addition it has an option on 325 city lots on the other side of White Plains Avenue, on Gunhill Road. This parcel will be used for the second "colony." The first "colony," consisting of six buildings, each occupying a square block, with dining-rooms, swimming pool, day nurs- eries, theater, library, kindergarten, preventorium, and health service, will be completed by the summer of 1928 if the present program works out according to schedule. It has all happened almost overnight and it sounds like Florida. It sounds too good to be true. Has the cooperative movement actually got going in America? If so, who did it? Where's the philanthropist? Where's the State? The answer is, Nowhere. None of them are in the cast at present and they don't seem to be needed. The workers have unrolled their own roll; bought their own bricks and the soil to lay them on. The trouble with most of the work- ers' cooperative housing schemes in America is that workers can't afford to live in the houses when they are built. The workers move out, or never move in. It's great for small professional and trades people. But the slums remain and the poor stay there. Well, 337 families are moving out of "railroad" flats on the East Side, Harlem, and the Bronx next November and are moving into one of the most desirable residential sections of the Bronx. They are not the very poor. Admit- tedly, that problem still waits for solution as far as the activities of the United Workers' Cooperatives are concerned. But they are union workers in good standing, all of them. Nobody else is admitted. They get two-, three-, and four- room apartments, with bath, admirably arranged, with light and air in every room, a big interior garden court, and a repertory of cooperative services that includes everything from day nurseries to a theater. They pay $12, $13, or $15 a month per room. The smallest room in the building is eleven by fifteen. This rental is subject to reduction as the mortgage is amortized to a minimum of $5 per month per room for maintenance. In addition the tenants invest $200 per room, half of which may be paid over two years in instalments. For this they get the privilege of living in the apartment and a vote in the management. If a cooper- ator moves out he gets his money back and no more. Nobody is making any profit out of the enterprise except the mortgage company which underwrote the building loan. It is too early, of course, to prognosticate complete suc- cess, but this much seems to be demonstrated: the workers can build their own homes with their own money; they don't have to pay Rockefeller or anybody else 8 per cent interest in perpetuity for doing it; finally they don't have to bleat for tax exemption although they, surely, if anybody, are entitled to it. The United Workers' Cooperative Association was organized in 1917. A group of Jewish workers in the needle trades rented one floor of a building at 1815 Madison Avenue and operated it as a cooperative rooming house with a cooperative dining-room as an adjunct. It succeeded. The members saved money and had a better life. On Sun- days and holidays they would take hikes into Westchester and New Jersey. They bought their provisions coopera- tively and it cost them seventy-five cents a day apiece. But the mess sergeant had big ideas. He was beguiled by the attractive prices he could get through quantity buying. So one time, instead of buying enough for two days, he bought enough for a week. What to do? Some of the boys decided to stay through the week — they were then camped on the property of the wireless station near Belmar, N. J. —

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Oct. 6, 1926] The Nation 323 and eat up the food. Before the week was out, more mem- bers arrived. They discovered that they had a permanent ramp. Moreover, the group was growing at a rate which both demanded and made possible a considerable expansion. They rented a site — a beautiful stretch of woods and pas- ture overlooking the Hudson near Beacon, N. Y. They established Camp Nitgedaiget — described in The Nation of September 29. It was there, on July 4, 1925, that some 2,000 cooperators held a mass meeting and decided that they were going after the New York City housing problem in earnest. The results to date have been briefly outlined. The plans for the future are staggering. They are enough to make the most florid of the Florida realtors bite his nails with envy. Besides the two huge "colonies" — one started and the other scheduled in the Bronx — there is talk of cooperative department, drug, grocery and other stores, a series of camps at the seashore and in the mountains, medi- cal and dental clinics. An invasion of the lower East Side is within the possibilities. Meanwhile, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers are preparing to break ground for the construction of five apartment buildings on an area of forty-four city lots on Sedgwick Avenue, bounded by Mosholu Parkway, the Jerome Park Reservoir, and Van Cortlandt Park. The project is similar in many of its details to that of the United Workers' Cooperative Association. Subscriptions are limited to wage earners and preference is given to mem- bers of the Amalgamated. The estimated cost of the project is $1,450,000— about $1,400 per room. A few blocks south, bordering the Jerome Park Reser- voir, the Yiddishe Cooperative Heimgeselshaft is con- structing an apartment building, covering thirty-eight city lots, which before completion in February, 1927, is ex- pected to cost approximately $1,250,000. The cooperative provisions are in general similar to those of the other two projects. The builder employed on all three projects is P>. Brodsky, president of the Dwellers' Building Corporation, an experienced Bronx apartment-house builder with numer- ous financial successes to his credit and an impressive bank rating. That Mr. Brodsky also happens to be an enthusi- astic cooperator is perhaps a factor in the .situation. He says what everybody who has studied the cooperative move- ment in America knows: that the entering wedge of co- operation in industrialized America is housing; also that half the cooperative loaf is frequently worse than no bread when the other half goes to private profit. These coopera- tors are getting the whole loaf and its taste is good. In the Driftway THE Drifter has never been to Newburyport; he has never seen the farmhouse in which Stuart Chase's great-great-grandfather raised his no doubt numerous fam- ily. But he knows another house, built just as the eigh- teenth century was turning to a close; he knows it inti- mately ; it is, indeed, one of the many places he will choose, when his drifting days are over, to rest in forever. And he believes that his knowledge of and affection for this house and the township in which it stands gives him authority enough to affirm that Mr. Chase was, when he wrote his article in The Nation, talking through his hat. HFAK Mr. Chase, wearing an elegant pair of rose- colored spectacles: the "sunny, low-eaved, great- ovened farmhouse"; the "knee breeches, the noble colors, the brave brass buttons of Newburyport"; "if you fell ill, your chances of dying were considerably greater in the old days, but you did not fall ill so frequently"; "those factors ol craftsmanship . . . awareness of nature, spontaneous play . . . which my great-great-grandfather's children re- ceived naturally, automatically, and costlessly in Newbury- The Drifter thinks of the house he knows so well; sunny, indubitably; roomy, set in grass and flanked by smooth meadows; plenty of air, light, space; plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit to eat; plenty of flora and fauna to become acquainted with, tools to work with, heartening and healthful chores to do. But how was the house in the year 1800? Not plastered, for one thing; heated only by the great chimney-stack, of course; five children slept in one room. There were other rooms, to be sure, but one had to keep warm somehow. Food was cooked over the crane; bread was baked in the brick oven. Fires had to be kept going all the time, fires that ate up logs four feet long. Woodpiles higher than the house melted under the fierce winter winds. And in summer? Well, fires had to be fed then, also. There was nowhere else to cook. No stoves in 1800. No screens to keep out the flies that swarmed in from the barns. In summer the house was unbearably hot, even set in the hills where breezes fan the branches out- side. Fresh vegetables? Surely; winter turnips, carrots, beans; a little popping-corn, plenty of cabbage. There were gentlemen farmers who experimented with all sorts of new- fangled and probably poisonous garden truck: green peas, for instance, and some kinds of greens called salads — and they do say some folks actually eat those round, red love apples, but of course we all know they are poison. Plenty of fresh air in Newburyport — outdoors. But don't let me catch you opening one of those windows. Don't you know how bad the night air is for you? # * * * * FOUR a.m. in Newburyport. It's not daylight yet, but the critters want to be milked. Breakfast ready? Where's that strip of wool I wind around my neck? Mighty cold out in the barns these mornings. Likely to have snow soon, then we'll have to get up earlier to shovel out. Won't be back till dinner; got to work out in the west pasture. Broke a crowbar yesterday getting out one of those biggest stones; we'll have a farm here some day when we get the stones and stumps out. Through the morning in Newbury- port: the sound of the spinning wheel, the thud of logs being pitched on the coals, an iron spoon scraping the inside of an iron pot. Fruit hangs drying from the smoked rafters ; the pot on the crane sends up a column of steam ; the hearth, new-swept, is the warmest place in the house for the chil- dren to play. Get off to school, you young ones; it's nearly eight o'clock, and you've three miles to walk. Of course it's cold, but you've got to learn your a b c's, haven't you? Do you want to grow up an ignoramus? Here's your lunch; see you get home before dark. . . . Supper time at New- buryport. The family reunited once more, father and the two oldest boys from the west pasture — digging out those stones makes your back hurt; the little children murmuring lessons in the light of the fire — candles don't give much light; the girls serving out soup hot from the pot — there's such a clutter around the fireplace you can't get near enough

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324 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 to fill the bowls; give me the baby — I'll nurse him now and maybe he'll go off to sleep. Evenings are getting short. Well, it doesn't matter, does it? I'm glad for an excuse to get to bed. It's nice and warm there and I like the smell of soup to put me to sleep. THE Drifter presents this picture as at least as true a portrait of the household at Newburyport as Mr. Chase's. There was work in those days, the back-breaking work of clearing the forest and making the meadows fit to plow ; work all the time, indoors and out : cloth to weave, clothes to sew laboriously by hand, tallow-dips to make, the everlasting fire to feed, and more everlasting wood to cut for it. The fireplace was picturesque; but somehow as soon as stoves were invented it was torn out. The farm was a health-giving place. But for some reason the boys wouldn't stay there. They said they had to work too hard. To be sure, in their new homes in the new cities they must often have thought wistfully of the corn-huskings, the sugaring- offs, the sleigh-rides over snow as hard and white as stone. But life was hard in the old days, and days were long. And if there were large fair ilies, there were also rows of head- stones in the burying ground. A woman who had given birth to a round dozen was lucky to bring half of them to manhood and womanhood. NO, the Drifter would not have enjoyed living in New- buryport in 1800. The hand-wrought tools, the pine chests, the great four-posters, the iron latches on the doors, the rugs woven by flickering candle-light would not have been compensation enough. Now he can go to his farm- house and count the world well lost. But now things are different. He wonders if Mr. Chase has not somehow con- fused his delight in his great-great-grandfather's farm- house as it is today with his notion of how it was in 1800. New York City in 1926 presents numerous disadvantages to the seeker after the good life. But Newburyport a cen- tury ago was no paradise either. The Drifter Correspondence How Many Miles to Culture? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Is it fair to compare the New Englander of early days with the Bronxite of today, and to say that machinery did it or at least failed to do it? The question is not, Is the strap-hanger better off from a cultural point of view than the artisan of a hundred years ago — but Has he more opportunities for culture than had the European peasant who was three or four generations from acquiring a strap? If so, even though part of the improvement is due to the availability of virgin natural resources, is not part of it due to the technical exploitation of those bounties? Or, to put it another way, were t'.e conscript armies of the war for democracy nearer to culture than were the Napoleonic cannon-food? Are the proletarians of England and Germany more cultured than the agricultural classes from which machinery called or dragged them — a finer comparison than with the small class of artisans which machinery doomed? Is the Russian peasant, with his American tractor to free him from famine, headed for or away from illiteracy, ignorance, superstition, and provincialism? What is the belief of Stuart Chase, Treasurer, Russian Reconstruction Farms, Inc.? Bronx, New York, September 4 J. B. C. Woods Thank God for the Bronx ! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In his splendid article My Great-Great-Grandfather and I Stuart Chase, considering the present system of "machine production in the terms of tonnage output" and comparing what we really have with what "Fulton and Ark- wright and Watt promised us," comes to the conclusion that the present world we live in "is the defeat of human intelli- gence"; it "is waste — meaningless, destructive, gigantic"; it "is a child smashing a microscope." He comes to conclusions too glum because, looking through lenses of aesthetics, he views only the lives of the middle classes. I am a proletarian. My great-grandfather belonged to the same class. Let's consider the change in mode of life of my great-grandfather, myself, and my offspring. First, shelter. I remember having been reared among a family of six children in an "apartment" of two dingy rooms, with earthen floors, with no plumbing or sanitation. No doubt we had more yard space, more playground space, more sunshine in our rooms than we have at present. But the space inside the rooms had to be shared with different insects, unpleasant even to remember. And this not because my grand- mother and mother were poor housewives — no, they could not prevail against the insects because there were no cheap under- wear and pajamas then, because there were no tenement-house departments, boards of health, or building departments to make the landlords do cleaning and make repairs, and because there were no such insecticides as we have today. Today my family of three, sometimes four, lives in four rooms. The rooms are small; but there is steam heat, electric light, hot water. A tenement-house department protects me from the extreme rapaciousness of landlordism. Food. My father's family and I, before I could earn my own living, had not enough to eat to prevent our stomachs from grumbling. It is true that the food I remember in my childhood was more delicious, the fruit more juicy. But what consolation when it came so rarely? Clothing. I remember my father wearing an overcoat eight or nine years till it tore at the elbows; then it was patched, mended, and given to the eldest son. When the eldest son grew out of it, it was patched and mended again and given to the younger son. And when it reached me it had been remodeled so many times that I felt like a gray cat in it. New suits were bought only for the eldest children and worn by them till they grew out of them, then given to the younger ones, until it was physically impossible to patch and remodel them any more; and then . . . they were put to some other use. Take health. My grandmother had nine or ten children. Only three survived; none reached sixty. My mother had twelve children; only two survived. I remember the stories of how my brothers and sisters died. Under present-day pub- lic sanitation plus the services of doctors and dentists, at least eight of the ten would have lived. My first-born died at birth in a Vienna, Austria, hospital eighteen years ago. And I am positive that born then in a New York hospital, or now in any country, that child would have been saved. So God bless our doctors and dentists. One can see that Stuart Chase has not suffered the anguish of wanting education and not being able to get it. He belongs to the leisure class. My parents revered education. Yet only after protracted beseechings could I move them to keep me at school till my fifteenth year. My other brothers had to go to work at twelve; for my parents could afford neither to pay for private tuition

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Oct. 6, 1926] The Nation 325 nor to feed us any longer. My son will surely be sent to college, if only the money-making spirit does not claim his soul. I was twenty when I saw a play fur the first time. In my childhood, like my parents, I considered that a luxury fit only for the aristocracy. Even now I see plays only when they are brought to the Bronx Opera House, at popular prices. But I do see and enjoy them. My son was eight when he saw his first good play, and at fourteen he had seen as many plays as I at forty; my father never saw any. The haphazard management of machine production, the soulless competition causes senseless waste. Hut it is not like a child smashing a microscope. Rather is it a youth going blusteringly wild ami senselessly spendthrifty. And the l1 Thorstein Veblens, Upton Sinclairs, S arings, Stuart Chases, The Nation will help bring the youth to his senses. New York, September U Israel Kahan From a Richmond Garden To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have the greatest desire to take your contributor Stuart Chase by the hand and show him many things. I want to bring him around the back of my half-acre estate and let him see the master of the house with his children working in the little garden. This summer we have raised practically all of the vegetables and fruit needed. He can peep into my garage and see a first-class work-bench and tools. Let him see that he need not send his children to expensive experimental schools. Unless a strain of laziness has come to him through his great-grandmother, he can supplement any public school education. He can discard his radio and have his children study music. . . . Oh I am full of ideas and suggestions which will help him, and our town isn't small, our income isn't large, our home is modest, and our children twice as numerous as his. I feel quite immodestly able to compete with his great-grandfather. Richmond, Va., September 9 Wilma Marx Straus Florida? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I had lived in New York City for sixteen years, my husband all his life. Like most New Yorkers we too, in our quest for more sunshine and fresh air, had tried almost every section of the city. With the arrival of our baby, New York seemed more and more impossible. Life with all its modern equipment for health and happiness, all its intellectual advan- tages, was but one round of appointments, interruptions, social obligations, without any time left for real living. At the dreaded realization that another baby was coming, we decided to go to some small town, preferably in a sub-tropical climate. Everybody advised against such a "crazy" move. The unanimous conclusion was that six months would see us humbly returning to the only place in the world — New York City. That was in May of 1924. Since then a number of our friends and relatives have visited us at Joy Hill, our farm in Florida. They have frankly envied us our peace of mind, our happiness, our freedom, and our two healthy boys. One can earn more money in the city, but the utter waste in superfluous clothes and over-stimulating and rich foods rob the family exchequer, and most of the savings usually go to the doctors. We raise all our foodstuffs on our farm. The Florida climate allows us a variety of fresh fruits and nuts and berries and vegetables all the year round. Our flock of chickens pays our other expenses. We have abundant time to play with our children and assist them in their "work." More! We who in the city found the rearing of one baby a very expensive and gigantic task, are now planning three or four! We can afford it h< ■ :/r Jlills, Fla., September w Rose Yuni Chenkin The Agonies of Orthodoxy To the Editor of Tin: Nation: Sir: If I should compare the environment of my child- hood with that of my children I am inclined to think that the balance would tip in their favor. My grandfather Dole, born in Maine, on the Kennebeck, was a farmer, but his three sons, all named after prophets of Israel, managed to go through Bowdoin College and the hardships of two of them planted the seeds of consumption. My father died when I was two and a half years old and I was brought up in the little town of Norridgewock, unique for its beauty, its cultivated and con- genial society, and its extremely plain living — but atrociously pious. Orthodoxy so permeated the atmosphere that one could see it hanging like a pall over the tranquil river against tha opposite hill; no circus was permitted to pitch its tents on the sacred soil, and when the ice went out in the spring freshets none of us youngsters was permitted to go out on the bank with the unregenerate and unredeemed to witness the show; my mother would not allow my cousins to walk to the graveyard to visit their mother's grave — for fear that the example might be used by Sabbath-breakers as a justification. Sunday was a day of horror. This fearsome superstitious Orthodoxy-Calvinism, of itself, was heavier in the scale than all the culture otherwise prevalent. The lights used to illuminate the long winter evenings were of sperm oil — yet the river was then ready, as it is now utilized, to furnish electricity for making brilliant the streets and houses and for lightening household labor. People were not nearly so healthy as they are now — certainly not so happy. On the whole I think my children were far happier than my brother and I were, though neither of us had any superfluity of income. So it seems to me that on the whole the world has improved! Ogunquit, Maine, September U Nathan Haskell Dole Down with Everything ! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Hail! And congratulations! Your courage in printing Mr. Stuart Chase's speculations in regard to the possible degenerating effect of machine culture deserves all praise. Those of us who have long ago ceased to speculate and got down to the gold tacks of practicing the auto-regen- erative, not the automotive, life can now take a new hold on hope. When political radicals begin to revolt against "spec- tator's culture, listener's culture" and — to add another — reader's culture, when this sign begins to become visible in the heavens we who have turned our backs on the husks and harlots of Egypt can begin to lift up our heads. If Mr. Chase begins to doubt the sterling virtues of lectures, concerts, operas, and committees, the unadulterated advantages of automats, auto- mobiles, elevateds, subways, and sunless apartments, perhaps it will not be long before Mr. H. L. Mencken begins to cook his own meals, darn his own socks, dispose of his own garbage, create his own music, and — throwing away his library — think his own thoughts. Perhaps, if you culture-hounds keep travel- ing in this direction at your present rate of speed, The Nation will print — ten years after the grand, final smash-up of the machine age and its culture — an article advocating the aboli- tion of electric lights, steam heat, telephones, radios, and all cities of more than a population of two thousand. Perhaps . . . perhaps you will then suspend publication. In the mean- time, congratulations. Chicago, Illinois, September 3 CLAUDE Stone

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Books and Plays Vanguard By LESLIE NELSON JENNINGS He said: If Time is what I now believe, Patience is less a virtue than a gift We all are born with, whether we achieve Tranquillity of spirit with the drift Of years, or suffer still the pangs of growth. But he was driven to the wall and passed By the fleet-footed and the laggard both, Who smiled at such a prophet coming last. So for a while we lost him; none could say If he had gone down preaching in the crowd, Or, like a man defeated, crawled away To make his fool's philosophy a shroud. Self-righteously we kept the beaten track. . . And then one day we met him coming back. First Glance OF the reigning Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Mr. H. W. Garrod, I can only say that I wish he would follow up the two small volumes which he has published on Wordsworth (Oxford University Press: $2.50) and Keats (Oxford University Press: $2) with others equally small but full on Milton and Shakespeare, and perhaps, to show how far he can go in the understanding of poets, on Dryden or Pope. For Mr. Garrod, the like of whose criticism I have never quite met anywhere, has a definite responsibility — not at all as Professor of Poetry, which might mean very little, but as one who claims with reason to be able to read good poetry as it was intended to be read. Coming to Matthew Arnold's chair after a life devoted to classical scholaiship, he exclaims against the "conspiracy of care- less reading" which he finds, as anyone may find it, among those who discuss the literature of England. "In general I am inclined to the belief," he says with the dryness which is one of his chief incidental qualities, "that not only are poets commonly a more truthful race than other men, but that they frequently understand themselves better than other people understand them. . . . We shall never understand poets unless we believe what they tell us. . . . For myself, when poets tell me that they are inspired, I am disposed to believe them — I have found it always the short- est way, not only of placating them but of understanding them. It may even be that it is the only way." We have been careless readers of our great poets, it would seem, because we have paid too little attention to what they said about themselves. Mr. Garrod addresses himself, then, to this task among others — to discover pre- cisely what Wordsworth and Keats thought they ought to be doing, and only then to decide wherein, if at all, they were deceived. In both cases he finds enough confusion of mind, but he finds enough clarity, .00, for his purposes ; and, since he is a critic of rich and fine equipment, the re- sult is a pair of essays hardly to be matched in English criticism for accuracy of analysis or completeness of com- prehension. In Wordsworth he stresses neither the "old half-witted sheep" of the famous parody nor the Byronic radical of Professor Harper, but — I am con- vinced— the poet himself as he existed most gloriously in the ten years between 1797 and 1807. He frankly accepts the author of the "Prelude" as one who possessed abnor- mally fruitful senses; and he minutely traces the steps by which Wordsworth emerged from the intellectual conflict within himself, occasioned first by the French Revolution and next by Godwin, into the marvelous decade when, set going by Coleridge, he went the whole way of his senses. "Perhaps, indeed, Coleridge's greatest work is Wordsworth — and, like all his other works, Coleridge left it unfinished." Coleridge and Wordsworth parted in 1806; Mr. Garrod then traces the slow descent of Wordsworth into the valley of the Ecclesiastical Sonnets. In the "Keats" Mr. Garrod disposes pretty well, I think, of the notion — held inter- mittently and unhappily by the subject himself — that the author of St. Agnes Eve had ever any business with the intellect. "I think him the great poet he is only when the senses capture him, when he finds truth in beauty, that is to say, when he does not trouble to find truth at all." Had Keats lived he would have been more Keats, not less; and while he lived — this is one of the more brilliant of Mr. Garrod's many brilliant perceptions — he was most himself in those moments when, after struggles to understand politics or metaphysics, he suddenly relapsed into luxury. But I wish Mr. Garrod would go on. He has been as wise in expounding Wordsworth and Keats as he has been witty in exposing the weaknesses of their critics. So far, however, he has confined himself to romantic material — inspiration, nature, the senses. There are ampler domains. Milton gained stature through using his mind; Shakespeare observed persons as well as places, looked on as well as dreamed; Dryden worked with wit. Or did they; and if so, how so? I should relish Mr. Garrod's answers to these questions, and to others. He is so good a critic that he can afford to be a broader one. Mark Van Doren Cook's Tours Through Art Art Through the Ages. An Introduction to Its History and Significance. By Helen Gardner. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $4. HPHE value of such books as this depends mainly on whether * the reader comes out with a feeling that he has really swallowed and digested a whole subject or is stimulated to follow up some few parts of it intensively. Which of these will occur, in turn, depends not wholly on the reader; some books glut the appetite with a false impression of completeness, obscuring the more subtle meanings and charms of a subject, while others create powers of further assimilation. "Art Through the Ages" has bitten off so large a chunk of history that, in spite of its bulk, it is necessarily a quick survey. Is it the good kind or the bad? The answer must be compara- tive. Hitherto the most popular book of its kind has been Reinach's "Apollo," which for a generation has fed to students pictures of a few popular classics and many initiative medioc- rities, along with the perfunctory tags of academic criticism. During the Wells craze for universal outlines an "Outline of Art," composed largely of sentimental anecdotes, was hastily put together under the name of Sir William Orpen, and it is still enormously read. Most textbooks on the history of art are un- believably dull, repetitive, and prejudiced. By contrast with these, "Art Through the Ages" is full of solid substance, scholarly in background, and liberal in point of view. It has

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Oct. 6, 1926] Tin* Nation 327 a concrete basis of freshly chosen photographs in rich varii many unfamiliar enough to surprise a connoisseur, yet typical enough to distinguish hundreds of major and minor traditions in a score of fine and applied arts. The primitive, exotic, and modernistic are given a share of representation among them that is rare in textbooks, if still somewhat slighter than could be wished for. By its illustrations alone the book is enough to tempt the reader to closer acquaintance with the originals. Is the text of a sort to intensify this attractiveness and stimulate the power to enjoy discriminatingly? By comparison with older books, again, there is distinct progress toward this end, largely because the author has followed the present ten- dency of art education to stress design. To a considerable extent Miss Gardner has avoided the usual anecdotes of artists' lives and the literary interpretation of pictorial subject matter, and has tried to bring out instead the direct aesthetic qualities of typical works of art. When a quality of color is suggested, or the rhythm of two lines, and when a light-and-shade pat- tern or a disposition of masses is pointed out in a statue or cathedral, the reader's attention is directed toward the object itself and his power of appreciating similar objects tends to be increased. That this line of approach is not followed out with enough thoroughness is evidence of the surviving demand for other modes of approach to art. Few teachers or general readers are yet ready to devote systematic study to plastic form for its own sake; they insist on being told interesting facts about its human and literary associations. There is at present a conscious educational trend, moreover, toward presenting all subjects "in their social setting," which often means merely flooding them with miscellaneous facts of a vaguely sociological flavor. Miss Gardner must be constantly inserting informa- tion about the political and religious environment of the artist, about the mechanical devices by which the building was made to stay up, about what the people in the picture seem to be thinking of, and how the subject expresses the interests of the time. There is some attempt to separate these viewpoints, but not enough to prevent frequent confusion. With so many artists and schools and so many aspects of each to be touched on, the directly aesthetic treatment has to be extremely sketchy, and often misses essential qualities. The text never stops long enough on any single object to give the reader anything like a full realization of its complex unity of line, light, mass, space, and color. Instead he is hustled down the ages, plied with mis- cellaneous information, his attention switched this way and that, until he closes the book without ever having had (so far as the text can help him) a single clear and vivid experience of a work of art. By the total absence of either psychological approach or personal viewpoint the book further misses the significance of art as a thing to be created, liked, disliked, and reflectively evaluated. It is perhaps too much to ask of a textbook that it present any fresh appraisals, but it may at least be expected to show a realization that feeling, perception, habit, and con- scious standards have something important to do with the history of art. In a textbook, again, a certain catholic objectiv- ity and tolerance are perhaps better than too narrow and violent preferences (although even the latter may stimulate a reader to doubt and think things out for himself) . But through- out this book there is little indication that a divergence in standards of artistic value is possible or that one picture may be judged better or worse than another. Works of every de- scription, major and minor, original and imitative, Renaissance masters and American academicians, are reviewed with the same placid amiability that extends almost (with a few timid doubts) to the post-impressionist radicals. The result is not only a slightly tedious softness but a failure to show that art history has been permeated with the battle of traditions and clashing impulses and a failure to start the beginner on the essential task of discriminating values for himself. Thomas Munro The Slory of Psychology The Meaning of Psychology. By C. K. Ogden. Harper and Brothers. ?■'!. j\/f K. (HIPKX has taken upon himself an a and well- *■" C I task. His Bingl of exposition enable him to produce a survey of the scope as well as the meaning of psychology, all in terms of the modern man's interests and the modern man's concepts of comprehension; and that means neither the "high brow" who would expect a more technical and systematized text-like procedure, nor the "low brow" who (if we may credit the questionable judgment of the editors of popular magazines) will swallow and digest only thin pabulum highly spiced with journalese sauce, but the man of medium cranial altitude whose needs are properly met by a writer loyal to scientific standards, and whose interests are worth stimulating and satisfying. Such a reader, whose I. Q. would entitle him to be called more than average, wants to know what psychology is all about, how it approaches and how it solves its problems, what kinds of facts it considers, and par- ticularly what kinds of conclusions it draws as to the mental na- ture of man. To cover this ground would, in the vernacular, be a pretty large order; but that is precisely what Mr. Ogden is willing to fill. He undertakes to set forth how psychology bears upon life's problems, its endeavors, its criteria of fitness, its mo- tives; to indicate how the mind machine operates, how it is constructed, and what it produces; to set forth the psychic side of man as a living organism and a going concern. In further detail: to take a psychic inventory in terms of be- havior liabilities and assets, native trends and their adjust- ment to condition; how the mind goes wrong and leaves home; what light psychology throws upon the products, the institu- tions, the man-made (which means so largely mind-made) en- vironment in which man matures to adult stature racially and individually. Viewed through the large end of the psycholo- gist's opera glass, there appears the total scene in miniature; viewed through the small end, there appears magnified the close-up of its features, its analysis, the varieties and types of mental performance. In addition there is the illumination which childhood sheds upon mature traits and vice versa; throughout there is the story of application paralleling the story of principles; there is the historical tale, of how these problems arose and how differently they were viewed and solved according to old-time interests — a glance backward at the per- plexities arising in the academic pursuit — and how radically all this has changed with the removal of the grove and cloister and the right-about-face that turned psychology to a control of human lives intimately to their profit or undoing. There is the collateral tale belonging more specifically to the related disciplines: what physiology, anthropology, psychi- atry bring to and take from the psychological viewpoint. Re- ligion, ethics, education, all bring tribute to and take tribute from psychology, and yet it must retain the dominance within its own domain, and this despite the division into schools, affiliations, "isms." From another approach it appears that psychology underlies economics, art, invention, even philosophy, and the common thought of the common man. For in an un- precedented sense this is the psychological age, and the term is properly as well as glibly used to follow the clue to the understanding and control of human beings in all relations — of family, state, class, industry, recreation, and spiritualization. On this trail Mr. Ogden necessarily includes the question of method, the question how the modern insight has come to be established through the laboratory, the clinic, the work of the evolutionist and of the "social" student; how the outgrowing of barren methods was necessary to the dissipation of old-time fallacies — largely the mistaking of myths, theories, metaphors for facts and relations and realities.

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328 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 From it all emerges the directive influence of the pragmatic temper. Psychology must be and has been rewritten from the point of view of mental phenomena in terms of the actual realities: nerves, glands, muscles, impulses, instincts, urges, mechanisms. Again specifically, the Freudian viewpoint tells the story in terms of psychic hungers and appetites, ministering to bodily as well as mental satisfaction, recognizing — as in the life of sex — the complexity of both phases and their fusion. In every reasonable sense this is behaviorism; and Mr. Ogden, like many another psychologist (though unlike his compatriot McDougall, who finds it irritating), finds the assumption of the radical Watsonian behaviorism, as the one-and-only, beware- of-imitations brand, amusing. Hospitable to all the cultivated fields of investigation that contribute to the psychological har- vest, he is perhaps a bit too hospitable when considering (though without indorsement) some of the aspects of "psychical re- search" which are unassimilable with the position which he favors; but he wishes to indicate frontiers as well as settled territory. Under the pragmatic survey he includes the psy- chology of the learning process — naturally in brief compass — and the story of how the mind as well as the world which it knows unfolds. He looks outward as well as inward, discusses what we bring to as well as what we get out of the life mental, how we meet the temptations and delusions of wrong thinking, how we develop the strengths or weaknesses of inherent capacity in character as well as in intelligence. It requires so much space barely to enumerate the things which Mr. Ogden tells about that none is left to indicate the acts and scenes of his drama. Suffice it to say that he is sparing of incident, confines attention to significant movements of modern and pragmatic interests, shifts the scenery frequently but with an orderly plot, and gives a readable and useful licture of what the active psychologists of today are contributing to an understanding of the mental world. It is a pretty large order, but it is expertly filled within the limited facilities of a narrow volume. Joseph Jastrow A Rare Temper From, Goethe to Hauptmann. Studies in Changing Culture. By Camillo von Klenze. The Viking Press. $2.50. A GREAT deal of criticism is being written in America and *■ *• a great deal of what is being written is stimulating and amusing. But most of it is the result of merely personal re- actions or else it limits itself to the merely rhetorical properties of letters — this is true of nearly all our criticism of poetry — or, like Mr. Spingarn's on the one hand or Mr. More's on the other, it derives from an antecedent embraced philosophy. Now, there is still another kind of criticism of which we have very little, but of which, I am sure, we stand in great need. This kind of criticism regards literature as the articulate record of the history of human civilization. I say civilization because unluckily we lack the word Kultur, which, properly used, makes the necessary distinction between, let us say, machinery as an end and a symptom. Cultural history is the history of man's spirit, of the relations of the spirit to the world, of the reactions of the world upon the spirit. Properly pursued, it is the most philosophical kind of history. Criticism that de- rives from it and regards itself as integrated with it is the most philosophical kind of criticism. We have so little of this kind of criticism because it can be practiced neither by the lean specialist nor by the bustling reviewer. To practice it you must have a command of prac- tically all the major literatures in their original languages and you must in your own person sustain a relation to life that is broad, intense, flexible, and yet profoundly guided from within. Now, these are precisely the qualities that Dr. von Klenze brings to his task. That he is a professor is a happy accident for his students; that he is a professor of German is due to ancestral sympathies and practical exigencies. What makes him an important critic, especially in America, is that he both knows and experiences, that his vast scholarship is irradi- ated with life and thought. We have dullards who know the brilliant and charming minds that guess or blunder. The combination of knowledge with wit and vividness is rare. I have dwelt on Dr. von Klenze's character and methods as a critic because these seem to me more in need of being emphasized than the particular subjects to which he has ap- plied himself. He writes of the varying visions of Italy and their meaning, of the development of the romantic views of art, of two great typical mid-century temperaments, of naturalism in the drama as part of man's social history, and finally of that compassion for the disinherited which has produced per- haps the most important writing of modern time. He starts, far more properly and philosophically than is commonly thought, from a German center. But his vision sweeps Europe and America. His results are, both in method and in kind, calculated to deepen and vivify the proper study of literature among us. Ludwig Lewisohn Baroja The Lord of Labraz. By Pio Baroja. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. 'T'HIS is the seventh book published in America by a great * writer whom Americans do not read, preferring to take their Spain from Ibanez and the movies. Brandishing this seventh book the critics heap scorn on the American public — those imperial vulgarians to whom artists of all the world must come bearing their treasures — for their blindness in passing this great one by. But the scorn having been hurled, we can open the book and read. Here we find people — Domingo Chiqui, for example, "who offended during many years the chivalrous sentiments of the city of Labraz . . . short rather than tall, merry and addicted to lying, and when it was a question of work, as light as a bar of lead. . . . His nose was long and hooked, and an Adam's apple rose from his throat like another crook desperately anxious to join his nose." When he died, from living too well, "his illness seemed to have sharpened his wits and added to his facetiousness, for at every instant he had some witty remark in his intricate language, so that laughter filled his bedroom instead of lamentation. . . . He consoled his friends with a gro- tesque account of the road of Purgatory he would have to tread and how he would tell St. Peter that, although a tavernkeeper, he had not often baptized his wine." Here is Perico, "one of the Liberals of the town. To be liberal meant for him to be gruff and outspoken. He owned a plot of land and a vineyard which yielded him a bare sus- tenance, and spent his days in amazing the town. His mustache was of an alarming size, and he wore his hair long; his suits were too large for him, he wore a large hat and carried a huge stick." Here is the romantic Goya, whose father the innkeeper married her to the accommodating Chiqui to prevent her being hounded out of the pious priest-ridden town, reading another novel. "This scene fills me with greater enthusiasm each time I read it. The Duke Rodolfo is about to enter the room of the dressmaker. I think he is her lover. Yes, he must be her lover; I have no doubt of it." Here is the dying wife of Don Ramiro, looking older than he, thin and weak, dressed in black; "her nose was slender and slightly aquiline; her eyes gray and sunken; her mouth large and kindly, and her expression straightforward, open, and energetic"; and the beautiful Micaela with "her serene lack of passion and clear cold understanding of life," who was to supplant the wife and hasten her death and to waken for the first time in Don Ramiro's turbulent heart "a tendency to tenderness, a need of humiliation." Here is the priest, "a little

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Oct. 6, 1926] The \T;itinn 329 ugly man, who out of egoism imagined tha went well in the world," the organist with a "certain mystery in hi* face, with its long nose, narrow clean-shaven cheeks, wide fore- head and the great silver spectacles," and his complete set of Voltaire locked up behind clerical treatises and stones of saints. And finally, here is the town, with its unconscious hypocrisy. "The brutal instincts which were half restrained by thi of hell and half excited by that loophole which hypocrisy affords to every vice had rendered the inhabitants of Labraz Qiarvelously ferocious. During public festivals this ferocity found an outlet in the bullfights. . . . The young men. gentle- men and clowns, placed themselves behind the barricade, and when the bull pressed near them they would prick it, beat it over the muzzle, knock out one of its eyes if they could, and finally when an old bull or an old cow was led into the arena would act as bullfighters and throw themselves upon it, holding it down and stabbing it with their knives until it was a mangled mass. After they had danced the jota, which is stupidity and ferocity converted into a tune, they drank a great deal, and returned to their houses to pray. The most dissolute inhabitants, when Holy Week came around, put on their peni- tential robes and walked in procession." Here in short is an eye as keen as that of an old Dutch painter of peasant interiors, a feeling for every kind and cir- cumstance of man, tolerance, understanding, sympathy; here is Voltaire ripping away the swaddlings from rottenness, and Ibsen wrestling with the inert mass of his people; here is a master comedian. All these are here in a rambling, helter- skelter story, poorly composed, as Baroja tells us himself with Shavian frankness, borrowing too much from too many people, or rather borrowing too hastily. Thus the plot might have made a Schiller epic, or a Selma Lagerlof saga, or a Scott romance. Baroja started out to tell it all in dialogue, and portions remain which are still all dialogue. The chapters do not grow out of one another smoothly. They change in style and tempo and in intention. There is an artificiality about the mechanism of the story that takes us back to the time before Balzac and Flaubert and Turgenev welded the old un- gainly elements in a new unity. It is as true and as fantastic as a Shaw play or a Dickens melodrama. One feels a master craftsman, disdainful of his craft, throwing his treasures at us in mad profusion. But that is by the way, for greatness makes its own forms and transcends forms. When we sort out the great books of the world we find that many of them fall into no category recognized before their time. And so here greatness has given us a badly composed, helterskelter book, ample as it is poignant, merry as it is scornful — another fleeting glimpse of that road between reality and o".r souls. Alice Beal Parsons Books in Brief Mothers in Industry. By Gwendolyn Hughes. The New Re- public, Inc. $1. The problems affecting working women are complicated by a host of social and economic preconceptions which like most preconceptions have their origin in kernels of truth long since withered. Analytic studies of the actual economic and social position of women workers clear the atmosphere of these old generalizations and are therefore of particular value. The Fed- eral Women's Bureau has made a number of studies of the economic position of married women in several large industrial communities. These studies have considered women's wages, their contribution to the family income, and kindred economic facts. Now Dr. Hughes in a study of 728 working mothers in Philadelphia has gone a step further by securing information concerning the effects of wage-earning upon the children of these mothers, upon child-bearing, and upon the health and social conditions found in the home. Her study indicates that the majority of wage-earning mothers are forced into industry ty. A pi 3 families in Philadelphia revealed the fact that only 6 per cent of this entire group were supported by the earnings of the husband alone. Furthermore Dr. Hugl information show- ing that the mother in industry still remains the home-maker; that industry itself makes few concessions to the working mother in the way of special arrangements for working hours and nurseries; that the existence of a working mother does not sarily mean a low standard of family welfare. Other People's Daughters. Seventeen Studies from Life of Girls and their Surroundings. By Eleanor Rowland Wembridge. Houghton Mifflin Company. $2. '>0. The hybrid form of this book — its appearance in novel size, its easy running style, and its seventeen stories of young girls, their sweethearts, jobs, and families — requires a name as sub- stantial as Mrs. Wembridge's to give it any semblance of scien- tific validity. But with such authority back of them the stories may be accepted as particularly brilliant examples of the popu- larized case history. Mrs. Wembridge presents stories illus- trating various psychological mechanisms functioning in par- ticular situations. Among these are day-dreams, wishes, adap- tation, exhibitionism, compensation, imitation, sex, parental love, egotism, etc. Federal Reserve Banking Practice. By H. Parker Willis and William H. Steiner. D. Appleton and Company. $10. This immense work is practically an encyclopedia of mat- ters connected with the Reserve System. The authors, who were formerly minor officials of the Federal Reserve Board, seem to have devoted most space to the subjects which most appealed to them. From the standpoint of the business man or the financial man, the allotment of about one-quarter of the work to agri- cultural credits and of 26 pages to the subject of financing manufacturer and merchant does seem disproportionate. Exactly five lines are devoted to the relations between the New York clearing-house and the Reserve, system, while the writers seem never to have heard of the present relations of the system to the investment and speculative loan market despite several chapters on interest rates and the discount market. But while these blemishes properly detract from the value of the book, it remains the only good and full exposition of the system's practice. The Northern Tribes of Nigeria. By C. K. Meek. Oxford Uni- versity Press. Two volumes. Mr. Meek has done an excellent service to ethnology; and it is interesting to note that this is a case in which the tail has wagged the dog. Originally setting out to make a census of Northern Nigeria, the author found the ethnological material gathered to be of such great interest and importance that he ended by giving it three-fourths of his space. Mr. Meek has had no easy task, for the area he describes is a truly marginal one, and every phase of culture presents a tangle of influences, from the coastal Negroid culture to the south and the Arab- Berber Mohammedan culture to the north, that is almost hope- less to unravel. In consequence we have a study which is very confusing, and this is as it should be, the material being what it is. There are some 235 tribes in the region. The census itself is a valuable collection of statistics, giving the names and num- bers of the tribes, the occupations of the peoples, their civil condition, education, and religion. Ixion in Heaven. By Benjamin Disraeli. Decorated by John Austen. Henry Holt and Company. $1.75. A reprint of the least clever of Disraeli's three burlesques. The brilliance that in 1836 set fashionable London by the ears is now merely useful material for the student of mores. Disraeli was happiest, after all, when he had living personages to model from, as in "Vivian Grey." His forte is neither irony nor humor, but malice. And so these take-off* on Olympian

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330 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 conversations sound a little bodiless, particularly when we re- member one Lucian of Samosata, who also wrote Dialogues of the Gods. John Austen's gravely malevolent illustrations which portray Jupiter and his family as bucks and belles of Victorian England are alone worth the price of the little book. Anti- macassars, glass bowers, ormolu, leg-of-mutton sleeves, orna- mental chin-whiskers — the entire paraphernalia are rendered with the most ridiculous seriousness and the greatest comic effect. Drama Broadway T) ROADWAY, as every reader of the newspapers knows, is a *-* world in itself, intricate, colorful, and varied. Into it are draw" all sorts and conditions of men ranging from the mere tough who has discovered opportunities for the exercise of his talents which the slums do not afford to the genuine artist who finds there the only market for abilities of a certain kind. And yet, various as are its denizens, they have something in common. They share a whole realm of private gossip, they possess vol- umes of "inside information" which leaks only in driblets to the outside world, and they are united by a common acquiescence in certain traditions and conventions which make the pattern of that life. Crooks and playwrights, night-club proprietors and actresses are all tacitly members of the same guild, they are collectively "of Broadway" just as really as they are by groups "of the underworld" or "of the theater." Theirs is a world as distinct from the rest of New York as the court of Charles II was distinct from the rest of London. And if a certain tawdriness is inseparable from this glam- orous existence there is no inherent reason why this same tawdriness should be shared by every artistic representa- tion; yet somehow it always, is. No play or novel which took Broadway as its theme has ever, I think, made very much of the materials at hand. No writer has yet done for Times Square what "Main Street" did for the small town or the novels of Edith Wharton did for New York society, though it is an entity as distinct and as interesting as either. Last year George Kaufman, whom one might have thought equal to the task, got as far as tnat highly promising title "The Butter and Egg Man" and then relapsed into purely artificial farce, while Sidney Howard, putting forth a more serious effort, allowed "Lucky Sam McCarver" to slip from his grasp. Whoever has known Broadway well enough to represent it has somehow been cor- rupted by it; whatever has been about Broadway has been of Broadway also, and that, of course, is fatal to art which, of necessity, implies a transcendence of the material it employs. No one has yet appeared who has encompassed the region of White Lights as Sinclair Lewis encompassed that of his chosen region, no one, that is to say, who has been at once so intimate with and yet aloof from its life and its mores. All the strictures which have been offered here apply in full force to the play which Philip Dunning has fashioned in conjunction with that extraordinarily stage-wise actor, George Abbott, and which has been comprehensively labeled "Broadway" (Broadhurst Theater). Every element which goes to make it up has been carefully and skilfully calculated for the meridian of Forty-second Street; scene has been linked to scene by people who not only have an uncanny sense of theatrical effectiveness but have, besides, a delicate finger upon the pulse of the public — ■ by people who know, for example, that though in melodrama the distressed maid must still be rescued by tne sober lover, we must now give to the triumph of virtue a half comic, half cynical air. Decidedly "Broadway" is of the region which it undertakes to portray. Yet within the limits here implied noth- ing can be given to the piece but superlative praise; it is mag- nificently successful in achieving its purpose. For the scene the authors have chosen the back room of a night club in which wholesale bootleggers pursuing their busi- ness and members of the homicide squad looking for evidence mingle with the cabaret girls who come in quarreling to change their costumes and exit in the first step of their dance. Not only have they realized to the full the obvious picturesque possi- bilities of this scene but they have, moreover, turned the trick which is the secret of every successful melodrama; they have, that is to say, contrived a story which is centuries old in all its essentials but novel in all its external dress. Here is the sleek, sinister villain matched against the simple-minded hero for the love of the inexperienced girl, here is the unexpected murder done by the revengeful woman, and here, too, is the officer of the law who slips discreetly away when he realizes that justice, though irregular, has been done. But here as well is a locale new at least in the sense that it has never been so effectively used before, and here is dialogue whose liveliness, verisimilitude, and flavor constantly rise far above the intellectual level of the plot. The result is that even the sophisticated spectator finds the old situations made surprisingly effective once more. "Broadway" is the first substantial hit of the new season, and it deserves its success since no more effective melodrama has been produced here in years. To the general it is a perfect play; even to the judicious it is continuously entertaining; and, the stage being what it is, no person who attends the theater often should miss it. Indeed, I suspect that very few will; the chances are that this day next year will see it still playing to enthusiastic audiences. Those who like operettas in the Viennese style will get their money's worth and more at "Countess Maritza" (Shubert Theater), which the Shuberts have planned in accordance with the same policy which has guided them in the production of vari- ous other elaborate musical comedies during the last year or two. There is acceptable music of the "Blue Danube" sort, lusty sing- ing by a large company, and a general air of profuseness in everything. Some of the dancing and the comic relief rises well above the level of the usual musical comedy standard. "Scotch Mist" (Klaw Theater) is a polite comedy-drama centering about the career of a lady who was generally regarded as light but whose indiscretions were due solely to the fact that her brilliant political husband didn't understand her. The dialogue has the ease and smartness made familiar by many English comedies, but otherwise the play is undistinguished. Rosalind Fuller and Philip Merivale head the cast, but the best performance is given by David Tearle in the role of an amiable rotter. Joseph Wood Krutch □ LECTURES □ lu* "Social Thought in Victorian Literature" Course of Eight Lectures By ROBERT MORSS LOVETT, A. B. in the COMMUNITY CHURCH AUDITORIUM Park Avenue and 34th Street On THURSDAY EVENINGS. Oct. 14, 21, 28, Nov. 4, 11, 18, Dec. 2. 9, at 8:15 P. M. Course tickets, $4.50, can be secured in advance at the Office of the COMMUNITY CHURCH Park Avenue, New York City. Single Admission 75c. At the RAND SCHOOL 7 E. 15th St. V. F. CALVERTON Contemporary Writers and Social Thought Fridays, o\-?o p.m., Oct. I to Nov. 5 PROF. HENRY E. CRAMPTON The Evolution of Life Saturdays, 2 p.m., Oct. 2 to Oct. 23 VERNON LOGGINS Modern Poetry : Lectures and Readings Saturdays, 4 p.m., Oct. 2 to Dec. 18 When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section British Labor in Transition By SCOTT NEARING THE Trades Union Congress which met at Scarborough in September, 1925, was full of dynamite. From the presidential address of A. B. Swales, through the reso- lutions on imperialism and world-labor unity, the dele- gates vied with one another in their efforts to go "left." It was a militant congress, faring big issues with vigor and resolve. A year later many of the same delegates met at Bournemouth in a very different frame of mind. Mean- while, there had been a general strike; the miners had been locked out for four months, and the British workers were facing a general employing-class offensive against their working hours and their standards of living. Repre- sentatives of the Russian Trade Unions spoke at Scar- borough, amid general approbation. These same repre- sentatives were excluded from the British Isles by the Home Office when they applied for permission to visit Bournemouth. Evidently the general strike has had a profound effect on the British labor movement. As President Pugh said in his Bournemouth address, it is undoubtedly the most important event in the past half century of British labor history. It was for this reason that the general strike was not discussed at the Bournemouth conference. The General Council of Trades Union Congress, which made the pro- gram and directed the conference proceedings, safeguarded itself in every possible way against having to stand a dis- cussion of the general strike from the floor. There were many informal comments made during the conference, but all direct discussion was ruled out of order by the Chair. The contrast between Scarborough and Bournemouth was particularly noticeable because, with a few minor exceptions, the same men and women who sat on the plat- form at Scarborough occupied platform seats at Bourne- mouth. There was a new president, of course, but the mili- tant president of last year was the silent vice-president of this. J. H. Thomas, his work completed for the moment, was away in Canada. George Hicks played no part in the Bournemouth Congress. A. A. Purcell gave no fighting lead and made no vigorous speeches. His comments on international unity, in contrast with those of 1925, savored of the caution of John Clynes. Fred Bramley, last year's secretary, had died. His place was filled by the assistant secretary, W. M. Citrine. Bevin played his usual role of political major-domo to the movement. The other members of the General Council were nervously quiet. The whole British movement has faced a general strike. President Pugh declared that the delegates did not assemble in any penitent mood. J. H. Clynes described their temper as "reflective." They were beaten; and very badly fright- ened, not so much by the Government as by the fierce vigor with which the rank and file of the labor movement responded to the strike call and carried on during the period of the strike. President Pugh, in his opening remarks, said that the supreme lesson of the strike was the belief of the rank and file in the principles of democracy. The Government did its best to provoke violence: "Nothing but the re- straint, forbearance, and good sense of our members prevented the agents of the Government fomenting a revo- lutionary temper and plunging the country into conditions of civil war." These provocations could not succeed, ac- cording to Chairman Pugh, because "the British people set themselves to achieve their aims by the methods of democracy, which means in politics the parliamentary system and in economic life a system of collective trade- union effort." It is along these lines that the advances will be made, Pugh insisted: "We have had a Labor Govern- ment. . . . What is more to my present purpose, we have our deeply rooted trade-union movement, powerful, efficient, well-organized, the instrument by which the working people have begun to secure and will, I am con- vinced, ultimately accomplish industrial and economic freedom. It is not a question of altering our fundamental aim or the direction of our efforts and our thoughts, but rather one of a continuous strengthening and broadening of our ranks to embrace all who accept our principles and have a conviction of the justice of our cause and sympathy with our ideals." Continuing his argument in favor of traditional think- ing and acting, Pugh said: "When the unions combined their forces last May they were not invoking any new principle of industrial action, but simply asserting more effectively on a larger scale the traditional trade-union refusal to accept dictated terms of employment whether from the employers or the Government." This was the tone of the General Council at the time of the general strike. It was their attitude at the Bourne- mouth Congress : "Nothing out of the ordinary has hap- pened. The general strike was merely an enlarged industrial dispute. Business as usual!" The British ruling class talked that way during and after the Great War. But with all the talk they never have made good. The war did make a difference. British trade-union leaders talked that way during and after the general strike. They are wasting their breath. The strike has made a profound difference which no verbal denials can modify. The real lesson of the strike was not a lesson in democracy at all, but a lesson in dictatorship. When the strike was threatened the Government invoked the Emergency Powers Act of 1920; divided the country into districts with a civil commissioner over each; took over the essential services, such as food, fuel, transport, etc., and under the provisions of the Emergency Act arrested and jailed people merely for having certain types of literature in their possession. Baldwin "played cricket" with MacDonald and Thomas till he felt that he was in danger of losing the game. Then, by an executive act, he shifted the game and changed the rules. Pugh and his backers still talk about the principles of democracy. But they have been face to face with a dictatorship. Their experience has driven them from the leadership of the British labor movement. The general strike was the biggest event in recent British labor history, but it was taboo at Bournemouth, not, as the leaders asserted, because its discussion might prejudice the case of the miners, while their lockout was still in progress, but because the leaders could not face >uQUC

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332 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 the implications of the general strike. The issue will be gone into, perfunctorily, at some future conference of trade-union executives, but it will not be threshed at any- central point by accredited representatives of the rank and file. The Trade Union Congress leaders have turned that job over to the minority. They cannot face the general strike issue because the general strike was a challenge to the whole theory on which MacDonald has built his Labor Party as well as to the traditional practices of British trade unionism. In a very real sense, therefore, the Bournemouth conference was the swan-song of the present generation of British labor leaders. They presented no line of policy, advocated no program, and blocked every effort at policy making. Ideologically, their epoch ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917. Practically the general strike proved their coup de grace. Of course, these men and women are not out of the movement. They have merely stopped leading. They will continue to hold their places until they are taken away by a leadership of the new generation. Meanwhile, the British labor movement will continue to be as it is today, in a fog of purposeless uncertainty; the chosen leaders out of the fight; the new leadership not yet designated; the masses struggling, resigned, militant as circumstances dictate. Color and World Migration THE People, a weekly published at Lahore, in its issue of July 25, prints the following report of a speech delivered by L. Lajpat Rai at the World Migration Congress in London during the last week in June: I am here to express the point of view of Asia in general and of India in particular, and as I am the only speaker for that vast beehive of humanity, I hope you will in the matter of time show me somewhat greater indulgence than perhaps you may otherwise be inclined to do. Let me tell you most candidly that the questions with which yiu are dealing are perhaps among the most important of those which are going to influence favorably or otherwise the cause of peace in the world. It is perfectly true that Asia is just now in a condition of subordination and her voice does not count for much in the affairs of mankind. But it must not be forgotten that this was not always so and there is no guaranty that it is going to be so for a very long time. It will be a short-sighted policy then, which is not likely to further the cause of humanity at large, including that portion of humanity which resides in Europe and America, to ignore the interests and rights, even sentiments and prejudices, fears and hopes of the peoples of Asia. Our complaint against you is not that you do not open the doors of your countries to us unreservedly but that you have in the past two centuries, by the use of political, military, and economic weapons, not only compelled us to work for you on your own terms but that after we have labored for you and given you of our best, you have thrown us out most merci- lessly, and added insult to injury. If you will look at the history of emigration from India during the last hundred years, you will find that the majority of our emigrants were taken to different parts of the British Empire and to some foreign countries by a system of indentured labor, which was hardly distinguishable from forced labor, and men and women were taken to Natal, Fiji, Guiana, the West Indies, and later to other places. At the time certain promises were given to our people of being allowed to settle on terms of equality in the countries of immigration, which are now being abrogated on various grounds, some of them seemingly substantial and others pat- ently unsubstantial. Even now we have no desire to thrust ourselves on any country whatsoever. We have compelled our Government to abolish indentured recruitment and we have also placed on the statute book an emigration law which for- bids the emigration of labor without the permission of the Government and the Indian Legislature. We perfectly recog- nize the right of all self-governing states and communities to regulate immigration into their countries, but what we insist upon is that those of our people who have already settled in other countries, particularly where they were taken under cer- tain agreements and certain promises, and the descendants of those settlers should be placed in a position of equality with the other people of those countries. The anomaly of the present position is that while the white people of the world demand their right to exclude non-white people from the countries of which they have taken possession by one means or another (sometimes even by force or fraud) they themselves want complete freedom to move about wherever they find it profit- able to do so. These rights they enforce by the use of the political and military powers that they possess. Let me illus- trate what I mean by referring to the conditions regarding my own country. We are not only being excluded from the United States, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and other countries but our men who have gone to settle there quite lawfully are being turned out from those countries under different pleas, of inferior civilization, insanitary habits, and lower standards of life. While this is being done in the interests of white labor, the white governments are forcing upon us their own skilled labor to the detriment of our people. It comes to this: heads you win, tails we lose. You will not have our skilled labor, but you will thrust your own skilled labor on us. Now, may I ask you if this is not unfair, nay, cruel? I put it to you, would you tolerate this if you were treated accordingly? You may take it from me that although we are at present helpless to remedy this state of things and to maintain our rights, we cannot be expected to bless such a system and to tolerate it for a long time. How long is this to continue? If continued unchecked, it can only end in disaster, the responsibilities of which will be entirely upon your shoulders. We do not want to encroach on anyone's rights provided no one else encroaches on ours. If the white countries of the world can exclude us, our skilled and unskilled workers, we insist on having the same right to exclude others. We have, gentlemen, heard a great deal about civilization, standards of life, and other things. I have no desire to retort, but let me tell you that we are not prepared to accept the validity of these pleas. The poorest classes of our people have virtues of their own, which are not very common in the poorest classes of your countries. This is the same argument which your own rich and propertied classes use against our workers. The poorer classes all over the world are ignorant, dirty, and uncivilized, for which capitalism and imperialism are solely responsible. If your argument is valid against us, that of your propertied classes will be equally valid against you. Let us, therefore, dismiss all these arguments, which are born of arrogance, pride, and greed. Let us remember that the cause of the worker all over the world is one and the same. By all means protect your rights against unfair competition, but if the only way to do so is by a policy of exclusion and segre- gation, then goodby to the unity and solidarity of the working classes. You may lay down your standards, provided you do not make them unattainable; but you must treat equally all who are prepared to accept and adopt them. In your struggle with capitalism you are throwing the whole weight of the colored workers of the world against you. This will not enable you to maintain your civilization; the result will be to the con- trary. For God's sake, then, away with race and color pride, and with the pride of your superior civilization — a civiliza-

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Oct. 6, 1926] Nation »■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■-■-■■ A Novel of Twisted Marriage STRANGERS by Dorothy Van Doren "ASTONISHES me as a first novel — it is so skilful and assured; it might have been done by such a veteran as May Sinclair. And its characters are challenging and provocative in their uncom- promising reality. "Ann is the most disturbing 'mod- ern' young wife that has yet got into fiction. " — Floyd Dell. $2.00 at booksellers "f^asEffla I ff^>;,»>////; v • ' v mmmmmmiKm&mmmmm You Need It Every Day— If you value correctness and scope of vocabulary' — accuracy of information about words, people, places — convenience in securing facts on a wide variety of daily questions — then you are in need, every day, of the ready fund of knowledge offered in WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY The Best Abridged Dictionary It is based upon Webster's New International This handy book is indispensable. 106,000 entries, and many v limbic sections, including General Vocabulary; Pronouncing Gazetteer; Pronouncing Biographical Dictionary; Foreign Words and Phrases; Guide to Punctuation, Use of Capitals, etc.; Abbre- viations Used in Writing and Printing; 1700 illustrations; and many other features. IMeW WOrtlS— Do you know the meaning and pronunciation of dactylogram, escadrille, Hooverize?— the identity of Cabell, Gluch, Cecil?— the location ofthe far Eastern Republic, Chemin des Dames, Monte Adamello? These are but a few of the up-to- date entries in Webster's Collegiate. A SHORT CUT TO ACCURATE INFORMATION The thin-paper edition is especially handsome and convenient to handle. Art Canvas binding, $5.00; Fabri- koid, $6.00; Leather, $7.50. Purchase of your bookseller: or send order and remittance direct to us; or write for information* Free specimen pages if you mention this periodical. G.&C. Mercian. Co. Springiield Mass. 1 ' • BENJAMIN FRANKLIN THE FIRST CIVILIZED AMERICAN By Phillips Russell This book rescues a great American from the myth-makers and endeavors to pre- sent him as he was in his living dimen- sions— mirthful, curious, companionable, loyal to his own creed, a hater of oppressions and falsities, a lover of man- kind, song and witty women. It presents new evidence and contains many heretofore unpublished documents that reveal Franklin in a new light and serve but to increase his stature. Profusely illustrated with rare prints, photographs and letters. $5.00 BRENTANO'S Publishers New York PREPARE FOR WINTER NOW! You can ensure yourself one evening's pleasant reading a week during the coining winter by devoting it to ®lj? iMattrijejsier (ferariian WEEKLY You will like its freshness of viewpoint coupled with the accuracy of its facts. It is a store-house of information on international politics, European trends of thought, current English literature, and cultural developments the world over. The intellectually inclined in more than sixty countries depend on The Manchester Guardian Weekly to keep them furnished with reliable information on all important world happenings and on new trends of thought in various countries. MAIL THIS COUPON To The Manchester Guardian Weeklv, 222 West 42nd Street, New York City. I enclose three dollars for a year's subscription to THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WEEKLY, to be mailed to me direct from Manchester, England. Name Address When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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334 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3196 tion which has invented submarines, bombs, and poison gas. Let us come to some harmonious and brotherly understanding which will advance the cause of humanity and peace. Asia v/ants nothing but justice and fair play. If you refuse it, you refuse it at your peril, which may not be imminent, but which nothing can prevent. Now, this is not the language of a threat, it is a plea which I submit to you in all humility and respect and with the greatest good-will. There is an under- current going on in the colored world which is bound to subvert the existing order of things if you do not look ahead. Let me also say one word about the distinction which is being made between political and economic grounds. The line of demarcation is very thin. The colored world thinks that your political leaders use the political weapon, and your labor leaders use the other. For the colored people of the world there is not much to choose between the two, as the result under either plea is their subordination, exploitation, exclusion, and segregation. The subject you are dealing with is of the greatest importance. Do not play fast and loose with it, but develop a policy which is considerate and humane. We of Asia will help and cooperate with the greatest possible good-will. Contributors to This Issue Wynant Davis Hubbard recently spent three years on his farm in Rhodesia. W. E. Woodward is the author of "Bunk," "Lottery," and other volumes. Carleton Beals is in Mexico, making a study of social and political institutions. James Rortv is one of the editors of the New Masses. Harry Kemp is the author of "Tramping on Life," and "More Miles," to be published this month. Thomas Munro is professor of fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania. Joseph Jastrow is professor of psychology at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin. Ludwig Lewisohn is the author of "Up Stream" and "I: rael." Alice Beal Parsons is the author of "Woman's Dilemma." Scott Nearing is the author of "Education in Soviet Rus- sia," and other books. He attended the British Trades Union Congress which met at Bournemouth last month. . A MO^rOW niARY A graphic human-interest story of the t\ IVlV^iJV^vy VV l^l/irv. 1 life of the peop]e in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth. $1.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. CHARLES H. KERR & CO. 347 East Ohio Street, Chicago HONDURAS (Yellow Hills) SALVADOR (Green Valleys) NICARAGUA (Orange Dawn) GmaII" Rai^bow Countries costa GaSs) ©* Central America E[™ By WALLACE THOMPSON Colorful description, romantic history and a \ ealth of information as to agriculture, highways, trade, people and their lives, education and thought, unite to make this book an alluring introduction to an accessible, neglected wonderland. Illustrated with 30 half tones. $5.00 E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 5th Avenue, N. Y. The New School for Social Research Registration begins September 27 School Year begins October 4 Harry E. Barnes — Intellectual History of Europe. Wednesday, 6.20—6.50 P. M. Franz Boas — Race and Culture. Tuesday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Nathaniel Peffer — Imperialism and Its Practical Implications. Thursday, 8.20—9.60 P. M. Edwin B. Holt — Psychology of Response. Monday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. (Ten lecture! ) John B. Watson and Others — Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis. Friday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) S. Ferenczi — Selected Chapters in the Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis. Tuesday, 8.20— 9.60 p. M. Ira S. Wile — Conduct Disorders in Childhood. Monday. 5.20—6.50 P. M. Frankwood E. Williams — Mental Hygiene — Its Personal and Social Aspects. Monday, 8.20— 9.60 P. M. Leo Wolman — The Labor Movement in the Na- tional Life. Monday. 8.20—9.50 P. M. Norman B. Ware — Rise of the Modern Labor Movement. Wednesday, 8.20—9.60 P. M. Paul Singer — Social and Economic Functions of International Banking. Friday, 8.20— 9.50 p. M. Walter W. Stewart — Current Tendencies in Finance. Monday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Edwin W. Kopf — Insurance History of the Nine- teenth and Twentieth Centuries. Thursday, 8.20—9.60 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Frederick R. Macaulay — Principles of Statistical Method. Thursday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. H. W. L. Dana— Literature Since 1918. Friday, 8.20—9.60 P. M. Stark Young — The Theatrical Season, 1926-27. Tuesday, 6.20—6.60 P. M. Waldo Frank and Others — Modern Art. Wednesday, 8.20 — 9.50 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Terry Ramsaye — The Motion Picture. Thursday, 8.20—9.60 P. M. (Twelve lectures) Arthur F. Payne — Technique of Vocational Guidance. Friday, 6.20—6.50 P. M. Everett Dean Martin — Fundamental Problems in Adult Education. Wednesday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Eduard C. Lindeman — Method and Content of Adult Education. Monday, 5.20—6.50 P. M. Harry A. Overstreet — Practice Course in Adult Education. Tuesday, 8.20—9.50 P. M. Leta S. Hollingworth — Educational Psychology. Thursday, 6.20—6.50 P. M. Tuition for course of ei&htcen lectures, 120; for twelve lectures, S15 Write for Catalogue 465 West Twenty-third Street, New York City When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation F O V S li K D 18 6 5 Vol. CXXIII Nl'W VOKK. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1926 No. 3197 Contents EDITORIAL I'VRAGRAPHS ■ Francis Paul 346 !N I'llK DRIFTWAY By the Drifter CORRESPONDENCE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Contradictions. By Sherwood Eddy SOME NOTABLE PALL ROOKS FALL BOOK SECTION MS: Animula Vajrula. Ry Babette Deutsch 3.r>;> The River. By James Rorty 859 Dark Summer. Py Louise Rottan 359 Text for u Hitter Vision. Ry Rolfe Humphries 359 TIIF. ROAD TO THE SPRING. Ry Mary Austin 360 3 KM PH, .1 V'K OV ALL LITERARY TRADES. By R. F. Dibble 361 \N UNKNOWN POET. Ry Ludwig Lewinohn 3ti:i 1HK PLASTIC ARTIST IN AMERICA. By Ralph M. Pearson 364 BOO: First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 368 The Democratizing of Civilization. Ry William I. inn Westermann . . . 368 Primitive Sculpture. By Joseph Wood Krutch 370 - I.ifrhts. Ry Zona Gale 372 \ Cure for Democracy. Ry H. L. Mencken 371 The Rape of the Lock. By H. S. Jennings 371 "Little Golden Guinea." By John Macy 377 The Religion of the State. By J. A. Hobson 378 The Yankees. By Clarence Walworth Alvord 379 God as History. Ry Shirley Jackson Case 380 ks in Brief 381 Music: Music and the External World. Ry B. H. Haggin Drama : Alloy. Ry Joseph Wood Kruteh 384 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor IVTE EnlTOKS LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manacer Subscription Rates : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, $6.50 : and to foreign countries of the Pont.al Union. $6.00. THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street. New York City. Cable Address: Nation. New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square. London W. C. 1, England. PROHIBITION sops up political interest like a sponge, leaving other issues high and dry. In the New York State campaign, for instance, rum and personalities crowd all else out of sight. There are issues, of water-power, State ownership, methods of taxation, which a decade hence will matter more to the people of the State; but today it is Wet vs. Dry, and "Al" vs. "Jim." "Al" is, as his opponent says, running for two offices — for Governor in 1926 and for Presi- dent in 1928. He will, of course, win the former post; but his hope of the latter will be dimmed unless he can send his running-mate, Judge Wagner, to the United States Senate in place of Mr. Wadsworth. Senator Wadsworth holds a logically absurd but politically strong position: he is him- self an avowed Wet, but his party's platform is relatively Dry. The Dry Republicans, who have nominated Franklin P. Cristman in opposition to the squire of Geneseo, are in a dilemma. They may win sweet revenge by defeating the Wet candidate of their Dry party, hut only at the cost of electing the Wet candidate of a Wei party. The Democratic platform flatfootedly asks to '•change the narrow, senseless definition of what constitutes an intoxicating beverage, as set forth n the Volstead Act, so as to permit light wines and beers." The Republican platform is emphatic in demanding rigid aw enforcement as long as the Eighteenth Amendment and Volstead Act are on the books. But as to the referendum upon the desirability of changing the law the Republicans speak as a crab walks: "The referendum," their platform ■ ays, "gives all the opportunity to express themselves. We urge a full expression at the polls on this matter." THREE AND A HALF MILLION tons of American- mined coal have been shipped to British ports since the coal strike began. Soft coal was not exported to Eng- land until this year; and it is this American coal, together with four and a half million tons of continental coal, that has broken the British strike. Yet the American Federa- tion of Labor still insists that each nation's labor problems are its own, and refuses international federation. FORTY-THREE MINERS trapped underground for five days! This is such a familiar news story that it is rarely found on the front page of the newspapers. But forty-three miners trapped for five days and then rescued alive and uninjured — that receives the news position of honor. At Ironwood, Michigan, this happy ending to the usual mine disaster took place; the men were imprisoned by a cave-in caused indirectly by a recent earthquake; in every miner's life the possibility of such an accident looms large, and he is prepared to meet it. These men had noth- ing to eat, but five gallons of kerosene and a birchbark brew made with the water that is always running down the shafts furnished them with heat and a substitute for nour- ishment. They waited, knowing that efforts to rescue them were going on. Their wives and children waited also, out- side the shaft, in dumb fear of the usual result. When the rescuers at last crawled through to them, forty were asleep and three were standing watch. There were three others caught in the beginning of the slide who were less fortunate. Their bodies were taken out the first day. But forty-three to three is a good ratio in mine accidents, con- sidering that 25,000 miners have been killed in the United States during the last ten years. It is a pity that the lucky forty-three could not have enjoyed the company of some of the gentlemen who believe that miners are overpaid. Wait- ing without food, in wet, dirty clothes, 120 hours for rescue that may never come must be a fairly enlightening experience. A COMMENDABLE STRAIN of common sense and desire for justice runs through the opinion of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis revers- ing the decision of the lower tribunal in regard to the Tea- pot Dome oil lease, obtained by Harry F. Sinclair and others from Albert B. Fall when the latter was Secretary of the Interior. The higher court orders that the lease be can- celed and that Sinclair's company account for the oil

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336 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 already taken. The decision, which was rendered by former United States Senator William S. Kenyon, with Judges A. S. Van Valkenburgh and W. A. Kent concurring, lays down the principle: If a government official, engaged in making contracts for the government, receives pecuniary favors from one with whom such contracts are made, a fraud is committed on the government, and it matters not that the government is subjected to no pecuniary loss or that the contract might have been an advantageous one to it. The government, it will be recalled, submitted evidence that Secretary Fall had received a sum of money from Mr. Sin- clair after the lease. The defense held that this was a loan and was repaid, but the Circuit Court of Appeals declares there is no evidence of the payment of either interest or principal. The court says further: A trail of deceit, falsehood, subterfuge, bad faith, and corruption, at times indistinct but nevertheless discernible, runs through the transactions incident to and surrounding the making of this lease. THIS DECISION makes the outlook good for an even- tual and not too distant victory by the government in its attempt te reclaim the Elk Hills oil reserve in California and the Teapot Dome reservoir in Wyoming, both of which were bartered to private interests by Secretary Fall. The lease of the Elk Hills tract to E. L. Doheny was ordered to be canceled by the first court before which it came. This ruling was later upheld by the Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco and the case is now awaiting fh al decision by the United States Supreme Court. The Sinclair lease will also be carried to the Supreme Court, without question. The two cases involve similar principles and, as the weight of legal opinion to date is strongly on the side of cancela- tion, we may reasonably look for a final decision returning both properties to the government. But in addition to the civil suits there is an equally important criminal prosecution pending against the two Dohenys and Messrs. Sinclair and Fal' which is dawdling along in a way to sicken anyone who tries to reconcile court procedure with justice. This prosecution, involving char;r> s of bribery and conspiracy to defraud the government, has got almost nowhere in two and a half years, none of the defendants having yet been re- quired as much as to set foot in court. Another technical motion in the case was disposed of on October 2, favorably to the government, the newspaper dispatches say. Yet it doesn't sound so very favorable when we read further that the defendants may still ask — and no doubt will — for either one of two writs to keep the case from actually going to trial. And beyond this do there lie other subterfuges? THE GERMAN RAILWAY BONDS— which are the key to the present plans for Franco-German recon- ciliation— have a par value of eleven billion German gold marks and bear a 5 per cent annual interest. They came into existence when the German railroads were denation- alized under the Dawes Plan and turned over to a "private" company. This German Railway Company is a fiction. Its directors are simply employees and its bonds are held in trust for the Powers receiving reparations by a French- man, M. Leon Delacroix. The company pays interest on the bonds from its profits, and this interest — amounting, together with 1 per cent amortization, to about 660,000,000 marks annually — represents the railway's quota in each annuity distributed by Mr. Parker Gilbert among Germany's reparation creditors. The railroads, in other words, have been pawned to the Allies, and the Germans who are run- ning them are doing so for the Reparation Commission. At present M. Delacroix has these bonds in his safe at Luisenstrasse 33, Berlin. The bonds have no actual value until they are floated on the open market. Now, it is no light task to put eleven billion marks in bonds on the market. There is probably not enough ready cash on all the bourses of all the continents to absorb one-half of them. M. Delacroix suggests beginning with a billion or two gold marks, and adds that "to avoid abrupt disturb- ances of the exchange it would be desirable to distribute the amount of the issue as much as possible among the ultimate recipient countries, that is to say, among he countries to which the proceeds of the issue are to be finally assigned directly or indirectly." In a word, America will again be called upon to finance the venture. VISCOUNT D'ABERNON, the retiring British ambas- sador in Berlin, will probably go home a disappointed man. After he had braved French anger to lay the founda- tions of the Locarno pacts and of the English orientation for Germany which was to have followed, the clever Briand snatched away the palms of victory. At Geneva D'Aber- non's chief. Sir Austen Chamberlain, was left in the cold while Stresemann and the French Foreign Minister pow- wowed at breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper. This new friendship is probably a mirror of the Franco-German economic rapprochement practical signs of which are beginning to multiply. Iron pact, potash combine, steel trust, German aid for the franc — these are only the most conspicuous. Moreover, France has much to give, Britain very little. Briand can promise to make the Rhineland armies of occupation "invisible," to permit the restoration of Eupen and Malmedy, to recommend abolition of the Inter-Allied Military Control Commission. For these favors Germany would have to pay, in railroad bonds ap- parently. And despite the petulance of Poincare events are moving Briand's way. French and German steel in- terests have combined, and even the killing of two German civilians by French occupation troops does not weigh against that potent fact. THE AMERICAN EXPERT who has been attempting to reorganize Polish finances declares that considering lur start from zero "Poland has made greater progress in the last six years than any other nation in Europe." But for all his optimism Poland's politicians seem loath to accept Mr. Kemmerer's suggestions of further paths of progress. The Diet, which General Pilsudski, for all his loud talk, did not dissolve, has rejected the Government budget by a vote of 206 to 90. The Government apparently planned to get along without a Diet and to continue a la Mussolini, but suddenly changed its mind and resigned. General Pil- sudski then took office as Prime Minister. The New York World's correspondent adds this footnote: More unexpected even than the resignation — in view of the time and occasion — was the unprecedented visit of the American Minister, John B. Stetson, Jr., and French Am- bassador Larouche to Premier Bartel in the midst of the crisis. The purpose of their visit and the purport of their con- versations are shrouded in secrecy, but the common com-

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 337 ment here is that the two diplomats impressed upon Bartel the bad impression that would be created abroad if the Die! was dissolved and the Government carried on as unconstitu- tional dicta: such an overwhelming defeat. Well-informed circles here, while expressing surprise at this apparent foreign intervention in a Polish domestic crisis, admit that Fiance's treaty relations with Poland and America's financial interest in the country through re- cent investments might easily account for such action. Is this what the State Department calls "avoiding Euro- pean entanglements"? ASOKKY PICTURE of England is painted by the Dean of St. Paul's in his recent book on the British Empire. "English naval supremacy is at an end. . . . Our position as a world power is thus permanently altered for the worse." England, "tor idealistic reasons," has dismantled its "splen- did air force, thus making it impossible for us to back our counsels of moderation with any threat of coercion." "Events have shown that to rely upon the help of the United s would be to trust in a broken reed." In the event of any attack on England, the United States would help only if the invader were a "black army." Dean Inge not only describes the erstwhile mistress of the seas as alone, friend- less, without an ally on either side of the Atlantic, without a fleet worth mentioning, but as grieved by this isolation, desiring an alliance of English-speaking nations, yearning for the hand of fellowship, struggling for peace. Nor do England's troubles end there; she is torn by fraternal strife — or perhaps not quite fraternal strife, since India and Egypt have hardly been accepted as blood brothers. This, of course, is a tale to rend the heart. The gloomy dean's remedy is simple: plain living and high thinking. Plain living might help; plain speaking might help even more. THE RADIO IS A FAILURE," says Thomas A. Edison, "so far as music is concerned." It is, he says, good for news and for reports of ball games and boxing matches — and political conventions, we would add — but the distortion of music is too great. "After the novelty has worn off," says Mr. Edison, "the phonograph will reclaim its own." And so the great inventor starts what may be the first rumble of a great collapse. We Americans are a people of passions, but they pass. We all rode bicycles — today we have left the bicycle to the small boy. Millions of us played Mah Jongg — who plays it now? We devoted our evenings to cross-word puzzles — who still remembers "ern" and "ai" and "Ra"? We tinkered endlessly with radios, and installed new sets in rapid succession ; radio shops sprouted on every corner, their noisy horns vieing with the blasts of the auto- trucks. And now Mr. Edison says that there is no more money in radio for the dealers. Fourteen million Ford cars have rolled out of the Ford factories; today the experts say that the country is turning sour on Fords, and Henry is working hard on his "air flivver." What will be the next craze? THE INDEFATIGABLE E. HALDEMAN-JULIUS, not content with dispensing millions of drops of pure lit- erature and speculation in the form of his Little Blue Books at four to ten cents each, has added the Haldeman- Julius Quarterly to his long list of publications. It is a sizeable, bustling magazine, containing almost 200 pages of stories, articles, and pictures and an incredible number of editorials and short pieces by Mr. Ilaldeman-.Iuliiis himself. From old-fashioned "free-thinking" to modern architecture, from George Sand's amours to Sinclair Lewis's Sunday School class at Kansas City, the subjects cover a range wide enough for everyone. Like the Little Blue Books, the Quarterly offers nuggets of wisdom mixed with sensationalism, ideas presented energetically, briefly, easily, for the consumption of the many. This is the American democratic ideal, the ideal of popular education, and in a country of one hundred million persons, most of whom are unfamiliar with ideas, it is immensely valuable. Mr. Ilaldeman-Julius disclosed that the biggest seller of his five-cent classics was Plato; this is a feat to boast of. It may be that this energetic pub- lisher is about to perform another feat — that of publishing a quarterly magazine whose circulation will run into the t.ns of thousands. FROM DORCHESTER, England, comes to the American newspapers for October 3 a piece of literary intelligence which in none of the reaches of the imagination could be called a scoop. The correspondent, acting for the Associ- ated Press, whispers to the American public that Thomas Hardy, "the aged dean of English literature," "is spending the twilight of his life at his home here in penning poetry — the first love of his youth. With the fiction which made him famous he is probably finished. . . . Just what he is writ- ing is not divulged, as he is offering nothing for publication. Whether the poems ever will be given to the public is a mat- ter which has not been decided." This, with some modi- fication of the references to Mr. Hardy's age, would have been news in 1896. Today with half a dozen published volumes of verse behind him, and with the reputation, earned at the cost of thirty years' labor, of being perhaps the best of contemporary British poets, Mr. Hardy need not be set down as a novice of eighty-six fumbling with his first love. "With the fiction which made him famous" he was finished before the present century. His poems and his verse plays, given to the world with no reticence what- ever and as soon as they were done, have all this time been making him as famous as any man would want to be. We wince a little at thought of the cost of this cable. The correspondent would have done as well to sit down and write a letter, using his leisure to look into the facts. HENRY T. FINCK, for many years musical critic and editorial writer for the New York Evening Post and The Nation, was no pompous and academic preacher of highfalutin doctrine nor a slinger of mealy and empty phrases about Art with a big "A." He was personally an accomplished musician and a thorough scholar of music, but withal he was a human being with a racy humor, strong individual likes and dislikes, a zest for life in many aspects, and a sunny capacity for friendship. As a musical critic he had pronounced prejudices — he cared nothing for Beethoven and for few of the moderns except Stravinsky — but he was liked even by those whom he attacked, because of his good humor. In addition to music Mr. Finck had numerous other interests. He was a passionate amateur gardener, an expert on food, and besides numerous books on music he wrote volumes on "Romantic Love and Per- sonal Beauty," "Food and Flavor," "Gardening with Brains," "Primitive Love and Love Stories," and "Girth Control." Mr. Finck's death occurred at his birthplace in Bethel, Maine.

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338 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 Sweet Land of Buncombe THERE are times, even in the heyday of a political cam- paign, when one takes seriously the theory that the people of these United States are capable of self-govern- ment. There are other times when the only remaining prop for faith in our so-called popular system of government is the obvious incapacity of the dictators, near-aristocrats, experts, and business men who offer themselves as a sub- stitute. Reading advertisements in some of the popular magazines is an encouragement to such disillusion. Read- ing the advertisements of advertisements is still more dis- couraging, but it is at least amusing. Here, for instance, are a few paragraphs from a circu- lar sent to advertising agencies by a corporation with head- quarters in Chicago, which styles itself Famous Names, Inc.: The Famous Names, Inc., was formed through the co- operation of the most prominent managers of moving- picture stars and theatrical celebrities who assigned to this corporation the exclusive selling rights for commercial ad- vertising purposes, of the names, pictures, and indorse- ments of a majority of the most popular and famous stars. . . . The service of this corporation is to supply the rights to use in commercial advertising names, pictures, and indorsements of famous moving-picture stars ;<nd stage celebrities and other famous personalities such as musi- cians, operatic stars, etc. . . . Almost without exception any moving-picture star or stage celebrity is available through our service. (See at- tached list of stars with whom we have established contact.) Many of the stars are available for special posing. These poses can be made according to specifications of the purchaser and can be made in a studio, in the artist's home, or on location. Many of the stars' homes are famous for tht-ir artistic settings, and such pictures posed by the artist in the home with the advertiser's commodity offer many advantages, particularly in the production of advertising material. In addition to the pictures and names we also supply indorsements signed personally by the stars. These in- dorsements can be, if desired, of the advertiser's own dictation. The rights to use this service are sold on an exclusive basis. This means a definite protection to the advertiser against duplication in pictures, names, and indorsements. This is possible because of our contracts with the stars. We will not offer the same stars to any other manufacturer or advertiser of similar commodity when our service has been accepted. We evidence the exclusive rights by a direct assignment to the purchaser signed by the star and like- wise an assignment by the Famous Names, Inc. . . . The fee for the exclusive use of a star is between $150 and $2,500, depending upon the standing of the star and the length of time the exclusive use is desired. This fee includes the special posing and signed indorsements. Also, a 15 per cent differential to the agency. . . . Millions are daily attracted to moving-picture theaters because of the popularity of the names and pictures of these stars. Likewise, additional millions can be attracted to national advertising through the use of pictures of these stars who are familiar and popular with the buying public. The picture of a famous star will always attract copy attention! Fooling the Public, Inc., this kind of advertising "ser- vice" might well be called. The star signs indorsements written by an advertiser perhaps without ever seeing or trying the ware. And the public — the kind of public which expresses itself in snobbish imitation of cinema heroes and pseudo-millionaires — buys on such false recommendation. At least, if one takes at par value the claims of the agencies that they have made advertising a science, one must assume that they have tested the method and that it pays. A hasty study of a few "national-advertising" sections does not reveal that much use has yet been made of John Barrymore, Richard Barthelmess, Marjorie Rambeau, Lenore Ulric, Clara Kimball Young, Constance Talmadge, Bebe Daniels, and the other stars listed as part of its "ser- vice" by Famous Names, Inc. ("prices on the above stars will be gladly furnished upon request and without obliga- tion"), but the samples of the method are there. Blue Jay Cornplasters feature "Famous Feet," and seem able to persuade almost any dancer to admit corns and preach the use of the Blue Jay products. The Pond's Extract Co. has enlisted the Queen of Spain to serve its business, and Prince Wilhelm of Sweden indorses Melachrino cigarettes. The fair face of T. C. Clark, '26, "chosen as the best-dressed man of Princeton," is becoming nationally familiar through his selections of Ide shirts and collars. Indeed Princeton seems to "attract copy attention," for the advertising pages of McCaU's tell us that the windows of Avalon, the residence of Dr. Henry van Dyke at Princeton, N. J., are "shaded throughout with Hartshorn shade cloths mounted on Harts- horn rollers." It's all business now. There was a time when senti- ment played its part. Helen Woodward, in that absorbing story of her advertising career, "Through Many Windows," says that the ingenious agents of the ancient days — half a decade or so ago — used to work through societies collect- ing funds for philanthropic purposes. To such societies they would say, "We'll contribute $5,000 to your fund for each well-known name among your members which you will allow us to use in publicity," — and, Mrs. Woodward ex- plains, the secretary of the association, who had a hard job raising funds, took the proposition to its members and the job was done. "Even as an advertising man I resent this type of testi- monial," writes the friend who sends us the announcement of Famous Names, Inc. "It was much better in the old patent-medicine days, when at least they took the dope they wrote about." We resent it more because its implied con- tempt for the American people is too often justified. The dominant sections of American life believe that the people want to be gulled, and delight in gulling them — and, ob- viously, they do gull them. Like all advertising dodges, this particular method will lose its value when it becomes too common, when famous names, standardized, commercial- ized, and incorporated, lose their surprise value. But new tricks will be invented, and the dear public will gape and swallow them. One may only faintly hope that the public will also learn to laugh at them. Even politics is today suc- cessfully conducted as a form of advertising. Bruce Bar- ton's recent interview with President Coolidge was great advertising and good politics, much more realistic than

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 339 the serious discussion of political battles in which editors indulge. The chief hope of the republic sometimes seems to lie in awakening the capacity for independent laughter in the serious-minded, famous-name worshiping people of this country. Starvation and Surrender STARVATION is a hard master; it is driving British miners back to their jobs at the owners' terms. The miners were not quite willing to die, or to see their children die; so they are dribblin.tr back to their jobs. And for the moment the owners may deceive themselves into a feeling of security. If the British coal industry were safe in a pocket all by itself, if the miners dug coal for the sole use of the own- ers, then perhaps this end of the strike, with the workers ding to every one of the employers' demands, might the problem once for all. But coal is a national com- modity, affecting every basic industry in the country; sooner or later the miners will have found new strength to fijrht for a living wage; and the country will have another two- billion-dollar coal strike on its hands. This inevitable trav- eling of the weary circle seems so evident that one wonders why anyone fails to see it. Perhaps, indeed, Mr. Baldwin sees it quite clearly; but perhaps also he realizes that by the time the miners recover from the present setback it will be somebody else's problem. That is the most charitable view to take of the British Government's role in the crisis now drawing to a close; the Government was as weak, as shillyshallying, as shortsighted as it seems humanly possi- ble for a government to be. Mr. Baldwin was hailed, when the general strike was called off, as a colossus, a broad-minded, powerful he-man who by his courage and determination was solving a hitherto unsolvable difficulty. After conference with him the Trade Union Council agreed to call off the strike under the im- pression that the proposals for reorganization of the coal industry drawn up by Sir Herbert Samuel were to be made, under the aegis of the Government, the basis for negotia- tions between miners and mine-owners. The strike was called off under a sort of "gentlemen's agreement" which left the initiative to the Prime Minister. The miners, to be sure, were not consulted; they hoped in those days for better things than the Samuel memorandum. Mr. Baldwin then stepped into the breach with proposals of his own invention. Unfortunately the first thing on his list was a reduc- tion of wages for the miners, and this, since refusal of a wage-cut had been the corner-stone of the strike from the beginning, was turned down by the men. The owners rejected his plan for other reasons. But from time to time Mr. Baldwin hopefully offered new proposals, which were likewise declined by both sides. He spent each week-end at Chequers, hoping for a settlement of the strike. Mr. Churchill, guardian of the Exchequer, would not consider a subsidy while the industry was being reorganized ; the owners would not consider settling with the men in any but district agreements, which would destroy hope of reorgani- zation and break the back of the national union; the workers remained firm in their slogan of "not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay." In the face of this deadlock all the Prime Minister could suggest was more conferences, more endless and futile discussions. Now time works against da\ laborers. The mine-owners have been better able t wcath.r live lean months than were the workers, and the miners, face to face with the awful choice between star- vation and surrender, are. by handfuls, surrendering. Their leaders have little better to offer them than the stale hope i hat the Tory Government will remember the gentlemen's ment and keep the pledges which it has neglected for five long months. The fundamental trouble is that England's fundamental industry is sick. The workers have a right to demand a living wage, the mine-owners a right to refuse to operate .1 a loss. The industry needs a national reorganization, which would mean closing marginal mines and reducing the number of workers in the industry — and would, in turn, require a temporary subsidy by the Government. The last subsidy was sheer waste, because nothing was done during its operation to make its continuance unnecessary. A gov- ernment with courage and convictions could act in this emergency. Behind the difficulties of the mine-owners are the heavy royalties paid the land-owners, which amount to more than any subsidy. Unhampered by a supreme court and a written constitution, England's government has the power to tax the royalties out of existence. That, of course, would bring it into conflict with powerful interests, which Mr. Baldwin is unwilling to do. Instead, he shilly-shallies. And as a result of his eternal vacillation men are stumbling back to work at wages which, as his own Government's com- missions have shown, mean rickets and near-starvation for their children. A policy of frank opposition would be more decent. Couplets ONCE when Bernard Shaw had been irritated beyond endurance by the repetition of some metrical plati- tude he exclaimed petulantly "You can't make a lie true by putting it into a couplet"; but, Shaw notwithstanding, one can do almost that. To the simple mind any jingle has something of the miraculous about it; the very fact that a statement falls into rhyme and rhythm seems to indicate that there is a harmony, preestablished in nature, between the statements it makes ; men speak in prose, but the gods rhyme. Hence it is that, the world over, proverbs which embody the credo of the vulgar are usually expressed in jingle, and since whatever is true rhymes, whatever rhymes is true. The more sophisticated have not, to be sure, quite this simple faith. They are not absolutely sure that A pint's a pound The world around, or even that "Early to bed," etc., is true just because these statements seem to have an irrefutable neatness. Yet even here rhyme casts its magic spell, and many a plati- tude, many a false statement has gone thundering down the years merely because a Pope or a Dryden gave it that triumphant finality which is the secret of the heroic couplet. Such being the case it is remarkable that this couplet has fallen so completely into disuse. Mastery of it is difficult enough, but it requires only a little familiarity with the literature of the eighteenth century to show that quite serviceable and readable stuff was turned out by

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340 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 hundreds of fifth-rate writers. No form so completely dis- guises utter banality of thought or so easily gives the air of saying something when nothing whatever has been said. It sometimes descended to frightful depths, especially in the hands of the writers of political verse, but there are thousands of lines lost in forgotten volumes which, at least to those who have read enough couplets to appreciate their slightly absurd charm, may be read with amusement. Here, for example, is a comment upon woman's rights taken from a prologue contributed by a "Rev. Mr. Nares," whom oblivion has completely swallowed, to a play by Elizabeth Inchbald, an ornament to her sex, whose name still lingers faintly : I grant, as all my City friends will say, That Men should rule, and Women should obey: That nothing binds the marriage contract faster Than our "Zounds, Madam, I'm your Lord and Master." But since the Sex at length has been inclin'd To cultivate that useful part — the mind; Let us not force them back with brow severe, Within the pale of ignorance and fear, Confin'd entirely to domestic arts, Producing only children, pies, and tarts. Here, "children, pies, and tarts" becomes, aided by the jingle of "domestic arts," a very fair imitation of wit. On its serious side the great virtue of the couplet is in its intellectual simplification. Whoever would write it must acquire or assume a philosophy as lacking in shade as Pope's. Within its narrow limits is no room for com- plexities or qualifications; there can be nothing except Virtue and Vice, both capitalized and neither defined. But for that very reason those who find the modern world too complicated might practice it with profit. They will come, willy-nilly, to conclusions; they will be forced to conquer a doubt rather than spoil a couplet. What pessimist would not give up the protest which he struggles in vain to express if he could say the reverse in form as perfect as All Nature is but Art unknown to thee; All chance direction, which thou canst not see; . . . And spite of Pride, in erring- Reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is is right. The American Past THE study of Rome's democratization and decline which Professor Rostvotzefi has written and which Pro- fessor Westermann has reviewed for this issue of The Na- tion takes its place among a noble number of lengthy works produced by European scholarship in the necessary attempt to understand the grandfather of all Western nations. Gib- bon had his own purpose in writing the "Decline and Fall," and the great German historians of the nineteenth cen- tury had theirs. Professor Rostvotzeff's purpose, no doubt, is a purely modern one. Though we know nothing of his intellectual career, we can suppose that this investi- gator of the effects which followed the dissipation of Roman culture through the masses is one of the many men today who doubt the once unquestioned wisdom of the people, and who are disinclined to believe that a civilization can ever thrive after it has become the common property of vast numbers. Something like the same question, if not the same an- swer, might be said to underlie the researches which we in America have been making into our past since the begin- ning of the republic. For we have thought quite as much about our past as about our future. Our youth, as Oscar Wilde let one of his stage people say, is merely the oldest of our numerous traditions. The reader of contemporary books is likely to jump at the conclusion that the urge to poke around among the Fathers or to reconstruct, as museum pieces are reconstructed, the life of an older American generation is a brand-new urge, born perhaps of fatigue induced by too much speculation concerning the destinies still ahead of us. But no generation, at least during a century and a quarter, has been without this urge. The results of the research have differed with the shift from decade to decade of philosophical and political emphasis; it may be that our method just now is indeed brand-new. But always there has been research. And the lure has been the same, even when no one confessed it — the spectacle, everywhere beckoning to be examined, of a wide new con- tinent into which Europeans poured, bringing portions large or small of a civilization with which they were free to do what they would. That is the picture which we have painted in what- ever colors have happened to be fashionable or have seemed to be enduring. To Parson Weems it surely never occurred that W. E. Woodward, whose portrait of Washington is to- day presented to the American public, would come along and say of the principal Father that he was a good man — Parson Weems said as much — but a dull one. Weems was not interested in dulness or rather he was unconscious that the picture he lavished his best strokes upon was essentially uninteresting. And indeed it was not uninteresting to him. His virtues were not our virtues; with his Washington, if he ever existed, we will have nothing to do. He might reply from the grave that with Mr. Woodward's Washing- ton, if he ever existed, he would have nothing to do either. To George Bancroft it could not have occurred that a tribe of historians might be born in America whose business it would be to scrutinize the heroes of our early politics as ordinary politicians are scrutinized. But Charles A. Beard took a look at the makers of the Constitution, and the tribe was formed. James Truslow Adams began upon New Eng- land— and lo, we no longer gazed upon a little Greece, a little Rome, where statesmen of the Bancroft sort moved in classic, shining light. To Bancroft the spectacle of raw America filling up with Europeans was stately; to some of his successors it has yet to become so. Even Claude G. Bowers, who uses warm colors as he covers his canvas with' figures of old statesmen at war, and who obviously admires those statesmen when he does not agree that they were right, would not suit Bancroft or the generation of Ban- croft's readers. He too makes a recognizable man out of his hero Jefferson — as do most of the writers in this cen- tennial year who have reconsidered the Sage of Monticello. Recognizable men. That is what we happen to be after today, and the emphasis must be placed upon the first word. We want the Fathers to look like human beings — our own kind if need be, and at the thought we grimace, but at any rate human. The question, What do we recognize, or What is recognition, is a metaphysical one which phi- losophers would have to answer. The question whether we are in a better position to apprehend reality than our predecessors were is one that had better remain unanswered. We are interested in the facts, we say. And we should be. But every generation has been interested in what it con- sidered facts. So time and history go on.

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation :;il Real Estate vs. Human Lives in Florida 5TELLA CROSSLE? "rjiHK poor people who suffered are regarded as of less L importance than the hotel and tourist business of Florida." To any one unacquainted with the almost inhuman cupidity and unquenchable boosting instinct of the Florida realtor this public statement made by John Barton Payne, chairman of the American Red Cross, together with his eharges that Governor Martin ami other State officials and real-estate promoters were deliberately blocking relief work by nation-wide propaganda minimizing the extent of the recent hurricane disaster, must seem at first incredible. But to anyone like myself, without property interests in Florida, yet with the experience of having lived there through all seasons for the last two years. Mr. Payne's assertion can be recognized as the literal truth. His charges, moreover, are substantially corroborated by other Red Cross officials and by the reports of reliable Northern newspaper correspondents in the devastated area. These charges are that leading Florida boosters sent out thousands of circular letters and telegrams saying the damage was slight, reports had been greatly exaggerated, the situation was "well in hand." and outside contributions were not needed. One outstanding example of the effect of this was that Richmond, Virginia, stopped payment on a $10,000 relief-contribution check. This in the face of the Red Cross survey showing that at least 18,000 families were homeless and destitute and at least 4,000 persons lay suffering from injuries in makeshift and other hospitals. It was further charged that to minimize the extent of the disaster with an eye to this winter's tourist trade Florida officials falsified figures of the number of dead; that even many of the victims were hastily buried with- out attempt at identification though most could easily have been identified. Many of these latter were Negroes who were not counted among the dead, though Negroes afterward were considered of sufficient importance to be compelled at the point of guns to clear away the wreckage. When we add to all this evidence the explanation first given out that the chief cause of loss of life was the flimsy and faulty construction of most of the houses, we see Nature's unwitting cruelty ably assisted by man's cupidity written in Death's black letters over Florida today. In peculiar high relief one can see there not only the tragedy of Florida but also that of modern civilization in placing the importance of big profits over that of human life and over all the values that make that life worth living. Of course, blaming the loss of life upon flimsy construc- tion is an attempt, as I see it, to lessen if possible the severity of the hurricane, to insinuate to the outside public that the greatest tragedy resulted more from man's short- comings than from an aspect of south Florida's climate; but a contributing cause of loss of life was the influence of the realtor. This influence not only was back of the flimsy and faulty construction but worked, as I can testify it always has worked, against full warning reaching the rank and file of the people. Florida is on the edge of the tropics and hurricanes are to be reckoned with in the tropics. The best that man can do there is to admit calmly to himself and others that such things are always likely to happen and to take such precautions as are possible. Rut in Florida tiie realtor's cupidity and public opinion, which this cupidity dominates, forbade this. So in a land where human habitations should be specially constructed for strength they are generally constructed flimsily for huge profits; and where the public should have a full understanding of the possibilities of such hurricanes and severe storms it is considered sacrilege to speak of them. The policy of Florida newspapers which in recent years become mere real-estate house organs, has been to play down local storms and play up Northern ones to the advantage of the realtor. Before me now as I write is the Evening Independent of St. Petersburg, Florida, dated Saturday, September 18. This was the day St. Petersburg had been repeatedly warned by United States weather ob- si rvers that a hurricane would be likely to descend upon it. Such a warning, one would normally expect, should bring newspapers on the streets perhaps in extra editions or at least with their first pages devoted largely to this local news of such grave importance. Not so with the "Sunshine Paper," so called because it is given away, not sold, on any day the sun fails to shine on St. Petersburg. It carries a four-column half- tone on its front page under a heading, Flood Takes Possession of Kansas Town, and in a small box, one column width away, is the warning from the Washington Weather Bureau that the hurricane which has just swept the Florida East Coast is now descending upon St. Peters- burg. And the heading over this warning is Storm Dan- ger Here Seems to Be Past. The general public — even in St. Petersburg — will never know the full extent of damages, injuries, or deaths, if any of the latter, there. The "Sunshine City's" realtors demand that such things be played down. Despite them, however, word did reach the outside world by way of north- bound eye-witnesses that concrete benches were picked up and whirled about by the wind and that frame houses were leveled. Tampa, across the bay from St. Petersburg, suffered extremely little — so one would think from reading the Tampa Tribune. Its issue of the Monday following the storm, like the previous day's issue, gives virtually no news of what happened in Tampa other than damages sus- tained by the telephone and telegraph companies in fallen wires, while on the editorial page, in a column always given to bright editorial paragraphs, are such remarks as the following: "Tampa was signally fortunate" ; "Florida has sur- vived worse blows than this"; "The East Coast is getting more than its share of wind" ; "The storm subtracted from the interest in the prize-fight." We read in one dispatch from Miami that one paper there went contrary to the Weather Bureau and announced there would be no hurricane — thereby, of course, assisting Death. This likewise is the realtor speaking. He is ready to deny quickly anything that may affect realty values even

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342 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 when he has no facts to back up his statements. Typical of this attitude was a man accosted by Washington reporters on a Pullman just arrived from Miami after the hurricane. He insisted the reports of hurricanes and storms were "all lies" and that the newspapers were printing "irresponsible accounts which would cost Florida a lot of money." If derogatory reports cannot be downed in this way, the Florida realtor or booster has a way of pointing some- where else for a comparison which will show his climate not so bad after all. While Mr. S. Davies Warfield cannot exactly be classified as a realtor, being better known as a railroad president, his quoted remarks are typical of this method: "I doubt if there is as much water in the streets of these several localities [Florida East CoastJ as there was in the streets of Jamaica, Long Island, two we< les ago when automobiles there were floating through the streets instead of running on their tires." He added that "reports of the disaster are greatly exaggerated." Many realtors and boosters tried in other ways to minimize the extent of the disaster, some even going to the extent of declaring the hurricane a "blessing in disguise." Several were quoted as saying that the tourist camps about Miami had been destroyed, pointing out that "this was a good thing." Tourist camps net the realtor no profit and their usual unsightliness affects realty values. But what of the 13,000 poor campers? Having lived in South Florida through all seasons amid all the bombast and fustian of the real-estate boom, I have been particularly depressed by the reports coming out of Florida and the statements of absentee realtors in the North commenting thereon. For, interpreting them as I leaned how to interpret them through my residence there, it has seemed to me that many deaths and much property loss might have been avoided had the realtor not been allowed to dominate everything. I can testify of an instance wherein the press agent of one Tampa development caused all the newspapers there last December to suppress a story of deaths and damages caused by a mild hurricane to which his development was subjected, This story got into the bull-dog edition of one of the papers before he could finish his midnight, rounds, with the result that leading local realtors held an indignation meeting next day and cautioned the newspapers not to let such a thing happen again. George Washington — The Image and the Man By W. E. WOODWARD* III. Ahorse AFTER George Washington's death his widow burned every letter that she had received from him, with the exception of three or four, a handful that escaped apparently by accident. No one has ever elucidated the motive behind this letter-burning episode. Martha Washington knew at the time — indeed, the whole world knew — that George Wash- ington was a star of the first mi gnitude in the field of hi .tory, and that every scrap of his writing would be treasured and printed. Did she feel that his letters to her were so sacred in their intimacy that posterity had no right to read them? Possibly. But there are other tenable hypotheses. She was anti- democratic and anti-public to an extreme degree. Consider- ing her as surrounded by such limitations of perspective, one may readily conceive that her motive may have been simply one of aristocratic seclusion. In destroying his letters she effectually effaced herself, for she lived only in his reflected light. But that may have been what she wanted. The highest form of pride is a dis- dainful humility. From another point of view it is a reasonable inference that these letters did not show her and her husband in a sat- isfactory relation to each other. His letters — many of them — were probably dictatorial, for that was his ordinary man- ner in communicating with other members of his family. However, these are merely conjectures. We do not know why she destroyed his let'ers. She never gave her • This if the last of three instalments from the book "George Washing- ton— The Imnre and the Man." to be published on October 15 by Boni and Liveiight. The material is used through the courtesy of the author and his publishers. reasons. The episode lies at the bottom of the ocean of silence that surrounds so much of Washington's private life. •x- •:(• * * * One of the letters which eluded Martha's incendiary hand is dated June IT), 1758, and is written from the head- quarters of the column on its way to Fort Duquesnc. When I this letter was written George and Martha had been en- gaged about a month. He wrote: My dear: We have begun our march for the Ohio. A courier is starting for Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity to send a few words to one whose life is now inseparable from mine. Since that happy hour when we made our pledges to each other, my thoughts have been continually going to you as another self. That an all powerful Providence may keep us both in safety is the prayer of your ever faithful and affectionate friend, Geo. Washington. Nice letter, but full of reserves. Short and unromantic. He "embraces the opportunity to send a few words," and he does send very few of them. One thinks that the brisk hurry of the campaign is the reason for his telegraphic style; yet on September 12 he wrote a letter to Mrs. Sally Fairfax that is not a bit telegraphic in manner. It was written from the camp at Fort Cumberland, and runs in these words : Dear Madam: Yesterday I was honoured with your short but very agreeable favour of the first inst. How joy- fully I catch at the happy occasion of renewing a cor- respondence which I feared was disrelished on your part, I leave to time, that never failing Expositor of all things, and to a monitor equally as faithful in my own Breast to Testifie. In silence I now express my joy. Silence, which in some cases — I wish the present — speaks more intel- ligibly than the sweetest Eloquence. If you allow that any honour can be derived from my opposition to our present System of management you

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 343 destroy the merit of it entirely in me by attributing my anxiety to the animating prospect of possessing Mrs. Custis, when — I need not name it, guess yourself — should not my own Honour and My Country's welfare be the excitement? 'Tis true I profess myself a votary to love. I acknowledge that a lady is in the case; and further, I confess that this Lady is known to you. Yes, Madam, as well as she is to one who is too sensible to her charms to deny the Power whose influence he feels and must ever submit to. I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection of a thousand tender passages that I could wish to obliterate till I am bid to revive them; but ex- perience, alas! sadly reminds me how impossible this is, and evinces an opinion, which I have long entertained, that there is a Destiny which has the sovereign control of our actions not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature. You have drawn me, my dear Madam, or rather I have drawn myself, into an honest confession of a Simple fact. Misconstrue not my meaning, 'tis obvious; doubt it not, nor expose it. The world has no business to know the object of my love, declared in this manner to — you, when I want to conceal it. One thing above all things, in this world I wish to know, and only one person of your ac- quaintance can solve me that or guess my meaning — but adieu to this till happier times, if ever I shall see them; the hours at present are melancholy dull — Be assured that I am Dr. Madam with most unfeigned regard. Yr. most obedient, Most Obliged Hble. Servant, Geo. Washington. ***** Mrs. Fairfax replied promptly, but her letter has dis- appeared. A historical misfortune. She evidently pre- tended to misunderstand, and Washington wrote to her again on September 25. Dear Madam : Do we still misunderstand the true meaning of each other's letters? I think it must appear so, tho' I would feign hope the contrary, as I cannot speak plainer without — but I'll say no more and leave you to [I omit most of this letter, as it is devoted mainly to a description of the military operations.] One thing more and then I have done. You asked if I am not tired at the length of your letter. No. Madam, I am not, nor never can be while the lines are an inch asunder to bring you in haste to the end of the paper. . . . He says in this letter that he "cannot speak plainer without — " Yes, but without what? We may confidently supply the answer, which is that he cannot speak plainer without coming right out and telling her that he loves her. He does not want to do that, because she is his friend's wife and because he is engaged to another woman. But he wants her to know it, just the same. Now, they [Washington and Martha Custis] are mar- ried, happy, and settled down at Mount Vernon. Martha called George her Old Man — a term still used in the South by wives in speaking of their husbands — and he calls her Patsy. When she wants to persuade him to do anything she holds on to a button of his coat and looks up at his face with a smile. A tall, large-jointed man with a pock-marked face and icy cold blue eyes; and a plump little woman twist- ing his coat-buttons and pouting. She is a gay little woman, but not frivolous. The gaiety of good health, good nature, and a small mind. I have mentioned Washington's coldness, his reserve, and his capacity for saying No in such a way that it carried the sense of emphatic finality. Men of this type are often stern and forbidding in manner, but Washington was not. His feeling of courtesy was strong; his manners were good, and he never forgot them. It would be too much to say that he was a charming person. He was too serious to have the fluid quality of charm, but he was pleasant and agreeable; and his conver- sation even with people whom he detested left the impres- sion of quiet urbanity. Beneath the gripping materialism of his nature there ran a warm current of affection for children. He remem- bered the names of children he had met, and his pockets were full of presents for them. # * * * * Washington's political career began in 1758 with his election to the House of Burgesses as a member from Frederick County. He had kept his eye on the office for several years. In 1755 he wrote to his brother that he would like to be a candidate that year if Colonel Fairfax did not want the place. Some of the Fairfaxes evidently had a candidate, for Washington's brother let the matter drop. Two years later he was a candidate, but received only forty votes. Then, in 1758, he appeared on the list again, with the Fairfaxes behind him. Powerful as these great landowners were, they did not make his success at the polls an assured matter, for shortly before the election Lord Fairfax wrote to William Fairfax: "I fear Col. Washington will be very hard pushed." Needless fears ... it all turned out well. Washington received three hundred and one votes, which was the largest number cast for any candidate. He did not appear per- sonally at the election, as he was on the Virginia frontier in the war against the French and Indians, but he was well known to all the voters, either by acquaintance or reputa- tion. There were no campaign speeches; liquor was freely distributed and took the place of political eloquence. With a generous hand he provided refreshments for the tired voters. This is what the election cost him: £ s d 40 gallons of Rum Punch at 3/6 per gain. 7 0 0 15 gallons of Wine at 10/ per gain. 7 10 0 Dinner for your Friends 3 0 0 13 y2 gallons of Wine at 10/ 6 15 0 3% pts. of Brandy at 1/3 4 4V2 13 gallons of Beer at 1/3 16 3 8 qts. Cyder Royal at 1/6 12 0 30 gallons of strong beer at 8d 10 0 1 hhd. & 1 Barrell of Punch, consisting of 26 gals, best Barbadoes rum at 5/ 6 10 0 12 lbs. S. Refd. Sugar at 1/6 18 9 10 Bowls of Punch at 2/6 15 0 9 half pints of rum at 7V2d each 0 5 7% 1 pint of wine 0 16 Confronted with this comprehensive list, one mentally calculates . . . three hundred and one Washington voters . and enough liquor to stock a barroom. They must have been formidable indeed in their carrying capacity. But let us keep in mind that drinking was not a furtive sin, as it is with us; nor was it a pastime. It was a sort of athletic sport. Men tried for records as one-bottle men or two-bottle men. A three-bottle man (and there were a few) was looked up to with the reverence that we show nowa-

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344 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 days only to champion prize-fighters and noted preachers. Washington was a one-bottle man. This means that at dinner he customarily drank a pint of Madeira, besides rum punch and beer. He preferred Madeira to all other beverages, but he was catholic in his drinking habits, and often drank cider, champagne, and brandy. If he was ever intoxicated I have never read of it; and, judging from what I know of his character, I am inclined to think he never was. ***** Washington's name seldom appears in the vast record of the ten years' controversy that preceded the revolution. It was a time of eloquence and argument, but he was neither an orator nor a writer. Backbiting commentators have hinted that Washington was really pro-British until the bullets began to fly, and that he took up the revolutionary cause only when he came to the conclusion that the patriots would win. Nothing could be further from the truth. If it were v% >rth while it would be easy to prove that he was anti-Brit- ish as early as 1760. In this case one may tack "anti" and "British" together with a neat sense of accuracy, for he was more thoroughly anti-British in these early years than many others who held prominent posts on the patriotic side dur- ing the revolution. His antipathies are easy to discern, but when we com" to his preferences we find ourselves in doubt. He was anti- British, but pro what? The idle determinative "pro" goes dangling about in the air, endeavoring to hook on to some- thing. Finally we think of land, and then we have it. lie was pro-Land and anti-British . . . and pro-Land meant the American side. A map of his political views in the pre- revolutionary period would be simply a map of the West- ern Territory, with a few disappointing financial statements from his London agents tacked on to one corner. * x At the first attempt of British troops to seize a handful of the patriots' military supplies at Concord, the red-coats were met by embattled farmers who fired the shot that, is supposed to have been heard around the world. L may not have been heard around the world, but it was heard as far as Virginia. Colonel George Washington heard it, and when the Second Continental Congress con- vened in Philadelphia he appeared in his uniform, the only man on the floor so attired. He had already declared, at the Virginia Convention, thai he was willing to raise a thou sand men, and march them at hi.", own expense lo the relief of Boston. He sat in Congress, day after day, a silent member silent in speech, but loud in military garments - like ;t bright-plumed game-cock in a barnyard. It was his way of saying that war was inevitable, and that he was ready. The fox-hunter had come out of his serene noon of land, horses, and dogs, to sit in meditation among the large intellects. Rather dramatic, in a way. Every visitor who hung around the door naturally inquired: "And who is the tall gentleman in uniform?" One day in the middle of June Cousin John Adams met Cousin Samuel Adams as they were both about, to enter the door of Congress. "Well, what for today?" said Cousin Samuel. "I am going to move today," replied Cousin John, "that Congress adopt the army before Boston, and that Colonel George Washington be appointed its commander-in-chief." Cousin Samuel was all for the adoption of the army by Congress; but Colonel Washington's name was not to be found among his carefully selected enthusiasms. The army is a New England army — he argued — and Washington is from Virginia; a wealthy aristocrat from Virginia. Wouldn't this appointment rather dampen the ardor? . . . "It is just because he is from Virginia, and aristo- cratic and wealthy, that I propose to nominate him," said Cousin John, in substance. "There is nothing that the revolutionary movement needs quite as much as it needs aristocracy and wealth; and above all it needs Virginia and the South." * * * * * When John Adams got on his feet to nominate a com- mander-in-chief John Hancock, who, as president of the Congress, was in the chair, thought that Adams intended to name him. Adams portrayed the high qualifications that the new commander must possess; and continuing, he said: Gentlemen, I know these qualifications are high, but we all know they are needful in this crisis in this chief. Does any one say they are not to be obtained in this country? In reply, I have to say they are; they reside in one <if our own body — John Hancock was all smiles. — and he is the man whom I now nominate — George Washington of Virginia. Washington, apparently startled, rose hurriedly and left the room. The upturned crescent of Hancock's smile turned into a downward curve of chagrin. John Adams wrote that he had never seen any one's expression change as quickly as Hancock's changed that day. The nomination was opposed by some of the delegates, even by some of the Virginians. Edmund Pendleton of Vir- ginia spoke against it. In secret, session, of course, and while Washington was out of the room. The question was deferred until next day, and then Washington was appointed commander-in-chief by unanimous vote. * * * * * The licit ish shall remember the day when Captain George Washington, "a very deserving gentleman," wanted a British army commission and was lightly refused. Free Speech (!) in Cincinnati By MARY I). BRITE IOO not know whether a permit is necessary in order to hold a street meeting in other cities of the United States, but it is necessary in Cincinnati. So when Mother Bloor came to Cincinnati to organize a relief conference for the benefit, of the Passaic textile strikers, and said she would like to have a street meeting, I undertook to arrange one for her. Now, street meetings have been rather common occur- rences here in the past, but in order not to make any mis- take the Chief of Police was approached and requested to issue a permit. He said at once that he would issue the permit, but on being told the nature of the meeting — that it, was in behalf of the Passaic textile strikers — he amended his first statement by saying that a permit could not be issued under those circumstances. Said the Chief of Police

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 345 — I am quoting him literally: "You know if I were to issue a permit for such a meeting it would be a virtual acknowl- edgment on the part of the city administration that it was in favor of strikes. The city administration is not in favor of strikes. No permit can be issued." Now, last fall Cincinnati adopted a new form of city government — that is, new for Cincinnati. We had been ruled for many years by a corrupt Republican gang which had been voted out while a city-manager plan had been voted in. Even some of the radicals had taken a hand in working for the new deal this promised. It was suggested to me that the Chief of Police was not the last court of appeal, so I took the matter to the local counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, who agreed to bring it to the attention of the City Manager; he did so and was told by the City Manager that the probabilities were the Chief of Police had refused a permit because an appeal for funds would be made, and there was an ordinance against appealing for funds on the city streets, irrespective of the cause involved. I informed him that this was not the reason assigned by the Chief of Police and that in applying for a permit no reference had been made to such an appeal. Thereupon he offered to interview the chief himself, and was told by him that it was because an appeal for funds was contemplated that the permit was refused. It was suggested then that if we still desired a street meeting a formal application should be made, assigning the reason for holding it and eliminating therefrom an appeal for financial aid. This was done and with this formal appli- cation I called on the chief in person. After reading it he informed me that no permit would be granted. I inquired if he would tell me why it was refused. Said he: "The purpose of this meeting is to cause a disturbance. Cincinnati people are not interested in the Passaic strike. If you want to inform them why don't you hire a hall? The reason that other towns are lawless and have trouble is because such permits have been granted. I am here," said the noble Chief of Police, striking his desk a vigorous blow which made me jump, "to protect the people of this town against such lawlessness and trouble. The per- mit is refused. Another reason for refusing it is because you expect to take up a collection, or at any rate appeal for funds, which is not permitted. It doesn't make any differ- ence what you say is the purpose of the meeting. That is only another way of whipping the devil around the stump. No permit will be issued." As I left the august presence he informed me that I could take the matter to the City Manager over his head, and I lost no time in acquainting the attorney for the Civil Lib- erties Union with the result of my interview. He wrote a strong letter to the City Manager, pointing out the guar- anties regarding freedom of speech and public assemblage contained in the Constitution of the United States. He in- formed him that he was fully advised as to what the actions of city officials should be under such circumstances and that the Chief of Police in refusing a permit for this meeting had violated the fundamental principles of American civil liberties. To this letter the City Manager replied that he had conferred with the Chief of Police, in whose office such matters were handled, and that he had stated the reason the permit was refused was because the locations specified in the letter were in a congested area. This was the fourth reason assigned for refusing the permit. I then submitted a list of alternate locations; street corners which had been used time and again for political meetings, at every one of which I had spoken myself during political campaigns, and said that we were not arbitrary; that we would take any location that was satisfactory to the City Manager and Chief of Police, provided we were not sent to an obscure street in a distant suburb. The up- shot was that the City Manager and Chief of Police ruled that in the future no street meetings were to be held in Cincinnati by any organization for any cause whatsoever, having been reduced to this extremity to avoid granting a permit for a street meeting to discuss the Passaic textile strike. A Battle of Editors By FRANCIS PAUL LAST spring Mr. Julian Harris, editor of the Enquirer- Sun of Columbus, Georgia, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize "for meritorious and disinterested public service." His paper was thus signally honored because of his "brave and energetic fight against the Ku Klux Klan, against the enactment of a law barring the teaching of evolution, against dishonest and incompetent public officials, against lynching, and for justice to the Negro." In the middle of the summer two magazine articles ap- peared, carrying before a wide reading public congratula- tions to the little news sheet of less than 10,000 circulation and making it nationally known. Mr. Thomas Boyd, author of "Through the Wheat," who spent part of the past winter in Columbus, contributed to the Forum an article entitled Defying the Klan and Mr. Charles F. Pekor, Jr., head of the Pekor Iron Works, of Columbus, Georgia, a former Texas journalist, wrote for the American Mercury an article en- titled An Adventure in Georgia. These articles told of the coming of Mr. Harris and Mrs. Harris to Columbus in 1921, of the high tone and quality of the editorial page conducted by them, of Mr. Harris's out- standing battle for free speech, for decency, and for toler- ance. To make the accomplishments and the courage of Mr. Harris stand out in their true light, the writers painted a black, but somewhat true, picture of conditions in Georgia. At about the same time an army officer stationed in the neighborhood gave a clear presentation of facts concerning a trial in a Georgia court of "justice" in The Nation. Immediately there arose a furore. The Macon Tele- graph accused Mr. Harris of seeking publicity among North- ern editors at the expense of his native State, and even went so far as to insinuate that he had written the Boyd article — alleged as one reason the fact that the editor of the Macon papT did not know who Mr. Boyd was. Charles Scrib- ner's Sons, his publishers, would have shuddered with hor- ror; but such ignorance of modern literature is not unusual in those parts. At the same time the editor of the Americus Times-Recorder launched a personal attack on the army offi- cer who had turned author and demanded his court martial. In the city of Columbus itself the editor of the Ledger aroused himself and with wounded vanity and State pride declared it was time to call a halt on attempts to besmirch Georgia. He repeated, as if he believed it, the charge of collaboration in or authorship of the Boyd article, against Mr. Harris. He accused Mr. Harris of having supported

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346 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 the articles in question simply because the latter reprinted those articles without condemning them. The editor of the Ledger was wrong in his logic but perfectly consistent — for he himself never reprinted any article with which he disagreed, and even went so far as to lambaste such articles without giving their authors the chance of a hearing by producing what had originally been said. All the while, Mr. Harris blithely reprinted all sides of the controversy. He even reprinted, without comment, the Ledger's attacks upon him, thus destroying that newspaper's logic. Papers more distant took a hand in the controversy. From Dalton, Madison, and Greensboro, Georgia, and from Brooklyn, New York, editors spoke fairly and well of Mr. Harris's attitude. The Dothan (Alabama) Eagle assailed the Ledger in vigorous terms: The fact that the Ledger has led the fight upon the Enquirer-Sun is unusual, for the Ledger has for years been in a state of coma, editorially. It has displayed no courage other than to attack a competitor for an article written by a Columbus citizen and published in a magazine several hundred miles away. Prior to its present fit the Ledger has confined its comments to elaborate editorials on hookworm, second-hand opinions on European politics, an occasional puff about Fort Benning, spasmodic grumbles about road hogs, and detailed cures for dandruff. It has not seen fit to offer moral lessons on the South's bigotry, her innate super- stitions, her guileless people dominated by mountebanks and demagogues and bullied by any illiterate evangelist who shouts almost silly sermons based on pleas to prejudice and plain ignorance. ... It has remuneratively followed tin- crowd, never daring to venture a new thought. In short, the Ledger's editorial page is merely a reluctant bow to established precedent. In all probability it would p efer to run patent-medicine ads in the place of editorials, and we unhesitatingly confess that the patent-medicine ads would, no doubt, be more informative. This Alabaman explosion caused a turmoil in the edi- torial office of the Ledger. The editor fell back on the charge of complicity and collaboration: As published, the editorial carried the earmarks of local preparation, but we are not going so far as the Macon Telegraph in placing responsibility. Nor are we going to say that Pekor had been asked to prepare his ugly article, de- spite interesting rumors on the subject. . . . The Enquirer- Sun persists in defending the poisonous articles by going to Alabama, New York, and other points for mere straws of approval. All the time Mr. Harris of the Enquirer-Sun continues to twinkle his merry little eyes, to smile in his unperturbed fashion, to make no editorial defense or attack, and simply by reprinting the words of others to let his readers know all that is being said on both sides. He believes that the right of free speech includes the right to be controversial. By letting all things be said, by battling straightforwardly on main issues and avoiding the personal, he has accom- plished his work. The Greensboro Herald-Journal has said: Julian Harris merited the Pulitzer award several years before it was rightly awarded to his paper. Sometimes he might err — we all do — but most of the times he is right. He doesn't color his news. He features and prints adverse newspaper criticism concerning himself. Julian Harris is the man who i .moved the mask from the Klan in this State. . . . Julian Harris saved "Mule" Hicks, a Negro, fr0m the gallows." If a judge be inflammatory, or appear so, Mr. Harris says what he thinks, even if brought up afterward for con- tempt of court. A Negro stole a mule and was sentenced to twenty years. He escaped with a group on an occasion when a convict guard was killed. A jury was assured by the prosecutor, it appears, that the punishment would be light, and told by the judge that they had better bring in a verdict promptly or they would be locked up for the night. They said: "Guilty"; the Negro was sentenced to be hanged. Mr. Harris exposed the circumstances surrounding the ver- dict, and it was his effort that secured for "Mule" Hicks the Governor's pardon. And all the while the Ledger was prat- ing of the sanctity of the law and the finality of a verdict, just as though a miscarriage of justice were as rare as a divine miracle in this day and age. If there were more editors like Julian Harris in Georgia, and in the nation at large, the journalistic profession would be a more worthy one. And if for each such there were excitable opponents like the editor of the Enquirer-Sun's local rival, and chief assailant, there would be some relief to the dead level of editorial space-filling. In the Driftway THE Drifter was going to the pereval, or pass, with his friend Boris. In bargaining for a horse and a guide they acquired also eight goats and an ass, which the guide was inspired to take from his town house to his cottage in the mountains. As an American business man this guide would be worth millions. He may even be rich in Russia, where money can sometimes be amassed in secret by a peasant so long as he is careful not to arouse suspicion by spending any of it. ***** AZAZT was the Drifter's horse. She was loaded with clothing and provisions, but not with two fresh and evil-smalling goat skins which the guide wanted to take along. This small victory went to the Drifter, but all the others went to the little guide. His black eyes, so close to- gether that they were almost one, sparkled with greed. When he met an acquaintance on the road he explained in a buzzing stream of his native Imeritinian what an easy mark an American Drifter was. At last the baggage and live stock were ready. The Drifter climbed up on Azazi's high saddle; and the cavalcade started; ahead the capering Azazi with the Drifter; then Boris on foot, amiably carry- ing a large bundle for the guide; next the ass and the fam- ily of goats; and finally the guide, shouting and whistling to his flock. Azazi did not caper long. When the ascent began she quickly tired under her heavy load, so that sym- pathy compelled the Drifter to get off and walk in the steep places. The guide lagged behind, coaxing a tired young goat. Every now and then the ass wandered, brows- ing, into the woods. Little by little the procession climbed the trail. ***** TOWARD sunset they wound into an Alpine meadow, filled with lovely and improbable flowers, and some familiar ones, much superior to their lowland cousins; the deep rose, beautifully shaped daisies, the high stalks with clusters of grayish bubbles, the shaggy round ostrich feath- ers, wild sunflowers, red thistles, and slender orange cro- cuses. All these the cows and goats devour, and turn them

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 347 into milk, which the natives turn into sour, stringy cheese. On the whole it did not impress the Drifter as an improve- ment, even when the cheese turns into a sturdy, dirty native. * * * # * THE Drifter has often confessed in The Nation his secret prejudice against automobiles and other devices of an over-developed civilization. At intervals this preju- dice becomes so strong that his doctors advise him to take a treatment. The best treatment he has ever found is living in a balagan. A balagan is a shepherd's hut of one or more rooms, its framework of logs covered with a patch- work of rude shingles. The cracks serve for ventilation; if you want light you open the door. The floor is packed mud, covered with a little straw. Straw also covers the low plat- form of logs that serves for bed. In the center of the room is a round, stone fireplace. Why the straw and shingles don't burn up in one puff the Drifter did not discover; perhaps because the fire is always a small one of roots and green rhododendron twigs. From a rafter hangs a rope and long wooden hook above the fireplace for the pot. That is all. By night a balagan looks like the paper lanterns chil- dren make at Christmas. By day smoke oozes from every pore. The smell of that smoke hangs over the whole valley. much of the greatness of Montaigne; but Mr. Krutch is the first critic I have met who points out the great role isolation also played in forming the genius of Anatole France. The hitter's power to draw within himself and out of life was greater than that of Montaigne because it was more subtle. Johnson City, Tennessee, August 9 H. Mulvaney, Instructor in French, East Tennessee State Teachers College The Story of Philosophers To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Many thanks for delaying the publication of your review of "The Story of Philosophy" until after I had an oppor- tunity to purchase and read the book. Had I read the review before I acquired the book I might have been deprived of many hours of joy, an abundance of knowledge, and the inspiration to enrol at Columbia University for the study of philosophy. The book was not written for philosophers to whom the manner of its conception "would be rudely uncongenial if not heretical" but for those who missed "the joy of philosophy" in attempting to obtain it direct from the works of the philosophers without the guidance of "The Story of Philosophy." "Real philosophers who ruled the perfect state" not only would not have exiled Dr. Durant but would have elevated him to the position of co-ruler. Brooklyn, N. Y., September 27 Max Herzfeld FOR days the Drifter lived in his balagan in the pereval. He lived the simple life, not quite as the natives live it. But if he ate more kinds of things than they did — if he added to their milk and cheese his nasty messes of dried vegetables, he made up by having less furniture. There was no splintery hewn wooden tub to bathe the baby in; there was a single blanket which had to be supplemented with his entire wardrobe before he could sleep at night. If he did not herd cattle and make cheese during the day, he worked hard climbing the valley walls without a trail and visiting an occasional glacier. There were nights when the balagan leaked like a sieve under a pelting shower of rain and hail. The Drifter does not claim that the cure is permanent; but he stored up enough loving thoughts of steam radiators and electric percolators and overstuffed armchairs and hot shower baths, and, yes, even automobiles, to last several months in the gasoline-laden air of New York City. The Drifter Correspondence Mr. Krutch and M. France To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: One reason I read every Nation book review, even on subjects so far from my range of interest as the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands, is because always, behind the review, I catch the gleam of the peculiar philosophical or literary glow of the individual reviewer, and am heartened thereby. You seem to have the gift of finding reviewers who glow. Mr. Krutch's review, A Master of the Accessible, is excel- lent; his vision is straight and deep. In pointing out that one of the deep springs of Anatole France's genius was his power to hold himself aside from the rushing current of life, Mr. Krutch also reveals the cause of that feeling of baffled envy to which the twentieth-century amateur of France is prey. The current of life has caught us and whirls us along its zigzag course. Our generation cannot hope to express itself through such channels of exquisite smoothness as France used. To this same power of aloofness has often been attributed Divine Wrath To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I don't often object to anything written about me or about my work, especially in America, which still knows me as little as they knew Whitman while he was alive. But you have published recently an attack upon me by someone called Nathan Asch, that I want to speak about because it is a simple series of lying, ignorant statements which ought not to appear in any decent journal. Nathan Asch tells me that my prose is hardly readable and that the second volume of "My Life" is distinctly inferior to the first, and that the stock of jokes is poorer than that of any smoking-car drummer; he adds, "The sex episodes are similar to those that can be bought in any well-protected bookshop." He ends up by comparing me with Casanova and telling me I have not the latter's gifts or integrity. Now, sir, the poor fool doesn't know that Casanova wrote in French, which was not his mother tongue. The other day the first newspaper in France, the Figaro, asked me to write on Verlaine, the French poet, and said that I was the only for- eigner they had asked to write about a French poet. The Jour- nal des Debats and the Temps both gave six columns to my study of Renan and the Debats said that it was the best portrait of Renan they have seen. The English have a good proverb: "One can only be judged by one's peers." Bernard Shaw has put me with Ben Jonson as the best critic of Shakespeare. Do you think Nathan Asch is my peer? Nice, September 1U Frank Harris After Prison, Thanks To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I have been granted a full and unconditional pardon after thirteen years in prison. Many thanks for the efforts put forth through The Nation and otherwise. Can you put a little notice in The Nation thanking everyone who took an in- terest in and helped me — I have lost the addresses of the friends who have helped me pass otherwise weary moments by corre- sponding with me. Good luck to you on The Nation — may it always be a power. Mena, Arkansas, August 29 Charles Cline

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348 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 The Eucharistic Congress To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: One of your correspondents, A. J. Petty of Newark, N. J., says in The Nation for September 8: One of the objects of the Eucharistic Congress in the United States was to bring- pressure to bear on Mexico through a show of strength and influence. I am credibly informed that five years ago Cardinal Mundelein intended to invite the International Eucharistic Congress to meet in Chicago. The present Mexican situation was then undreamed of. Can A. J. Petty give one shred of evidence to back up his statement? New York, September 22 A. M. NOONAN Education a la Legion To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The American Legion has just been holding its Cali- fornia State Convention, and it cheered wildly a speaker who called for the suppression of some Communist schools in Los Angeles. Since the American Legion is taking charge of our education, it becomes important to know what it has to teach our children. There follow portions of a letter which give some informa- tion on this subject. The writer is a young hig-h-school girl who, with her mother and another woman friend, set out to motor to British Colombia. We spent the night at the Tremont Hotel in Red Bluff and there were a great many American Legion men there, waiting to go to a convention in Susanville. Heavens, you should have heard the noise! They got drunk, of course, and all night long some were walking up and down the street, shouting to on- another, sue ring to beat the hand, and singing tin- usual songs. They even called hack and forth across the street. You should have been there: And that's not all. They not only kept every- body awake, hut climbed to the balcony and tried to come into our rooms. We shouted and called to them to stop, but one man even forced the lock on the screen door and only stopped when I slammed the inner door in his face. This was at ?, a. m., and the noise kept up until 7 the next morning. The hotel clerk could not stop them. Don't you think it is a perfect outrage that people, nd especially American Region men who are supposed to be the bulwarks of the government, should conduct them selves like that? Pasadena. California, August in Upton Sinclair Who's Who in America To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I see you have an article with regard to the United States and other Christian nations patrolling the rivers of China, and I should like to call your attention to an act of Congress, entitled The Chinese Trading Act, which was ap- proved September 19, 1922, and authorized corporations to trade in China. This act confers great and special privileges and impliedly guarantees that the government will furnish the money to protect our men trading' in China, even if they should import opium or other contrabands in violation of the laws of China. I do not think it is worth while, as long as we hold the Philippines, to make any fuss about our invasion of the sovereignty of China. The United States is out for empire. The republic ceased to exist long ago. We are a government of, for, and by the cor- porations— an autocracy of artificu " persons without human sympathy, the most cruel form of government ever created by man. An organized movement is now on to acquire the title to the farms of the Mississippi and Missouri River Valley by corporations; these farms in large areas are to be scientifically cultivated by hired men and machinery, to produce cheap food for their factory slaves. The only issue in this country is the issue between the robbed and the robbers; between the exploited and the ex- ploiters; between the men who do the work and produce all the wealth and have none of it and the men who produce none of the wealth and have all of it. Sioux Falls, S. D., September 22 R. F. Pettigrew, former United States Senator for South Dakota Lazarus To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Aberystwith is a gay little watering-place in Wales. Its life depends on the university which holds a position of dignity throughout Great Britain, and on the summer visitors who, when the weather is fine, swarm upon the esplanade and sprawl upon the sands. The annual Plenary Conference of League of Nations Societies was originally scheduled for Dres- den, but after the March fiasco at Geneva the plans were hastily changed, and little Aberystwith was chosen in its stead. Aberystwith greeted it with Welsh music, fervent and stirring, Welsh enthusiasm, and Welsh hospitality. David Davis, M. P., a man of great influence in the countryside, made all the foreign delegates his guests, and hotels and university dormitories opened their doors wide in uncalculating hospi- tality. Among' the delegates were the veteran Dumba of Austria, Giannini of Italy, Norman Angel], who had lived to see his prophecies too truly realized and bore the look of it, the Viscountess Gladstone (nibbling chocolates in moments of re- laxation), and the Russian Princess Radziwill, somber and brooding- and elegantly gowned. There were Admiral Lowe of the British navy and General Montgelas of the German army, but the delegate who focused most popular interest and curiosity was Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, one-time ambassador from Germany to the United States of America. This, it seemed, was Count Bernstorff's first public appear- ance in an enemy country since the war. David Davis presided, flanked by the ruddy bishop with his spectacles on the end of his nose, and the mayor, resplendent in robe and chain. The meeting- was perhaps an hour old when David Davis rose to introduce Bernstorff. He moved forward resolutely with a pale, set face. It was apparent that he was used to facing antag-onism and hatred, and that while he would not allow them to stand in his way, that they were iron in his soul. At his opening words a dreadful and passionate cry came from the back of the hall. A man had risen in the audience and with a face distorted by passion shrieked aloud: "How about the Lusitania? How about the Lusitania, I say!" The tones went through and through his hearers. They expressed the extremity of emotion; one wondered of what terrible experience it was the expression. There was a moment of uncertainty. Many in the great audiem ed the emotion of the man who had cried out. Bernstorff's name would always be linked with the most spec- tacular crime of the war, whose sufferings were fresh in the memory of every one present. The meeting might have in a moment be< n turned into a riot, but a spirit that did credit to the people of that remote provincial town prevailed. Some one led off in applause, obviously intended to cover the dis- turbance, and in a moment it was taken up by the crowd till the hall reechoed to it. And when Bernstorff resumed his speech he received an ovation, led by David Davis. The incident expressed a willingness and a wish to believe in the sincerity of the man so lately hated and feared as a dangerous enemy, when he said to them virtually: "The old way was an evil way. Let us find a better one." Ho?ifleur, Franoe, August 15 Mary Kelsey

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International Relations Section Russia, the Land Contradictions By SHERWOOD EDDY* o f DURING August I made my fourth visit to Russia with a party of twenty-four American business men, edi- tors, educators, and social workers. On my first visit in 1912, under the Czarist regime, I obtained police permits to conduct religious meetings in St. Petersburg and Kiev, and, although denied permission, conducted meetings in the rooms of the students in Moscow. In 1926, after nine years under the present Government, while our country has been flooded with propaganda both red and white and with the wild tales of emigres of the old order, it seemed that the time had come for an unofficial group to make an objective, impartial, fact-finding study of actual conditions in Russia and to share their impressions with their friends in America. As a month was all too short to make such a study, Professor Jerome Davis of Yale, who speaks Russian well after living under the Czarist, Kerenski, and Soviet regimes, was sent in advance to gather information and make preparations for the party. We were particularly on our guard lest we should be a "personally conducted" dele- gation shown only the most favorable things by govern- ment interpreters. Our party included four persons who spoke Russian and we employed twelve other interpreters, the majority of whom belonged to the old order rather than the new. We were granted entire freedom in Russia, we went where we wished, chose the institutions we wished to inspect, and freely interviewed both friends and foes of the present Government. Some of us flew from Berlin to Moscow in a day, in a never-to-be forgotten flight in a storm. During a total of two weeks in Moscow we interviewed some thirty of the Soviet Union's principal leaders, including Stalin, who, more than any other, has succeeded to Lenin's influence and power; Chicherin, Minister of Foreign Affairs; Luna- charski, Minister of Education, and many heads of depart- ments of the state and the church, members of the Czarist regime, foreign diplomats, business men, and newspaper correspondents, as well as workers and peasants. We vis- ited, of course, all possible places of importance, such as the historic Kremlin, the seat of the present Government, as it had been the fortress and home of the rulers of church and state for eight centuries. We saw the palaces and crown jewels of the Czars, also factories, schools, prisons, museums, galleries, and the remarkable institutions of social education and service for workers and peasants, of which Russia is so proud. We visited the medieval city of Nizhni-Novgorod and attended its picturesque fair, which for five centuries has been a meeting-place of East and West. We inspected here one of the 300 high-power wireless stations by which Russia keeps in touch with all parts of the world. For a * Sherwood Eddy headed the unofficial group which went to investigate Russia. The conclusions reached and the judgment of the group on the advisa- bility of American recognition of the Soviet Union will be printed next week in the International Relations Section. night and a day we journeyed down the blue Volga to Kazan, (he capital of the autonomous Tartar Republic which claims to represent one of a hundred peoples, nationalities, and minorities now liberated for the full development of their own culture, education, and government, as a volun- tary member of the U.S.S.R. Four members of the party visited the southern Ukraine, the Crimea, and the Caucasus, while one crossed and recrossed the Trans-Siberian Railway. After visiting Leningrad, most of the party left by way of Finland or Poland. Before attempting to evaluate the present situation in Russia, may I mention one or two fundamental facts: 1. The significance of the present experiment in Russia can hardly be exaggerated either in its possibilities for good or for evil. Here is the largest country in the world, with an area approximately equal to twice that of the conti- nent of Europe, twice that of the United States, or one- sixth of the habitable land surface of the earth, with the largest undeveloped resources of any country in the world. Here is the largest white population in the world, 140,000.000 persons, a truly great people whose human resources far outweigh their material possessions. Siberia alone, almost a continent in itself, rich and fertile, if popu- lated with the density of Belgium would accommodate almost twice the earth's present population. Here is this great people trying the most colossal experiment in history in this vast laboratory of social research. Here for the first time in history, on such a scale, a government of workingmen and peasants is trying seriously to solve social problems that have baffled humanity for centuries. A powerful world movement, with its party already repre- sented in fifty-two countries and united in an "Inter- national" with a frankly avowed aggressive world program, is too serious a factor to be met with ignorance, indif- ference, misrepresentation, or falsehood. Russia is under a stable government which has been recognized by all the other leading governments of the world, after overcoming for nine years probably the greatest obstacles which ever faced any country. It is time we turned from second-hand propaganda to come to grips with the basic facts and stark realities of the situation. For good or evil, from the point of view of shaping history, Russia is one of the two most .significant countries in the world today, our own being the other. 2. The basic poverty of Russia must not be forgotten in understanding its situation. The average wage of labor in industry is less than a dollar a day (it was twenty- five cents a day outside the two great cities on my last visit three years ago) and it is much less in agriculture. Russia was ruined after five centuries of a corrupt Czarist regime, after the greatest loss of any nation in the World War, after two revolutions, a world blockade, invasion by armies of the Allied nations, fighting at one time on twelve different fronts, meeting the sabotage of its own bureau- cracy, suxwiving a famine where three millions perished; Russia was swept by pestilence, with the peasants on strike reducing the area under cultivation by half, and with indus- tries disorganized and reduced to one-seventh of their pre- war production. Add to all this Russian character and custom, its primitive methods, its still largely illiterate masses, its casual, inefficient methods, its ancient tradition of graft, its lack of personal initiative, and you have a state

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350 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 of basic poverty which conditions and limits the entire system. Russian industry cannot yet produce enough to meet the demands of its own peasantry and under primitive methods in agriculture the yield per acre is only one-third what it is in Germany. 3. Yet industry and agriculture are steadily recover- ing. After having fallen to 14 per cent of their pre-war production in industry, the Russian people this year have recovered almost 90 per cent of their former maximum production, both in industry and agriculture, and will prob- ably equal it next year. Despite all obstacles their budget has been balanced, their currency stabilized, and most of their available land, although nominally owned by the state, has been divided and has come into the permanent posses- sion of the peasants. Although it will be long delayed for lack of funds, they have begun the most complete system of electrification in the world. After examining the evi- dence pro and con, although some authorities disagree, personally I believe that the trend of events points to two economic conclusions. First, that although the process will be delayed without foreign capital nothing outside Russia can now prevent the ultimate economic success of the Soviet experiment. Second, barring those who have been accepted and are working loyally in the present economic order, the treatment of the former privileged tenth of the population has been cruelly unjust; yet the condition of nine-tenths of the great masses in industry and agriculture is on the whole slightly better economically and immeasurably better in the releasing of the human spirit for self-realization and self-expression than it was under the blindly repressive Czarist regime. This is true not only among the com- munal city workers, but particularly among the hardy indi- vidualistic and independent peasants now awakened by the World War, the new education, and growing self-govern- ment. The 8,700,000 members of trade unions have more influence in the democratic sharing of control in industry and in government than in any other country, but they have no autocratic power. Strikes are legal, infrequent, and as a rule are quickly settled by conciliation boards or by arbitration courts. The cooperative movement is one of th strongest in the world with 11,000,000 members in the Consumers and 7,650,000 in the Producers and Farmers Cooperatives, with some duplicate members. These co- operatives are not only an economic but a vast educational and social force making for the recovery of the nation. 4. The present Soviet Government has come to stay. With all its faults it seems to be on the whole much better than the former hideous Czarist regime. Although its downfall has been eagerly predicted for the last nine years it was never so strong as it is today. Whatever its faults there is no other party or government in sight that could govern Russia and maintain law and order. Few of the people want to go back to the slavery of the Czars or the nerveless rule of Kerenski. We found no government in Europe more stable and strongly intrenched. No other has made so many changes and adaptations in the last nine years, none has been more willing to confess its many mistakes and learn from them. Its army has been reduced to one-tenth the size of six years ago, from 5,300,000 in 1920 to some 550,000 today. Judged both by expenditure and the size of the army in propc-tion to population, which is lower than the surrounding nations, the actual policy of the Government at home seems to make for peace. (To be concluded next week) Contributors to This Issue Stella Crossley wrote Florida Cashes In Her Chips in The Nation for July 7. W. E. Woodward is the author of "Bunk," "Lottery," and "Bread and Circuses." Mary D. Brite wrote Anyhow Debs Spoke in Cincinnati in The Nation for July 25, 1923. Francis Paul is a pseudonym. Babette Deutsch, the winner of The Nation's 1926 Poetry Contest, is the author of "Banners," "Honey Out of the Rock," and a novel, "A Brittle Heaven." James Rorty is on the staff of the New Masses. A volume of his poems, "Children of the Sun," is published this fall. Louise Bogan is the author of "Body of This Death." Rolfe Humphries is one of the editors of the Measure. Mary Austin is the author of "The American Rhythm" and many other volumes, including the chapter on Aboriginal Literature in the Cambridge History of American Literature. R. F. Dibble is the author of "Mohammed," published this fall. Ludwig Lewisohn is the author of "Up Stream" and "Israel," and "The Case of Mr. Crump," just published. Ralph M. Pearson is the author of "How to See Modern Pictures." William Linn Wkstermann is professor of history at Columbia University. Zona Gale is the author of "Miss Lulu Bett." Her latest book is "Preface to a Life." II. L. Mencken is the editor of the American Mercury. His fall publications include "Americana — 1926," "Notes on Democracy," and "Prejudices: Fifth Series." H. S. Jennings is professor of zoology at Johns Hopkins University. John MACY'S latest publication is "Romance of America as Told in Our Literature." J. A. HOBSON is an English economist and contributing editor of The Nation. Clarence Walworth Alvord has been professor of his- tory at the universities of Illinois and Minnesota. Shirley Jackson Case is chairman of the department of church history at the University of Chicago. B. H. Haggin is writing a set of articles on music and its criticism of which this is the introduction. Sherwood Eddy formerly represented the Y. M. C. A. in Russia, and is the author of "Russia, A Warning and a Challenge," and other books. EMPLOYEE STOCK OWNERSHIP IN Tin. UNITED STATES INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SECTION, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY An authoritative report on a subject that should receive the attention of every executive and student interested in industrial relations. Explains a new field of investment hanking in which over $700,000,000 in securities have been sold to more than 300,000 employees. The book has just been published after careful research by the Industrial Rela- tions Section, which is a separately endowed part of the Department of Economics and Social Institutions of Princeton University. Price, Cloth, $2.00; Paper, $1.50—174 pp. INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SECTION PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PRINCETON, N. J. When urriting to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 351 Some Notable Fall Rooks BIOGRAPHY, MEMOIRS Allen, Hervey. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe. Doran. 2 vols. $10. Allen, Hervey. Poe's Brother. Doran. $7.50. Anonymous. The Great American Ass. Brentano's. $3.50. Asquith, Earl of Oxford and. Fifty Years of British Parlia- ment. Little, Brown. 2 vols. $8. Aubry, G. Jean. Life and Letters of Joseph Conrad. Double- day, Page. 2 vols. $10. Bauman, Emile. Saint Paul. Putnam. $3.50. Benjamin, Rene. Balzac. Knopf. $5. Black, Jack. You Can't Win. Macmillan. $2. Bodley, Temple. Life of George Rogers Clark. Houghton Mifflin. $5. Booth, Bramwell. Echoes and Memories. Doran. $2. Bowen, Marjorie. Mistress Nell Gwyn. Appleton. Boyd, Ernest. Guy De Maupassant: A Biographical Study. Knopf. $5. Broun, Heywood, and Leech, Margaret. Anthony Comstock. Boni and Liveright. $3.50. Brousson, Jean Jacques. Anatole France, Voyageur. Holt. $3. Brown, William Montgomery. My Heresy. John Day. $2. Chase, Cleveland B. The Young Voltaire. Longmans, Green. $3. Clarke, Edward. Benjamin Disraeli: A Romance, 1804-1881. Macmillan, $2.50. Cobdon-Sanderson, Thomas James. The Journals of, 1879- 1922. Macmillan. 2 vols. $25. Coit, C. W. The Royal Martyr. Houghton Mifflin. $5. Cotton, Edward H. The Life of Charles W. Eliot. Small, Maynard. $3. Da Bisticci, Vespasiano. The Vespasiano Memoirs. Dial Press. $5. D'Auvergne, Edmund B. Pierre Loti. Stokes. $5. de Koven, Mrs. Reginald. A Musician and His Wife. Harper. $5. Dibble, R. F. Mohammed. Viking. $3. Emperor Frederick III. The War Diary of. Stokes. $5. Fisher, H. A. L. James Bryce. Macmillan. 2 vols. $8. Gibbons, Herbert Adams. John Wanamaker. Harper. 2 vols. $10. Gilliat-Smith, E. Anthony of Padua. Dutton. $2.50. Gordon, Armistead C. Allegra: The Story of Byron and Miss Clairmont. Minton, Balch. $2.50. Guiney, Louise Imogen. Letters of. Harper. $5. Haggard, H. Rider. The Days of My Life: An Autobiography. Longmans, Green. 2 vols. $7.50. Hellyar, Richmond H. Barbellion. Doran. $2.50. Hewlett, Maurice. Letters. Ed. by Laurence Binyon. Small, Maynard. $5. Hirst, Francis W. The Early Life of Lord Morley. Mac- millan. 2 vols. Holloway, Emory. Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative. Knopf. $5. Houston, David F. Eight Years With Wilson. Doubleday, Page. 2 vols. $10. Hughes, Rupert. George Washington. Wm. Morrow. $4. Hume, Martin. The Wives of Henry VIII. Brentano's. $4. Huxley, Leonard. The Life of Darwin. Adelphi. $2. Jerome, Jerome K. My Life and Times. Harper. $4. Kemp, Harry. More Miles. Boni and Liveright. $3. Lawrence, William. Memories of a Happy Life. Houghton Mifflin. $5. Lee, Sidney. King Edward VII. Macmillan. 2 vols. $16. Leslie, Shane. George IV. Little, Brown. $4. Lincoln, Abraham. An Autobiography of. Ed. by Stephenson, Nathaniel Wright. Bobbs-Merrill. Ludovici, A. An Artist's Life in London and Paris, 1870-1925. Minton, Balch. $3.75. Ludovici, A. Personal Reminiscences of Auguste Rodin. Lip- pincott. $3. MacKaye, Percy. Epoch. Boni and Liveright. 2 vols. $10 Magne, Emile. Ninon de Lanclos. Holt. $4. .Maurice, Frederick. Statesmen and Soldiers of the Civil War. Little, Brown. $3. Meynell, Everard. The Life of Francis Thompson. Scribner. $3. Moore, Charles. The Family Life of George Washington. Houghton Mifflin. $5. Nye, Frank Wilson. Bill Nye: His Own Life Story. Century. $4. Older, Fremont. My Own Story. Macmillan. $2.50. Owed, Moysheh. Visions and Jewels. Holt. $2. Peck, Walter Edwin. Shelley: His Life and Work. Small, May- nard. 2 vols. $12.50. Pinto, V. De Sola. Life of Sir Charles Sedley. Boni and Liveright. $6. Poincare, Raymond. The Memoirs of. Doubleday, Page. $5. Quaife, Milo M., Ed. Yellowstone Kelly: The Memoirs of Luther S. Kelly. Yale University. $4. Reid, Forrest. Apostate. Houghton Mifflin. $4. Russell, Phillips. Benjamin Franklin: The First Civilized American. Brentano's. $5. Sawyer, Joseph Dillaway. Washington: A Pictorial Biography. Macmillan. 2 vols. $20. Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. Cortes the Conqueror. Bobbs-Mer- rill. $5. Sherard, Robert Harborough. The Life, Work and Evil Fate of Guy De Maupassant. Brentano's. $4.50. Smollett, Tobias. The Letters of. Harvard University. $3. Tarbell, Ida M. A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. With a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French. Macmillan. $2.50. Towne, Charles Hanson. Adventures in Editing. Appleton. Van Dyke, Paul. Ignatius Loyola. Scribner. $3.50. Warren, Louis A. Lincoln's Parentage and Childhood. Century. $3.50. Welby, T. Earle. The Life of Swinburne. Doran. $5. Woodward, Helen. Through Many Windows. Harper. $2.50. Woodward, W. E. George Washington. Boni and Liveright. $5. DRAMA Bahr, Hermann. Expressionism. A. and C. Boni. $5. Darlington, W. A. Literature in the Theatre. Holt. $3.50. Dos Passos, John. The Garbage Man. Harper. $2. Drinkwater, John. The Merry Monarch. Doran. $5. Evreinov, Nicholas. The Theatre in Life. Brentano's. $3. Hurlbut, William. Bride of the Lamb. Boni and Liveright. $2. Nathan, George Jean. The House of Satan. Knopf. $2.50. Odell, G. C. D. Annals of the New York Stage. Columbia University. Ramsaye, Terry. A Million and One Nights. Simon and Schuster. 2 vols. $10. Schnitzler, Arthur. None but the Brave. Simon and Schuster. $1.25. Stallings, Laurence, and Anderson, Maxwell. Three American Plays. Harcourt, Brace. $2.50. Watson, Ernest Bradlee. Sheridan to Robertson. Harvard University. $5. Werfel, Franz. Juarez and Maximilian. Simon and Schuster. $1.

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352 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 ECONOMICS, INDUSTRY, POLITICS, SOCIOLOGY Armstrong, Hamilton Fish. The New Balkans. Harper. $3. Baker. P. J. Noel. Disarmament. Harcourt, Brace. $3.75. Baldwin, Stanley. On England and Other Addresses. Stokes. $4. Bausman, Frederick A. Facing Europe. Century. $3. Benn, Ernest J. P. If I Were a Labour Leader. Scribner. $1.75. Creel, George. The People Next Door. John Day. $4. Dexter, Robert C. Social Adjustment. Knopf. $5. Dowd, Jerome. The Negro in American Life. Century. $5. Dyche, John A. Bolshevism in Labor Unions. Boni and Live- right. $2. Ford, Henry. Today and Tomorrow. Doubleday, Page. $3.50. Fraser, Herbert F. Foreign Trade and World Politics. Knopf. $3.25. Frederick, J. George. Modern Industrial Consolidation. Frank- Maurice. $10. Hirst, F. W. From Adam Smith to Philip Snowden. Adelphi. $1.25. Ise, John. The United States Oil Policy. Yale University. $10. Kautsky, Karl. Thomas More and His Utopia. International. $2.50. La Follette, Suzanne. Concerning Women. A. and C. Boni. $2.50. Lashly, A. V., and Morley, Raymond, Ed. The Missouri Crime Survey. Macmill^n. $6. Lenin, N. War and Revolution. International. $3. Lewis. Wyndham. The Art of Being Ruled. Harper. $4. L,ewisohn, Sam A. The New Leadership in Industry. Dutton. $2. Lubin, Isador, and Everett, Helen. The British Coal Dilemma. Macmillan. $2.50. Luce, Robert. Congress: An Explanation. Harvard Univer- sity. $1.50. Mohr, Anton. The Oil War. Harcourt, Brace. $2.50. Mukerji, Dhan Gopal. The Face of Silence. Dutton. $3. Murray, Robert H. History of Political Science from Plato to the Present. Appleton. Pollock, James K. Party Campaign Funds. Knopf. $3. Ralston, Jackson H. The Law and Procedure of International Tribunals. Stanford University. $5. Rappard, William E. International Relations as Viewed from Geneva. Yale University. $2.50. Reed, Ruth. Negro Illegitimacy in New York City. Columbia University. $2.25. Riasanov, D. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. International. $2.50. Ripley, William Z. Main Street and Wall Street. Little, Brown. $2.50. Rogers, Lindsay. The American Senate. Knopf. $2.50. Schiller, Ferdinand Canning Scott. Eugenics and Politics. Houghton Mifflin. $2.50. Shaw, George Bernard. The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. Brentano's. $3.50. Shaw, H. K. Democracy and Finance in China. Columbia University. $3.50. Shultz, William J. The Taxation of Inheritance. Houghton Mifflin. $3. Smith, T. V. The Democratic Way of Life. University of Chicago. $1.85. Spender, J. A. The Changing East. Stokes. $4. Thrasher, Frederic M. The Gang. University of Chicago. $3. Wilson, Woodrow. Principles of Dem cracy. Harper. 2 vols. $8. Wolfson, Theresa. The Woman Worker and the Trade Unions. International. $1.75. ESSAYS, CRITICISM, LITERARY HISTORY Barfield, Owen. History in English Words. Doran. $1.50. Beach, Joseph Warren. The Outlook for American Prose. University of Chicago. $2.50. Blanchard, Frederic T. Fielding the Novelist. Yale Univer- sity. $6. Boswell, James. The Hypochrondriack. Ed. by Bailey, Mar- gery. Stanford University. Bowman, James Cloyd. Contemporary American Criticism. Holt. $2.50. Bradford, Gamaliel. Darwin. Houghton Mifflin. $3.50. Brinton, Crane. Political Ideas of the English Romanticists. Oxford. Broun, Heywood. It Seems to Me. Boni and Liveright. $2. Buck, Howard Swazey. A Study in Smollett. Yale University. $3. Burdett, Osbert. Critical Essays. Holt. $1.85. Calverton, V. F. Sex Expression in Literature. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Cerf, Barry. Anatole France. Dial Press. $3.50. Clark, Barrett H. Eugene O'Neill. McBride. Clemenceau, Georges. Demosthenes. Houghton Mifflin. $2.50. Crawford, Nelson A. Agricultural Journalism. Knopf. $3.25. Davis, Hallam Walker. The Column. Knopf. $2. Drake, William A. American Criticism: 1925-1926. Harcourt, Brace. $2. Edgar, Pelham. The Mind of Henry James. Houghton Mifflin. $3. Fausset, Hugh I'Anson. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Harcourt, Brace. $3.50. Gardiner, A. G. Certain People of Importance. Harper. $3. Garrod, If. W. Keats. Oxford. Giese, W. F. Victor Hugo. Dial Press. $4. Goldberg, Isaac. The Theatre of George Jean Nathan. Simon and Schuster. $3. Gorman, Herbert. A Victorian American— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Doran. $5. Gretton, Mary Sturge. The Writings and Life of George Mere- dith. Harvard University. $2.50. Grey, Viscount. Fallodon Papers. Houghton Mifflin. $2.50. Jackson, A. V. Williams. Zoroastrianism: Studies Old and New. Columbia University. Je per en, Otto. Phonetics. Holt. $3.50. Legouis, Emile. History of English Literature. Vol. II. Mac- millan. $3.75. Littell, Robert. Read America First. Harcourt, Brace. $2.50. Macy, John. The Romance of America as Told in Our Litera- ture. Doubleday, Page. $5. Manly, John M. New Lights on Chaucer. Holt. $2.50. Mencken, II. I.. Americana— 1926. Knopf. $2.50. Mencken, H. L. Notes on Democracy. Knopf. $2.50. Mencken, H. L. Prejudices: Fifth Series. Knopf. $2.50. Mitchell, Langdon. Understanding America. Doran. $2. Monahan, Michael. Nemesis. Frank-Maurice. $3. Muir, Edwin. Transition: Essays on Contemporary Literature. Viking. $2. Mumford, Lewis. The American Essence. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Murry, J. Middleton. Jesus — Man of Genius. Harper. $2.50. Myers, Walter L. The Later Realism. University of Chicago. $2. Noyes, Alfred. The New World. Holt. $3. Orcutt, William Dana. In Quest of the Perfect Book. Little, Brown. $5. Palache, John Garber. Gautier and the Romantics. Viking. $3. Perry, Bliss. The Heart of Emerson's Journals. Houghton Mifflin. $3. Raleigh, Walter. On Writing and Writers. Longmans, Green. $2.25.

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 353 Redman, Ben Ray. Edwin Arlington Robinson. McBridr. Sterling, George. Robinson Jeffers. Boni and Liveright. $1. Stoll, Elmer E. Shakespeare Studies. Macmillan. $4. Strachey, Lytton. Pope. Harcourt, Brace. $1. Tupper, Frederick. Types of Society in Medieval Literature. Holt. $1.50. Valery, Paul. Variety. Harcourt, Brace. $3. Weekley, Ernest. Words Ancient and Modern. Dutton. $2. Willey, Malcolm M. The Country Newspaper. University of North Carolina. $1.50. Willoughby, L. A. The Classical Age of German Literature. Oxford. Wilson, Edmund. Discordant Encounters. A. and ('. Boni. $2.50. Yarmolinsky, Avrahm. Turgenev: The Man, His Art. and His Age. Century. $4. FICTION Anderson, Sherwood. Tar, a Midwest Childhood. Boni and Liveright. $3. Armstrong, Martin. Desert: A Legend. Harper. $2.50. Baroja, Pio. The Lord of Labraz. Knopf. $2.50. Barreyre, Jean. The Blind Ship. Dial Press. $2.50. Bates, H. E. The Two Sisters. Viking. $2. Bennett, Arnold. Lord Raingo. Doran. $2.50. Bercovici, Konrad. Singing Winds. Doubleday, Page. ?:!. Bodenheim, Maxwell. Ninth Avenue. Boni and Liveright. $2. Brackett, Charles. That Last Infirmity. John Day. $2. Bunin, Ivan. Mitya's Love. Holt. $2. Cabell, James Branch. The Music from Behind the Moon. John Day. $6. Canfield, Dorothy. Her Son's Wife. Harcourt, Brace. $2. Capek, Karel. The Absolute at Large. Macmillan. $2.50. Cather, Willa. My Mortal Enemy. Knopf. $2.50. Couperus, Louis. The Comedians. Doran. $2.50. Crosby, Oscar T. Adam and Eve. Stratford. $1.25. Deland, Margaret. The Kays. Harper. $2. Dell, Floyd. An Old Man's Folly. Doran. $2. De Montherlant, Henry. The Bull-fighters. Dial Press. $2.50. Deutsch, Babette. A Brittle Heaven. Grecnberg. $2.50. Diehl, Ludwig. The Sardonic Smile: A Novel Based on the Romantic Life of Heinrich Heine. Houghton Mifflin. $2.50. Dobie, Charles Caldwell. Less Than Kin. John Day. $2. Dreiser, Theodore. Chains. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Du Gard, Roger Martin. The Thibaults. 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354 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 Heyward, Du Bose. Angel. Doran. $2. Hudson, Stephen. Richard Kurt. Knopf. $2.50. Hume, Cyril. The Golden Dancer. Doran. $2. Hurst, Fannie. Mannequin. Knopf. $2. Ibanez, Vicente Blasco. The Pope of the Sea. Dutton. $2. Istrati, Panai't. Kyra Kyralina. Knopf. $2.50. Johnston, Mary. Michael Forth. Little, Brown. $2. Kaye-Smith, Sheila. Joanna Godden Married. Harper. $2. Kipling, Rudyard. Debit and Credit. Doubleday, Page. $2. Larson, J. Anker. Martha and Mary. Knopf. $2.50. Lawrence, D. H. David. Knopf. $2. Lewis, Wyndham. Tarr. Knopf. $2.50. Lewisohn, Ludwig. The Case of Mr. Crump. Paris: Edward W. Titus. $10. Mabbott, Thomas O. The Half-Breed and Other Stories by Walt Whitman. Columbia University. Macaulay, Rose. Crewe Train. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Maugham, W. Somerset. The Casuarina Tree. Doran. $2. Mauthner, Fritz. Mrs. Socrates. International. $2. McKenna, Stephen. Saviours of Society. Little, Brown. $2.50. Millay, Kathleen. Wayfarer. 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Undset, Sigrid. The Cross. Knopf. $3. Van Doren, Carl. The Ninth Wave. Harcourt, Van Doren, Dorothy. Strangers. Doran. $2. Van Vechten, Carl. Nigger Heaven. Knopf. $2.50. Walpole, Hugh. Harmer John. Doran. $2. Wassermann, Jacob. Wedlock. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. Wells, H. G. The World of William Clissold. Doran. 2 vols. $5. Wescott, Glenway. The Apple of the Eye. Harper. $2. Wilson, Margaret. The Painted Room. Harper. $2. Wolf, Robert. Springboard. A. and C. Boni. $2. Wylie, Elinor. The Orphan Angel. Knopf. $2.50. Young, E. H. William. Harcourt, Brace. $2. Young, Stark. Heaven Trees. Scribner. $2. FINE ARTS, MUSIC Ball, Katharine. Decorative Motives of Oriental Art. Dodd Mead. $12.50. Chorley, Henry. Thirty Years' Musical Recollections. Knopf. $5. Cornelius, Charles O. Early American Furniture. Century. $4. Gardner, Percy. New Chapters in Greek Art. Oxford. Guillaume, Paul, and Munro, Thomas. Primitive Negro Sculp- ture. Harcourt, Brace. $6. Major, Howard. The Domestic Architecture of the Early American Republic. Lippincott. $15. Mather, Frank Jewett. Modern Painting, 1664-1914. Holt. $3. $2. $2.50. Brace. $2. Herbert S Gorman lAutijor of 'GoltlbyGoU' James Joyce, tfislirstr, Horty Vears The dramatic story of a man and woman dragged through the mire of life and who rise superior to their environment because of that clean inner urge — that secret virginity which nothing can touch. His characters "may seem to fly in the face of convention- ality, yet their steadfast idealism is as admirable as it is unusual. A brilliant, realistic story of aspiration revealing a new trend in modern fiction At all book stores, $2.00 ^OTSSHAroMAA: What Plato failed to tell of Socrates' dia- logues, Mauthner does . In which the scold's mask is lifted from the fair Xantippe. revealing the puzzled wife of the philosopher battling alone against her fate. 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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 355 Morison, Stanley. A Short History of the Art of Printing. Macmillan. Newman, Ernest. Contemporary Musicians. Knopf. Northend, Mary Harrod. American Glass. Dodd, Mead. $5. Osgood, Henry O. So This Is Jazz. Little, Brown. $3. Rutter, Frank. Evolution in Modern Art. Dial Press. $2.50. Rutter, Frank. The Old Masters. Doran. $2.50. Spargo, John. Early American Pottery and China. Century. $4. Sparrow, W. Shaw. A Book of British Etching from Barlow to Seymour Haden. Dodd, Mead. $12.50. Terry, R. R. Medieval Music. Duttpn. Tyler, Royall, and Peirce, Hayford. Byzantine Art. Stok< s. $6. HISTORY Adams, Randolph Greenfield. Political Ideas of the American Revolution. Duke University. $2. Allison, John M. S. Thiers and the French Monarchy, 1797- 1848. Houghton Mifflin. $5. Breasted, James Henry, and Robinson, James Harvey. The Human Adventure. Harper. 2 vols. Callcott, Wilfrid Hardy. Church and State in Mexico. 1822- 1857. Duke University. Capart, Jean. Thebes: The Glory of a Great Past. Dial Press. $20. Chapman, Charles E. History of the Cuban Republic: A Study in Hispanic-American Politics. Macmillan. $4.50. Davis, William Stearns. Europe Since Waterloo. Century. $5. Dutcher, George Matthew. A Guide to Historical Literature. Macmillan. $8. Fortesque, John. On the Writing of History. Longmans, Green. $1. Frothingham, Thomas Goddard. The Naval History of the World War. Harvard University Press. Vol. III. $3.75. Greer, Walter. The Campaigns of the Civil War. Brentano's. $5. Grenier, Albert. The Roman Spirit: In Religion, Thought, and Art. Knopf. $6. Howe, M. A. De Wolfe. Causes and Their Champions. Little, Brown. $4. Inge, W. R. England. Scribner. $3. Iorga, N. A History of Roumania: Land, People, Civilization. Dodd, Mead. $4. Kenton, Edna. The Indians of North America. Harcourt, Brace. 2 vols. $10. Newbigin, Marion I. Canada: The Great River, the Lands, and the Men. Harcourt, Brace. $4. Randall, James G. 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356 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, RELIGION, ANTHROPOLOGY, EDUCATION Asbury, Herbert. Up From Methodism. Knopf. $2.50. Asin, Miguel. Islam and the Divine Comedy. Dutton. $5. Benrubi, Isaac. Contemporary Thought of France. Knopf. $2.50. Brandes, Georg. Jesus: A Myth. A. and C. Boni. $2. Browne, Lewis. This Believing World. Macmillan. $3.50. Carncross, Horace. The Escape from the Primitive. Scribner. $2.50. Crespi, Angelo. Contemporary Thought of Italy. Knopf. $2.50. Davis, Jerome. Business and the Church. Century. $2.50. de Sanctis, Sante. Religious Conversion. Harcourt, Brace. $3.75. De Wulf, Maurice. History of Mediaeval Philosophy. Long- mans, Green. 2 vols. Durant, Will. The Story of Philosophy. Simon and Schuster. $5. ,Ialdane, Viscount. Human Experience. Dutton. $2. Hankins, Frank H. The Racial Basis of Civilization: A Critique of the Nordic Doctrine. Knopf. $3.25. Huntington, Ellsworth. The Pulse of Progress. Scribner. $5. Jespersen, Otto. Mankind, Nation, and Individual, from a Lin- guistic Point of View. Harvard University. $1.40. Lenin, N. Materialism and Critical Empiricism. Interna- tional. $3. Levy-Bruhl, Lucl^n. How Natives Think. Knopf. $4. Mudge, E. Leigh. Varieties of Adolescent Experience. Cen- tury. $1.75. Parrington, Vernon L. Democracy in American Thought, v. I and II. Harcourt, Brace. $8. Parsons, Elsie Clews. The Pueblo of Jemez. Yale University. $7.50. Perry, Ralph Barton. General Theory of Value. Longmans, Green. $6. Randall, John H. The Making of the Modern Mind. Houghton Mifflin. $5. Rivers, W. H. R. Psychology and Ethnology. Harcourt, Brace. $5. Schmidt, Max. The Primitive Races of Mankind. Little, Brown. $6. Smuts, J. C. Holism and Evolution. Macmillan. $3.50. Snov den, James H. The Truth About Mormonism. Doran. $2.50. Summers, Montague. A History of Witchcraft and Demonology. Knopf. $5. Westermarck, Edward. Ritual and Belief in Morocco. Mac- millan. 2 vols. Whitehead, Alfred North. Religion in the Making. Macmillan. $1.50. Wright, Cuthbert. The Story of the Catholic Church. A. and C. Boni. $2.50. POETRY A. E. Collected Poems. Macmillan. $3.75. Baudelaire, Charles. Complete Works. Tr. by Arthur Symons. A. and C. Boni. $3.50. Bynner, Witter. Cake. Knopf. $2. Cooke, Edmund Vance. From the Book of Extenuations. Doran. $1.50. Crane, Hart. White Buildings. Boni and Liveright. $2. Crane, Nathalia. The Singing Crow. A. and C. Boni. $2. Ficke, Arthur Davison. The Selected Poems Of. Doran. $2. French, Joseph Lewis. An Anthology of Chinese and Japanese Poetry. Boni and Liveright. $7 "0. Hardy, Thomas. Collected Poems. Macmillan. $4. Johns, Orrick. Wild Plum. Macmillan. $1.25. Johnson, James Weldon, and Johnson, J. Rosamond. The Second Book of Negro Spirituals. Viking. $3.50. The Negro Presents His Case With out Co mp la in t Without Bitter /less Without Propaga?ida The Negro Year Book $1. 1925-26 edition A Book of Facts 00 50 Paper Cover $1. Board Cover NEGRO YEAR BOOK COMPANY TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, ALABAMA ADAM and EVE BY OSCAR T. CROSBY, F. R. G. S. AUTHOR OF Tibet and Turkestan - International War A study of the Garden of Eden Story, inspired by travel in Mesopotamia and in other Oriental Lands. Cloth $1.25 THE STRATFORD COMPANY - Boston, Mass. New The TODAY AUD Just vols. T0RH0RR0W Series Read* St im nlating provocative — significant THE FUTURE OF ISRAEL By JAMES WATERMAN WISE, who discusses the "separatcness" of the Jew and his relation to society in the future. PLATO'S AMERICAN REPUBLIC By J. D. WOODRUFF, who descrihes in a dialogue quite after the Greek manner Socrates' account of his lecture tour with Xantippe in the United States. Each $1.00 nilTTARIJ^ 681 Fifth Aue. Published by UTTfiSI'6 e8' Fifth fll I ion d New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 357 JOHN MASEFIELD will pive SIX READINGS October 18 — Stories, early poems and pla October 21 — Narrative poems: Everlasting Mercy and Widow in Bye Street; Dauber and I dil Fields. October 25 — First Plays: Nan; Pompey; Faithful. Plays in Verse: Philip; Good Friday. October 28 — Later Poems of the Countryside; Rey- nard and Right Royal. November 1 — King Cole; Enslaved. November A — Miscellaneous poems. Later plays: Trial of Jesus; A King's Daughter. Fee for the course. $w Readings to be given at 5:20 1'. M. at the NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH 465 West 23rd Street New York City THE PROGRESSIVE PARENT The October Issue of PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ./ Quarterly Review of the Newer Tendencies in Education will be all about THE PROGRESSIVE PARENT The single issue fifty cents, year's subscription (f..ur issues) $2.00 THE PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 10 Jackson Pi Washington, I). C. THE PROGRESSIVE PARENT The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers a fifteen months' course of study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federa- tions and Health Centers. The course is open to graduates of colleges of recognized standing. Several tuition scholarships and maintenance fel- lowships are available to especially qualified students. Social workers who arc not college graduates will be given special consideration in the preparation of courses of study suitable to their individual needs. The Fall Quarter Begins October 4, 1926 For further information, address the Director The Training School for Jewish Social Work (Initiated by the National Conference of Jewish Social Service) 210 West 91st Street, New York City T A R C% R TP IT IMF PI 1? 14th St- and Second Ave., New York JU r± 13 KJ XV X X-/ 1YX r i^r>, EDMUND B. CHAFFEE, Director Fall Program Labor Temple Forum American International Church Sunday Evenings at 8:30 SPEAKER SUBJECT Arthur Garfield Hays. .. "Russia Today" James Weldon Johnson. "The Negro and the American Labor Movement" Will Durant "The Modern Woman" Charles Stelzle "What About Prohibition?" Tony Sender "Socialism and the New Germany" Rabbi A. Josiah Ford... "The Black Jews" J. Malcolm Bird "The Present Status of Psychical Research" Senator Gerald P. Nye, of North Dakota "The Revolt in the West" Margaret Sanger "The Future of Birth Control" Judge Florence Allen. . . To be Announced John Haynes Holmes... "The Rights of Man versus the Rights of Men — A new Reading of Democratic Ideals" Edmund B. Chaffee The Significance of Christmas Admission Free DATE Oct. 10 17 21 31 Nov. 7 14 21 23 Dec. 5 12 19 26 Sunday Evenings at 7:15 DATE SUBJECT Oct. 10 "The Great Social Sin" 17 "The Emotional Basis of Disbelief in Immortality" 24 "Behaviorism and Religion" 31 "The Future of Democracy" Nov. 7 "The Philosophy of Oswald Spengler" 14 "Is One Race Better Than Another?" 21 "Can American Radicals Be Thankful?' 25 "Judging Our Pleasures" Dec. 5 "Peace — How to Attain It" 12 "Prohibition — Facts and Fallacies" 19 To be Announced 26 Christmas Program Admission Free Labor Temple School Dr. Will Durant, Director of the School, author of "The Story of Philosophy," will lecture every Wednes- day evening at 8:30 in his course "Contemporary Psychology," and every Sunday afternoon at 5:00 in his course "Contemporary Literature." Admission 25c. for single lecture, or $5.00 for entire course. For further informa- tion inquire at Labor Temple office, 244 E. 14th St. Every Thursday evening at 8:30 Mr. Chaffee conducts a Forum on "The Events of the Week and Their Inner Significance." Admission is free. All are welcome. KEEP THIS FOR REFERENCE When writing to advertisers, rptease mention Tfce Natron

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358 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 Kemp, Harry. The Sea and the Dunes. Brentano's. $2. Lowell, Amy. East Wind. Houghton Mifflin. $2.25. Masters, Edgar Lee. Lee. A Dramatic Poem. Macmillan. $2. Pound, Ezra. Collected Poems. Boni and Liveright. $3.."0. Rickaby, Franz, Ed. Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy. Harvard University. $3.50. Rorty, James. Children of the Sun. Macmillan. $1.75. Sandburg, Carl. Selected Poems. Harcourt, Brace. $2. Sandburg, Carl. The American Songbag. Harcourt, Brace. $3. Sassoon, Siegfried. Satirical Poems. Viking. $1.50. Snow, Wilbert. The Inner Harbor. Harcourt, Brace. $1.75. Stevens, James. Collected Poems. Macmillan. $3. Swartz, Roberta Teale. Liliput. Harcourt, Brace. $1.75. Teasdale, Sara. Dark of the Moon. Macmillan. $1.50. Untermeyer, Louis. The Collected Parodies Of. Harcourt, Brace. $1.75. Van Doren, Mark. 7 P. M. and Other Poems. A. and C. Boni. $1.7:.. Wolfe, Humbert. Humoresque. Holt. $2. SCIENCE Berry, R. J. A. The Nervous System of Man. Macmillan. Bolsche, Wilhelm. Love-Life in Nature. A. and C. Boni. 2 vols. $10. Carr-Saunders, A. M. Eugenics. Holt. $1. Cline, Isaac M. Tropical Cyclones. Macmillan. $3.50. Daly, Reginald A. Our Mobile Earth. Scribner. $5. de Reaumur, Rene Antoine Ferchault. The Natural History of Ants. Knopf. $5. Hale, George Ellery. Beyond the Milky Way. Scribner. $1.50. Herrick, C. Judson. Brains of Rats and Men. University of Chicago. $3. Lodge, Oliver. Evolution and Creation. Doran. $2. Mach, Ernst. The Principles of Physical Optics. Dutton. $6. Michelson, A. A. Studies in Optics. University of Chicago. $2. Morgan, Thomas Hunt. The Theory of the Gene. Yale Uni- versity. $4. Pearl, Raymond. Alcohol and Longevity. Knopf. $3.50. Wellhouse, Walter Housley. How Insects Live. Macmillan. $5. TRAVEL, GEOGRAPHY, NATURE, DESCRIPTION Anderson, Romola and R. C. The Sailing Ship: Six Thousand Years of History. McBride. $5. Andrews, Roy Chapman. On the Trail of Ancient Man. Put- nam. $6. Colum, Padraic. The Road Round Ireland. Macmillan. $1. Couperus, Louis. Nippon. Doran. $6. Franck, Harry A. East of Siam. Century. $3.50. Geil, William Edgar. The Sacred 5 of China. Houghton Mifflin. $7.50. Genthe, Arnold. Impressions of Old New Orleans. Doran. $5. Graham, Stephen. The Gentle Art of Tramping. Appleton $2.50. Graham, Stephen. London Nights. Doran. $4. Grey, Zane. Tales of New Zealand. Harper. $5. Hawthorne, Hildegarde. Corsica: The Surprising Island Duf- field. $3. Ibanez, Vicente Blasco. A Novelist's Tour of the World. Dutton. $6. Lucas, E. V. A Wanderer in Rome. Doran. $5. Meier-Grafe, Julius. The Spanish Journey. Harcourt, Brace $6. Peabody, Robert E. The Log of the Grank Turks. Houghton Mifflin. $4. Tomlinson, H. M. The Gifts of Fortune. Harper. $4. Younghusband, Francis. The Epic of Mount Everest. Long- mans, Green. $3. □ WHERE TO BUY BOOKS D A BOOKSHOP BROUGHT TO YOU We specialize in service to those far away from bookshops or too busy to do their own browsing. Any book sent anywhere post free. Send for our Fall book list and particulars. THE POST-BOX BOOK SERVICE 15 West 44th Street, New York Special Sale of GERMAN SCIENTIFIC AND ART BOOKS at greatly reduced prices during October B. WESTERMANN, CO., Inc. 13 West 46th St., New York JUDAICA BOOKS HEBRAICA EVERYTHING PUBLISHED AND IN PRINT Send for Catalogues and Lists BLOCH PUBLISHING COMPANY Established 1854 "the jkwish book concern" 26 East 22d Street, New Y«rk n LECTURES □ "Social Thought in Victorian Literature" Course of Eight Lectures By ROBERT MORSS I/OVETT, A. B. In the COMMUNITY CHURCH AUDITORIUM Park Avenue and 34th Street On THURSDAY EVENINGS. Oct. 14. 21, 28. Nov. 4, 11, 18, Dec. 2. 9, at 8:16 P. M. Course tickets. $4.50, can be secured in advance at the Office of the COMMUNITY CHURCH 12 Tark Avenue, New York City. Single Admission 75c. STUDENT WORKER CONTEST First prize $100 Second prize $50 Third prize $25 For particulars address The Nation 20 Vesey Street New York, N. Y. Real Estate -If you have a house or property to sell or lease, try The Nation classified ad- vertising section. —If the experience of other advertisers of real estate is a guide, your advertise- ment in The Nation will pay. — Write for rates to Dept. R., The Nation. IV hen writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Fall Book Section Poe Animula Vagula By BABETTE DEUTSCH Afternoon edges toward evening Like a tired stallion, Snuffing the yellow grain that the road spreads Before the bin of sunset. But I, the rider, Must slip from the saddle only to mount again. The moon will fur with light all the great heads Of night's twelve horses Galloping under me, Before I come To what awaits me — And that will not be home. Travelers, heavily sleeping in strange beds, Hearing in sleep the whistling groan of a mare In labor, I am one Of your sad company. And when you rise and miss a horse to ride, And crouch over your sore bodies, And curse Because you cannot journey further, I Shall nurse my wounds with you — I shall be there. The River By JAMES RORTY Given a broad-flowing river, a calm and lordly river, Peace may be made with a green bank sloping, a red cow drinking, Trees, and white houses, the ripe corn shedding Pollen for bees to go bearing and sharing Up the warm valleys. Peace may be made, and happy songs for singing Under the blue sky, softly, quietly singing Beside the broad river. War may be made with a river, happy war; A pushing war upstream, the tough blades churning and the blunt prows shoving back The will of the wide-bowing river. This Be your Answer and your Cause : to wage Against the twilight silence of the shadowy capes that reach Gray hands to quell the river's day-warmed pride, A steaming, shouting war; to lead By night, by day, your burdened conquest through The willow-bordered bays, the slow canals that thread The humming fragrance of the summer fields, Until the rolling barges swim at last In the wind and the sun of the lake's wide freedom. . . . War, Brave war may be made with a river. ms Death may be found in a river, night and death; Death without fear, a grave and reasoned death. For the river is wide, and the mirrored window-lights that peer From the depths of the night-stricken river — do they not Say always the same thing? Or do the voices change That whisper, close in the night among the trees, "Kiss me," and "Love me, do not wait" . . .? Death may be found in a river. If the tower clock Thrust high in the night by the surge of the turbulent city, Weary of Time, should bend and dip The light-flower of its spire within the flood Of the deep, unhurrying river — would that be A thing for wonder? Or if one or two Stray souls grown very free should leave The blaze of the boulevards, and walk far out, and cast Deep anchor where the river meets the sea, and there Baptize their quiet brows With the salt of a sure salvation . . . well, what then? Must there be shouting and alarms? . . . One yields at last To the will of the wide-flowing river. Dark Summer By LOUISE BOGAN Under the thunder-dark, the cicadas resound. The storm in the sky mounts, but is not yet heard. The shaft and the flash wait, but are not yet found. The apples that hang and swell for the late comer, The simple spell, the rite not for our word, The kisses not for our mouths, light the dark summer. Text for a Bitter Vision By ROLFE HUMPHRIES The flesh is a cheat, said I, the flesh is a cheat, A mockery in dumb show, a pantomime To fool my vision on the sunny street, Or dupe my blindness in a darker time ; Under this acid gaze, this second sight, Beloved girls who wander to and fro Turn into racks of skeletons, ash-white, Who jerk and hitch a little as they go. And all the old distinctions I have known And had some faith in, what are they, I said : The flesh, a draper's imposition, thrown Across the ribs ; that other hoax, the mind, A thickish gruel, more or less refined, Poured in a bony noggin called the head.

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360 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 The Road to the Spring By MARY AUSTIN TWENTY years ago those of us who were in a position to assert our faith in the relevancy of Amerind poetry to the evolving American aesthetic did so in the face of a general skepticism as to its authenticity. Improbable, said editors and critics, that verse so limpid and explicit could be the work of ignorant "savages." Today, unable longer to deny the fact, reluctant critics defend their failure to ap- preciate the significance of the increasing bulk of credible translations, on the ground that it is none of it sufficiently pleasing as poetry to be taken into the national account. Both of these attitudes are eminently characteristic of our American — or should I say democratic? — disposition to rate art values by their concurrence with the immediate intel- lectual prepossession. As a matter of fact, except for less than a score of individual lyrics, the absolute rendering into English of what Witter Bynner has called "the serenities, the simplicities, the grave and happy mysticism of Indian song" has not yet been made. Probably it can not be made until, at least among people who concern themselves pro- fessionally with poesy, there exists toward our aboriginal literature such a cultural perspective as we give to the Greek Anthologies. For the present, however, it is not necessary that such translation appear, since it is evident that for the people who do interest themselves in Indian song it serves a pur- pose other than and — for the time — more important than aesthetic appreciation. It serves for the untwinmg of the three-plied cord of rhythm, melody, and ideation of which poetry is made. For in our time all three of these modes of poetic expression have so altered their form and relative values that the modern poet, when not inhibited in the use of one or the other of them, is at least staggered. Not only have the sword-waving, crosier-bearing, lute-plucking ges- tures that accompanied the dance of life for the elder poets changed to the movement of a machine-timed, crowd-swayed age. The key of poetic inspiration, the plane of conscious- ness from which poetic perceptions arise, has been trans- posed to regions unfamiliar to the young muses. So much so that the whole art of poesy, from being the special mode of youth, promises to become, as it was in the beginning, the preoccupation of the grave and wise, the medium of truth to be apprehended only at levels beyond the reach of sense and sentiment. Poetry is a medium of expression which requires the whole man; body movement, concreted in the drum and the rattle or, as with us, in the stress and fall of syllables; voice, tempered to musical pitch and interval and these modulated finally to the flow and succession of vowels and consonant; and ideation, controlled by the precise choice and dexterous use of words. The various kinds of poetry take their technical names from the several manners in which these elements are employed. In the passage of poetry from its aboriginal expression by the whole man- — pounding feet, shaken rattle, singing voice, leaping body — into the printed page, poetry has taken on an infinity of devices. Many of these, such as assonance, alliteration, rhyme, both internal and terminal and stanzaic pattern, the modern poet tends to discard in the effort to renew his footing on the bare and salty earth ; some of them no doubt to be picked up again with new insight into their value and use. But what now to discard, what to maintain as fundamental amid the clanging alterations of the national expression? Rhyme and fixed stanzaic pattern, as sub- stitutes for melodic effect, are being rather widely let go. But what of rhythm, the printed modulation of body ges- ture? To what extent will the machine-rhythm, rapidly re- ducing the gestures of the whole world to uniformity, pre- vail against the local rhythms of natural environment, the landscape line, the seasonal succession, race, climate? The poet, who sings more or less under the pressure of such readjustments subconsciously taking place in the racial matrix of his group, will accept with what dignity he can the handicap of a fumbling uncertain age. But the critic and the teacher, while they wait for sheer genius to pro- duce the absolute rearrangement of the technical elements, must resort for forecast and example to the unselfconscious song of the American aboriginal. American for choice, not only because it is the only living body of primitive verse easily accessible but because it has, binding it to the mod- ern condition, the inescapable natural background, all that the soil, the scene, supplies. Students can find, if they know where to look for them, rhythms of the corn lands, of the great plains, the desert and the wooded ranges. But Amer- indian verse has more than this which is intrinsically Amer- ican in the modern sense. It has that preponderance of the communal impulse over the personal which is beginning to be hopefully and yet so menacingly the American note. And it has this advantage over every other body of primitive literature which can be conveniently studied in schools — racial purity of expression; nothing borrowed, nothing en- grafted. Altogether an admirable medium in which to study the movement of the poetic impulse working from within outward to clothe itself with literary form. The true use of poetry is to the makers of it. It serves others, if at all, by giving pleasure, the pleasure arising from the absolute welding of force and form which we call aesthetic. Anybody who is expecting from our aboriginal verse, or neglecting it because it has not, the quality of giving rise to poetic impulses in others announces himself by that expectation as lacking in the original strain from which poetic impulses immemorial take their source. He is showing himself to be, if a poet at all, merely an induced poet; a state from which, like the soft iron which becomes a magnet when subjected to the electric charge, he will, when the inducting charge is cut off, find himself return- ing to the condition of soft iron. No one can by taking thought or by reading the works of other poets become more poetic than he naturally is. The most he can hope for is the illumination of form. For what is all art, all man- ners, but the experimental search for form adequate to the animating impulse? And when the current forms of a given art are no longer found equal to the current inspira- tion, to what source could the artist more hopefully turn for such illumination than to a society in which man has not yet shorn himself of any of his possibilities of expres- sion? The Amerind, if he requires it to complete his poetic form, may stamp the earth, leap in the air, shake a rattle, or, for the announcement of his title, paint himself red and yellow, as a Song of the Sun, or black and white and green, as a Song of the Earth Needing Rain. He is not only free of all possible rhythms and patterns but he is not even bound to the word. He may add or interpolate syllables until the words are "lengthened for singing" — that is, until they fit

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 361 properly into the rhythmic pattern which his poetic emotion naturally takes. By the fresh observation of this instinc- tive choice among the elements that make up poetic form the perplexed modern, tormented by ideas which he cannot make at home in traditional verse forms, may see his way in his own work to a choice nearer to his desire. It has never been so much as suggested, by any of us who have been in a position to make such observation, that modern poets should write in the Indian manner. Only that, by studying the manner in which the untutored mind displays itself among its materials — stress, movement, color, pat- tern, sounds, and words — we may make a new and more satisfactory alignment of the modern equivalents for such material. It is the road to the spring that we travel, to the source of man's medium, rather than to his emotions ; a road which every people must take from time to time if it would not see its own most intimate expression smothered in staleness, ossified by tradition. Not that Amerindian verse has not aesthetic charm when successfully rendered into English. It is a wicked waste of a national resource that we make no move to finance the translation of the best of it by students poetically en- dowed, instead of trusting it to ethnologists who make no claim to poetic gifts, or to scholars, such as Nellie Barnes, Hartley Alexander, and Eda Lou Walton, whose interest is scholarly rather than poetic. Nevertheless, it is in the work of faithful students that the treasures of Amerindian poetry are most usefully preserved. In these unpremeditated mo- tions of man's mind toward the use of his whole self in the expression of the deepest impulses of that self is the root, sound and nourishing, of the sum of all those affective impulses which we know as culture. Only when we come around again to the Amerindian capacity for putting the whole man into any cultural expression shall we achieve its ideal. James Ralph, Jack of All Literary Trades By R. F. DIBBLE AMONG all that numerous crowd of forgotten literary worthies and unworthies who wrote and rewrote, ate and starved, hated and loved with equal abandon during the early eighteenth century, James Ralph is probably buried in the profoundest obliteration. His name can be found today in only three works of importance: Franklin devoted some pages of his "Autobiography" to him ; Pope slaughtered him in one of the most merciless couplets in the "Dunciad" ; and Boswell honored his memory with two small footnotes in the "Life of Johnson." Yet during his topsy-turvy life Ralph was a luminary of considerable magnitude. He was a sort of literary godfather to Fielding; Walpole and Bolingbroke alternately sought and feared his vitriolic political pen; it is probable that King George III himself paid 150 good British pounds to secure a document written by Ralph, in which the kingly vices were uproariously revealed; and in 1753 Franklin, disillusioned though he was, admitted that while Ralph's "reputation was indeed small as a poet . . . he was esteem'd one of the best political writers in Eng- land, and his prose was thought as good as any man's." His early years are shrouded in irritating obscurity. Born possibly in Pennsylvania, perhaps in 1698, though more probably in 1705, he first appears definitely in Phila- delphia in 1724 as a merchant's clerk who loved to read, to scribble impossible heroic couplets, and to say nasty deistic things about God. Franklin first met him in that year and found him to be "ingenious, genteel in his manners, and extremely eloquent; I think I never knew a prettier talker." For Ralph's budding poetic soul was already soaring far above the pettinesses of facts and figures. He thoroughly believed that he was destined to become an eminent poet; and when Franklin tried to discourage him by pointing out the innumerable flaws and conceits in his couplets, he would grandly reply that other poets, when they first began, made as many and probably more mistakes. Nor was he at all abashed when Franklin, forever prosy-minded, coldly re- marked that he "approv'd the amusing one's self with poetry now and then, so far as to improve one's language, but no farther." So it came about that when Franklin sailed to Europe late in 1724 Ralph — nothing doubting that he would soon become the peer of Pope — sailed with his friend. The deceitful knave, who was both a husband and a father, pre- tended that he was going abroad merely on mercantile busi- ness; but Franklin soon discovered that, being in great dis- favor with his wife's relatives, he "proposed to leave her on their hands and never return again." He never did. For a time the two travelers were inseparable. They lodged, ate, and slept together in London; but there the partnership stopped, for Franklin alone paid the bills. Ralph had spent his last pistole on the ocean voyage, and there- fore thought it only right that his friend should both dis- charge his debts and lend him money — did he not more than repay Franklin every day by parading solemnly around their little room, his hands swinging aloft and his voice vibrating with emotion, as he spouted a geyser of newly improvised verses? Bored almost to extinction, Franklin was only too pleased a find a good job at which he labored with all his terrific utilitarian efficiency. Left thus to him- self, Ralph — who above all things needed an audience — decided to become an actor; but after he had displayed his wares he was candidly advised "not to think of that em- ployment, as it was impossible he should succeed in it." His success in obtaining money from Franklin's rapidly dimin- ishing store, however, was uniform and constant, and he used it in going to playhouses "and other places of amuse- ment." From this time on, in fact, he "seem'd quite to forget his wife and child." In the house where the two men resided there lived a "sensible and lively" milliner; and after Ralph had driven Franklin out into the streets to escape those awful mouthings and gestures the crafty fellow tried his poems and plays on the lady. The result was so perfectly satisfactory that "shortly in the book they read no more that day," but grew so intimate that "she took another lodging, and he followed her." For a year he dawdled about, doing nothing but manufacture verses and gratify himself in other ways; for his companion believed herself to be so much in debt to him that she paid all his accounts and sup- ported herself and their child. At the end of this time, however, her money and patience were simultaneously ex- hausted, and Ralph accordingly decamped from London to take charge of a country school. But, deeming such a busi- ness to be far below him, he dropped his own name and assumed the name of Franklin; for he was "confident of better future fortune, when he should be unwilling to have

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362 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 it known that he once was so meanly employed." Further- more, he felt perfectly justified in taking Franklin's name, since such a mere hard-working grind as Ben would obvi- ously never make any name for himself. Yet he still had enough respect for Franklin's literary judgment to send him large specimens of an epic poem, "desiring" as Franklin says, "my remarks and corrections." Ben replied by sending Ralph one of Young's recently pub- lished satires which showed the folly of pursuing the Muses, but "all was in vain ; sheets of the poem continued to come by every post." Then Franklin, vexed even more by Ralph's rhymes than by his constant requests for more money, determined to get an ample revenge. He made overtures to the abandoned and lonesome milliner, and, "being at that time under no religious restraint, I attempted familiarities (another erratum) which she repuls'd with proper resent- ment, and acquainted him with my behavior." This affair gave the sly Ralph his cue. Equally tired of his debts and of the milliner, he saw the way to be free of both. On the one hand he could accuse her of infidelity, and on the other hand he could tell Franklin that, on account of his amorous activities, he "had cancell'd all financial obligations." But Ben was able to take care of himself He had lately pub- lished his first bit of writing, "A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain," and had dedicated it to his friend ; but he held the scamp up to the scorn of pos- terity by including the publication of this pamphlet among his countless errata and by penning this line in his auto- biography: "In the loss of his friendship I found myself relieved from a burthen." Yet at a later day, in commenting bitterly on the twenty-seven pounds he had forever lost to Ralph, Ben could not refrain from adding: "I loved him, notwithstanding, for he had many amiable qualities." Meanwhile Ralph, thrown wholly on his own resources, returned to London and became a hack-writer. In 1728 he first burst into print with "Touchstone, or . . . Essays on the Reigning Diversions of the Town," a divertingly dull hodge-podge which showed an enormous amount of famil- iarity with the stage and the customs of Grub Street. Dur- ing the next year there appeared his "Miscellaneous Poems," dedicated in most fulsome terms to the Earl of Chesterfield. They included "Night: a Poem," four cantos of blank verse that imitated Thomson's "Seasons"; "Clarinda, or the Fair Libertine," four cantos of heroic couplets that imitated Dryden; and "Zeuma, or the Love of Liberty," three cantos of such incredible blank verse that by no stretch of imagi- nation can they be said to imitate anything. The book failed to succeed; but the "mungril Criticks," as Ralph called them, snarled and snapped over the shreds of the volume, while Pope conferred immortality upon him by writing: Silence, ye wolves, while Ralph to Cynthia howls, And makes Night hideous; answer him, ye owls. Perhaps it was rather unkind of Pope to italicize Night; certainly it was unnecessary — in every way — for him to append a footnote which stated that Ralph was a "low writer." For the first time in his life Ralph now felt despondent. Pope's couplet and footnote, he complained, prevented his success in any employment, even ir the everlasting job of writing poetry. But in 1730 he became acquainted with Fielding, whom he at once took under his expansive wing; and in the same year Fielding's "Temple Beau" appeared, with a prologue written by Ralph. In it he lamented the decline of genuine comedy to farce, complained of the want of patronage by the great, and prayed that they would en- courage true merit by making Fielding's play a success. They did. The result was that poor Ralph discovered he had started Fielding on the road to fame, while he himself remained as deep in the literary dumps as ever. But when Fielding ran the Haymarket Theater in 1736 he seems to have repaid the debt by allowing Ralph to become his assist- ant, and he also put in rehearsal Ralph's play, "The Astrol- oger." Unfortunately it was found necessary to subject the piece to an indefinite postponement; and in the end Ralph had to be satisfied with only one benefit performance of another of his plays, whose name, sad to relate, has not ccme down. The disappointed poet and dramatist now turned to journalism. In 1738 Dodington employed him to write fiery denunciations of the Ministry, and in 1739 he became asso- ciate editor of Fielding's paper, The Champion, which con- stantly attacked Walpole and his coterie. When Fielding withdrew from this publication in 1741 Ralph succeeded him as sole manager and chief editorial writer. But though he did his best to imitate Fielding's indirect methods of attack, his ironies and his allegories, he failed, and The Cliampion quickly descended into a peevishly dull political journal that soon petered out in a chronic decline. Even successful imitation, it appears, was outside the scope of Ralph's genius. His febrile activity soon turned itself into new chan- nels. In 1742 he wrote a five-hundred-page attack on the aged Duchess of Marlborough, who had shown the temerity to defend Queen Anne; in 1743 there appeared his ponder- ous "Cultural History of the Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, by a Gentleman of Quality"; and in 1744 his "Use and Abuse of Parliaments" advanced the novel idea that parliamentary government must always be a failure. From 1744 to 1746 he was busy on his masterpiece, "The History of England During the Reigns of King William, Queen Anne, and King George I. By a Lover of Truth and Lib- erty"— a book for which the most that can be said is that it added some new material to that of its predecessors. Those two massive folios do indeed show prodigious dili- gence, if little else; and they were actually praised — though, alas, after their author's untimely death — by Charles James Fox, by Lord Hallam, and by the Edinburgh Review. This history also won him the favor of Bolingbroke, chief figure in the party headed by the Prince of Wales, and in 1748 Ralph was put in control of The Remembrancer, the mouthpiece of the Prince. Apparently on the road to real political preferment at last, he became almost opti- mistic again; but in a short time the Prince had the bad taste to die. So Ralph, down in the depths once more, aligned himself with the opposition on a new paper; but through the services of Garrick — who had once shown some mild interest in his dramatic productions — he was bought off in 1753 by the Pelham Ministry and given a yearly allowance of £300. For the next few years his literary work consisted of a series of letters which announced his annual visits to Newcastle House for the purpose of col- lecting his pension. One other work, at least, came from his pen. In 1758 he published "The Case of Authors by Profession or Trade

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 363 Stated," in which the concentrated spleen of thirty years of failure burst forth. In fact the book holds some slight interest even today, as being one of the first — possibly the very first — eighteenth-century protests against the treat- ment of poets and dramatists by booksellers and theatrical managers. In it he wantonly attacked his benefactor, Gar- rick, and on every page he stoutly defended authors who wrote for money — as well he might. But he wrote now merely from habit — "as alert with my Pen as a Wasp with its Sting" — not with the hope of winning any fame for himself. Optimism of every sort, even his faith in deism itself, had completely vanished. So utterly morose had he become that he could no longer read the prince of pessi- mists, Ecclesiastes, without parodying him: "I throw my Bread upon the Waters without any Hope of finding it after many Days." The logic of events would seem to demand that his life should have become more and more gloomy until the squalid, poverty-stricken end. But it was not to be so; in his case virtue, as is proper, turned out to be its own re- ward. He who had ruined scores of quills and reams of foolscap to win the reputation that was ever denied him departed this life in a blaze of glory, as rich and famous men should depart. Racked with incessant stabs of pain though he was during his last months, he was nevertheless supremely happy and he greeted every twinge with a smile. His triumphant decrepitude gave him more satisfaction than anything else in his life had ever done. For on Janu- ary 24, 1762, he died of the gout. An Unknown Poet By LUDWIG LEWISOHN A FRIEND who suspected the miracle but wasn't quite sure brought him up to our apartment in Vienna one evening in the early fall. It was, whatever the result, a difficult situation. Good literature does somehow, I said to myself, manage to get itself published. Hadn't a Vien- nese publisher handed me the other day a new volume of lyrics by a man in whose future he had faith? It seemed superficially to speak against Dr. Ernst Waldinger that his two collections of verse were, for the present, hopelessly in manuscript. With what polite lies was I to save my face if the stuff proved immature or conventional? If, on the other hand, we were in the presence of the miracle, how was I to endure the poet's modesty of demeanor in the presence of the foreign and supposedly arrived man of letters? For the Viennese are a modest and a gentle folk. Amid the ruin of their land and city they go on producing more beautiful things in all the arts than the dwellers in any other place on earth. Yet they are strangely humble before the representatives of the peoples whom they think of as strong and victorious. The poet proved to be slim and unobtrusive. He was the more shrinking because he had been almost mortally wounded and shell-shocked during the war. For months he had lain unconscious and dumb. A strange lisp had re- mained; he still hid a shattered hand. But from beneath his shrinking demeanor there came to us something sweet and indomitable and incorruptible. It was clear to me almost at once why he worked in a kinsman's mercantile estab- lishment to earn bread for a wife and child; why he was allied to none of the various local literary groups or circles; why he knew no one in his native city. He couldn't ply the trade of letters. Since it never occurred to him that he could subordinate his duties as a man to his success as a poet, it was equally clear that he hadn't quite literally the time to call on editors or make appointments to meet people in the Caf6 Central or Herrenhof or ingratiate him- self with those editorial powers and principalities who pre- cisely in Vienna operate with a good deal of social elegance and formality. He was closely allied by marriage to at least one Viennese of the highest international fame and to an Austro-American family of both wealth and distinc- tion. I had but to look into Ernst Waldinger's eyes to understand his noble inability to press his claims either upon the very great man, absorbed, old, in uncertain health, or upon the American kinsmen, who, though intelligent and kindly and generous, were thinking of everything else rather than of the severest of the Muses. . . . I begged him to honor us by reading a few poems. He sat down on a couch, half-turned away, shading his eyes a little. His voice was low but sonorous; the lisp almost dis- appeared. He read, like all poets, with heavy emphasis on the musical values of his verses. Without physically rais- ing or lowering his voice he brought to our ears the reso- nance of thunder: Aus goldnem Hammern und aus Brunnenrauschen, and the song of flutes and soft recorders : Du Flote des Geschicks, du schwebst als glitte Ein zartes Vogellied durch blaue Mitte. He read a poem called L'Antichambre — Wie viele Zeit verbringen wir vor Tiiren — into which he had poured forever all the hesitancy and pain and pride and humiliation and despair and reassertion of the free self of all noble spirits who have had to be suppli- ants because they could never sink to the level of those outside whose doors they waited; he read a sonnet Unto Us a Son Is Born. . Mayest thou have music loftier than our own, Thou whose sweet eyes our ecstasy once bred; Then wilt thou hear the hours' more patient tread And with thy aspirations be at one. Though many a flower must wither ere 'tis blown, And many a goodly fruit unripe lie dead, None ever came but in a savior's stead. Mayest thou have music loftier than our own. The somber burden which to thee we brought Forgive thy parents and their hapless race! Keep nothing of them but their yearning's grace And guard it tenderly as they did not, That or from discord or accordant tone Thou mayest hear music loftier than their own. Only he did not read this conventional verbiage into which I have forced his lovely spontaneity and packed significance. He read : Dass du Musik hast iiber uns hinaus, Sussblickender. He read, above all: Doch keiner kam, der nicht zum Heil geboren. He fell silent amid the shadows of his corner on the couch, still shading his eyes, still hiding his wounded hand. He must have perceived our emotion in the hush. He explained very simply that he had written a group of poems

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364 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 in which he had tried to interpret the inner significance of certain great forms of analogous creative acts within his own art. Thus he read us Fugue — swift, resonant stanzas concerning a tone that, rising from the silence of deep midnights, is married to sister-tones and reaches finally the throne of ultimate mystery; he read us Arabesques — the breathless, inconceivably swift interlacement of sinuous terze rime; he read us The Tower— a magnificent paean of all the unconquerable aspirations of mankind: Alle Ekstasen sollst du iiberstiirmen, Allen Gebeten, die seufzen, beschworen, Gib die Gestalt und lass sie sich tiirmen, Steinerne Orgel zu brandenden Choren! He read us finally his epilogue and confession of faith: Of Strong Humility. He who regards the universe with true piety holds nothing to be of small account; to him who reverences all life all things yield up their secrets. True love and faith purge the wild senses of terror and identify the soul in joy with the self-contemplative creativeness of God. All men are thus at one and equal in a glow like a still fire within the heavenly crystal; they are in the shadow of a spirit that manifests itself in all phenomena alike ; they are members of a community divine by its very nature and sustaining the least and most fearful of its creatures. Thus in the strength of humility the circle of creation rejoices, knowing itself and all its works obedient to the ultimate command : Und in der Demut Starke Frohlockt der Schopfungskreis, Der sich und seine Werke Dem Sinn gehorsam weiss. These poems were all from Dr. Waldinger's earlier manuscript collection: "Die Berufung." He was good enough later to give me a copy of his more recent work: "Gras Zwischen den Steinen." This is a continuous poem of forty sections or brief cantos, each section or canto con- sisting of seven stanzas. The form is severe and highly symmetrical, relying for variety upon the change of sub- ject, mood, and inner music. The theme of the entire poem is the poet's boyhood and adolescence in Vienna. It shares with all first-rate literature the quality of being universal by virtue of its very concreteness. In those etched scenes of home and street and school the humblest, at times the most sordid details are — while remaining precisely what life makes them — lifted into the eternal world of the interpre- tative imagination. I cannot clear the barriers of language and convey any just notion of this poem. I have read it again and again in the carbon copy which Dr. Waldinger gave me. It moves me more each time, not less. I rank it in my own mind with Dehmel's "Zvvei Menschen," with William Ellery Leonard's "Two Lives," with that brief series of works, beginning with "Modern Love," in which, after so long and painful a divorce, verse and life, music and reality, high imagination and concrete experience are married once again. . . . Waldinger is barely thirty. I cannot find any influ- ence of any older poet in his verse except perhaps a slight tinge of Rilke in his earlier poems. What distinguishes him is, I take it, a union of precise fidelity to fact with plasticity of contour and musical resonance of texture. He describes, for example, a teacher in a school who overawes his pupils. To them he seems detached, noble, a superior being. The poor man is, in fact, pursued into his very classroom by sordid and domestic cares. At night he tries to flee from life by writing shoddy verses. Waldinger makes us feel the feelings of the small boys ; next he makes us see as with the eyes of the body the humble and unhappy pedagogue. And the poem is as severe as a canto of Dante and as rich in vowel-music as a sonnet of Rossetti, and yet there blows through it a bleak wind of modern life and we know the brown, stained classroom and the man and his wife and the wretched little flat and the evening- lamp there by which the teacher writes his verses. . . . It is months ago since Ernst Waldinger did me the honor of giving me his manuscripts. I do not know whether he has found a publisher. He probably thinks that I, like others whom I begged him to approach, am afflicted with what he once called "sloth of the heart" ("Tragheit des Herzens"). The truth is that I have had many qualms of conscience. But life is imperious in its demands. I have had nearer duties than that of speaking a word, ineffectual enough, for the marvelous poet who by chance came up my stairs one day. Also the history of literature persuades me to believe that such work as his cannot go permanently unnoticed and unpraised. To which he could justly reply that he needs publication and appreciation now, that a gleam in these dim and penurious years would do more for him, more therefore for poetry, than all the possible plaudits of a future when he will be indifferent and can- not enjoy them; when he may be solitary and cannot impart them. . . . The unforgettable words of Johnson em- body the recurrent tragedy of the creative artist. Mindful of those words I have written this perhaps too personal and certainly quite inadequate account of my unknown poet. Even amid the clamorous business of the world it may be seen by a few who are not wholly unmindful of things precious and permanent. The Plastic Artist in America* By RALPH M. PEARSON THEODORE DREISER, Zona Gale, Sherwood Anderson, and Edgar Lee Masters say that if a literary artist does not thrive in America the fault is his, not America's. The vein of human ore runs as rich here as it has ever run, the artist as observer and teller of stories need not be rasped by unreason, instinct at play, hundred-percenters, our youth, our want of mellowness. These are our flavors. They are materials at hand to be used. "The whole story of the swift, sudden changes in life, the drive, the rush, the lost sense of values in the modern industrial world, the neces- sary loss of sensibilities too — is that not a story?" So, in the main, run the arguments. No conflict of standards, no definition of terms, particularly as to what is and what is not art in literature, is touched on. The artist's problem, it seems, comes down chiefly to a working adjustment be- tween himself and his material. Can this healthy situation, which Mr. Anderson extends to all the arts, be said to carry over to the plastic arts? Experience says, No. There may be similarities, but there are also extreme differences that change the face of things. If any "scribbler" doubts it let him paint a dozen pictures * This is the tenth of a series of articles hy American writers, answer- ing in the light of their general experience the question : Can an artist function freely in the United States? Mary Austin, Theodore Dreiser, Sher- wood Anderson, Zona Gale. Edgar Lee Masters, Ludwig Lewisohn. Sinclair Lewis, Floyd Dell, and Irwin Edman have hitherto contributed.

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 365 Houghton Mifflin Company <)V Tin: STREAM OF TRAVEL James N. Hall The odyssey of an adventurous young man. $3.00 Till: UOG OF THE GRAND TURKS Robert E. Peabody The record of four famous ships. $4.00 THE SOCIALj WOKKER IN A HOSPITAL WARD Elsie Wulkop With comments by Dr. Cabot. $3.00 WASHING- TON'S RULES OF CIVILITY Charles Moore A fascinating reprint. Illustrated with fac- similes. $3.00 APOSTATE Forrest Reid An Intensely moving spiritual autobiog- raphy. $4.00 MY ANTONIA WillaCather A new edition of Miss Cather*s masterpiece. $2.50 A BOUQUET FROM FRANCE Wilfrid Thorley An anthology of French poetry, with English translations. $2.25 Lord Grey's FALLODON PAPERS In this series of stimulating and delightful essays, England's former Foreign Minister writes of the pleasures of reading and outdoor life at Fallodon. $2.50 Clemenceau's DEMOSTHENES A masterly study of the great Athenian orator which is at the same time a subtle spiritual autobiography of the "Tiger" him- self. $2.50 THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MIND By John H. Randall, Jr. John Dewey calls this brilliant analytical survey of the intellec- tual backgrounds of the present age "the only history of modern thought and philosophy which puts their development in the proper perspective." $5.00 Gamaliel Bradford's "He made hell a laugh- ing-stock, heaven a dream, and God Him- self no more than an amiable possibility, if even that." The story of a tolerant and lovable man who shifted the attitude of science and overturned the whole world of thought. $3.50 DARWIN EAST WIND By Amy Lowell "Thirteen poems, all dedicated pas- sionately to New England life and character, all . . . stark and mor- dant and merciful, drenched with purgative pity and terror." — Joseph Auslander, Ne<w York Sun. $2.25 THE NEW SPIRIT THE SOUL OF SPAIN By Havelock Ellis These important volumes — two of the most incisive of all the Ellis books — are now available in the new Popular Edition. Each $2.25 PALIMPSEST By H. D. In its snaring of the most elusive overtones and undertones of life, this book by one of the most dis- tinguished of contemporary poets pushes forward the established boundaries of prose fiction. $3.50 THE HEART OF EMERSON'S JOURNALS Edited by Bliss Perry A vivid self-portrait of the Con- cord philosopher revealed with care and discrimination from the ten volumes of his Journals. $3.00 MEMORIES OF A HAPPY LIFE William Lawrence The autobiography of Bishop Lawrence. $5.00 THE WHITE DEVII/S MATE Lewis S. Palen Adventures in Red Russia. $2.50 NORTHERN LIGHTS AND SOUTHERN SHADE Douglas Gold ring Vignettes of Scandi- navia and Brittany. $5.00 AUTUMN FIRE T. C. Murray "One of the best plays of the Irish soil." — Spectator. $1.25 O GENTEEL LADY! Esther Forbes Sophisticated romance of crinoline days. $2.00 TAXATION OF INHERITANCE W. J. Shultz A comprehensive sur- vey. $3.00 EXTENSION OF BANK CREDIT Earl B. Schwulst A study of the princi- ples of sound banking. $3.00 When writing to advertiser; please mention The Nation

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366 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 that are works of art in the modern sense and see what hap- pens. Subject matter undoubtedly is as rich and available as it has ever been or as it is in any field of art. Forms, tex- tures, lines, colors are raw materials, like words and notes, waiting in limitless profusion to be used for expressing the endless aspects of life and nature. Materials, then, are the same. But when we come to the problem of adjustment to materials and to the entire problem of adjustment to the public the differences are certainly dominant. Take, for instance, the matter of a standard. That Shakespeare, Flaubert, Keats, Masters, and Anderson are artists would be generally granted by the three groups that make their public — writers, critics, and general readers. In granting this much a standard of judgment is allowed which at least places the quality of art in the creative handling of material rather than in the material itself. Not so in plastic art. Cezanne and Sargent could both be called artists only by opposed schools of criticism — the one school seeing art mainly in style or creative expression, the other seeing it mainly in skilful recording of subject, or imita- tion. In the plastic field, therefore, a definition of terms is the necessary first step, and moreover it is the only escape for the individual from the imitative viewpoint or from the confusion incident to conflicting standards that are not clearly understood. Both adherence to imitation and confusion of issues, as they work on the mind of an artist trained to the aca- demic standard of the average school, prevent significant creation; but even mightier looms the economic issue. This hungry beast lies in wait just outside the door of the mind to stop all flights of fancy — to bring an artist s thoughts back to bread and gas. The artist, of course, can "go and be a banker," as Mr. Anderson suggests, and save his skin. But such a retreat will hardly solve the issue. This economic matter does not take its root in the selfishness of an indifferent public. It is not that there is no money for art — or support for artists. Millions are freely given, and certain so-called artists can live like bankers without the bother of being bankers. It goes deeper than that. It goes back to a state of mind — a state of mind that, in the very act of generously supporting art as it understands it, is actually blighting art by non-support according to the newer concepts of the day. The conception that visual art is a modified form of copying has permeated the English-speaking world so thor- oughly that art quality (which all history proves cannot lie in that direction) has been lost sight of to a degree almost impossible to believe. So far has it gone that the lesson of Oriental art and of the classics of all ages is largely lost. So, too, is the lesson of the modern rediscovery of the mov- ing power of design — which gives to those classics a greatly deepened meaning. Many authorities are in the same pre- dicament as the general public and have failed as com- pletely to extricate themselves from their inherited bias toward skilful imitation. The National Academy, the American Federation of Art, and many art schools, mu- seums, critics, and art magazines are cases in point. For in giving their generous support to a type of work which Oriental culture finds vulgar they fail to support creation. The calling of museum suppo; c "generous" must be ex- plained. John Cotton Dana, one of the few officials with a conscience in the matter of living artists, says: "Our art museums have, up to this day, used not even as much as 2 per cent of their total expenditures for the purchase of objects produced in this country." Two per cent of all museum expenditures is a lot of money — perhaps ten or twenty or more thousands of dollars — enough to allow ten or twenty or more artists to quit commercial work and turn to creation. But it is not spent with this end in view. It is mainly spent for documents describing winter ably compiled by Redfield, or for those describing prominent persons compiled by Sargent and Louis Betts; which signi- fies generosity — to the recording school. With 98 per cent of their money going in other directions and the "generous" 2 per cent, if these figures are right, going for "safe and sane" contemporaries, creative expression is a bit obviously "up against" the economic issue so far as museums are con- cerned. The antidote (and fortunately there always is an antidote) is found in a different and more adventurous state of mind as evidenced in the acts of such courageous leader- officials as Mr. Dana, who is buying contemporary Ameri- can art for the Newark Public Library with the definite aim of encouraging its production. Other antidotes are the educational activities of the Barnes Foundation, the en- couraging-art-in-industry activities of the Art Center of New York, the museum exhibitions of contemporary work, the purchases of such adventurous collectors as John Quinn and Duncan Phillips, the growth of creative expression among children so ably reported in the last issue of "Pro- gressive Education," etc., all of which contribute to the attainment of the creative goal in proportion as they refuse to compromise with the prevailing public taste of the day. The state of mind which supports imitation is surpris- ingly unconscious at a time when consciousness of mental processes is so much the order of the day that a village library will have more requests for books on psychology than for those on any other serious subject. Satisfaction with the familiar, fear of the new and strange, run their course as unquestioned here as ever they did in the interior of darkest Africa. Mr. Dreiser in this series makes Sar- gent and Whistler represent the "really important artists." Mr. Cram damns modern art because it carries abstraction beyond familiar limits. Senator Beveridge calls art "truth." The great public knows what it likes and likes what it knows. Patrons of art give their thousands and millions for magnificent museums to house borrowed art of other ages. And the creators of the day get on as best they may. All because fear of the new and strange and desire for the safety of the guaranteed judgment stop all questing for adventure in the field of visual art. In the literary department the new, even though it must batter against the same traits of mind, does get a hearing — does meet an alert analytical criticism that at least differentiates art from material. In the plastic de- partment art is widely confused with material because the imitative tradition is accepted without analysis or because conflicting standards confuse the issue. It is the state of mind which allows the situation to exist, working both through the artist and through the patron, that chiefly pre- vents the free functioning of the creative plastic artist in America. The Nation's list of Notable Fall Books for 1926 will be found in the main section of the present issue, on pages 351-358.

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The Nation Uikihg (Press <B ooks I work "I genius." — —London Morning P •' H. E. Bates ix a twenty-one year old English novelist sponsored by Edward Garnett, the Eng- lish critic, who numbers among his previous dis- coveries Conrad, Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson. Mr. Bates makes his bow to American readers with THE TWO SISTERS "An unusual and lovely book. ... It makes its ap- peal to real lovers of lit- erature, to connoisseurs." — New York Times. The story of Tess and Jenny, of the brooding atmosphere which sur- rounds their home, and of their love for the man Michael is one which only a true artist would dare to approach and could carry off success- fully. With an introduc- tion by Edward Garnett. $2.00 From GOETHE To Hauptmann by Camillo Von Klenze "This is a study in com- parative literature, a sub- ject on which the author is as capable of speaking as any man in the world whose medium of expres- sion is German or Eng- lish, unless it be Sir Ed- mund Gosse." — Allen Porterfield in The New York Times. $2.50 Readers of The Nation will welcome The SECOND BOOK of NEGRO SPIRITUALS James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson have produced a companion volume to their fainous "Hook of American Negro Spirituals." With a new introduction and sixty-one more songs, many of which have never been set down before, this volume is equally as fine as the first, which set a nation singing and talking of "America's greatest con- tribution to art." — Sinclair Lewis. Uniform with first vol- ume. $3.50 A novel of universal appeal POWER by Lion Feuchtwanger Romance lives again in this novel, hailed by European critics as one of the greatest romances of the past decade. The story of an actual historical character, a Jew of the court of Wurttemberg in the early eighteenth century, it comes to American readers in the fine translation from the German by Willa and Edwin Muir. Huge in scope and conception, Power stands out as a dignified work of art that will with- stand the years. $2.50 "We unreservedly recommend by R. F. Dibble as the season's biography -The World. $3.00 THE TIME OF MAN by Elizabeth Madox Roberts A more distinguished reception could hardly be conceived than that accorded to this first novel by a new American author. Critics and readers universally hail it as a beau- tiful and moving story, a permanent contribution to Ameri- can art. It will be read by every cultured American, by everyone sensitive to true emotion and fine writing. "A beautiful work of art." — Carl Van Doren. 'Brim full of beauty." — Keith Preston. "A work of genius, beautifully written and full of light." — Edward Garnett. "A wonderful performance. I am humble before it." — Sherwood Anderson. Biography and Criticism John Garber Palache GAUTIER AND THE ROMANTICS A happy blend of biog- raphy, anecdote and criti- cism makes this volume a treasure trove of informa- tion and entertainment — one of the few books on the subject in the Eng- lish language. Mr. Pa- lache, author of Four Novelists of the Old Re- gime, has successfully de- picted the life of Gautier and of his circle, Flau- bert, Balzac, Turgenev, the Goncourts, Baude- laire, George Sand and many other famous fig- ures of the period. In addition he has brought to his task a keen critical appreciation and narra- tive art. Illustrated. $3.00 Transition by Edwin Muir Edwin Muir needs no in- troduction to the readers of The Nation. His bril- liant essays on contem- porary literature have, many of them, appeared in these pages. In Transition he reveals the entire tendency and direction of the present age of literature through a keen analysis of the most interesting and baf- fling English writers of today: Strachey, Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Stephen Hudson, Aldous Huxley, Edith Sitwell, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and others. $2.00 30 Irving Place THE VIKING PRESS New York City When uniting to advertitere, please mention The Nation

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368 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 First Glance "rr\ HE Heart of Emerson's Journals," edited by Bliss 1 Perry (Houghton Mifflin: $3) from the now famous ten volumes published between 1909 and 1914, will probably establish itself as the best single book to which to go for a picture of the living Emerson. The "Essays" have lost a little of their vitality, though perhaps not much; the poems, which gain in strength as time passes, are nevertheless only Emerson at his highest and rarest. Here are both the essayist and the poet at their bubbling source, set in relation to the more general man who must always be interesting chiefly for the thing he spent his life in trying to become. Here is no finished product — poem or essay; here is the naked endeavoring soul. The "Journals" are important among other reasons be- cause they show Emerson in the act of becoming a writer. This, I fancy, was the dominant function of his life; and the process was never done. From the day when as an undergraduate he read Ben Jonson not for "edification" but for "vigorous phrases and quaint, peculiar words and ex- pressions" until the day when at 69, wandering a little in his wits, he noted the necessity of capturing every birdlike perception before it flew away forever — from first to last he was engaged in making himself a perfect artist of the darting word. With Emerson, as with his disciple Thoreau, writing was almost a disease. He admitted that his fond- ness for it was "immoderate." It was the language of Car- lyle, not the thought, that he respected. As much as any- thing else it was the speech of common people — not their manners or their characters — that made him a defender of democracy. For him the magic of poetry was the magic of verse. Always he studied expression, which for him was a mode of life quite as much as it was a mode of art. In his youth he doubted himself: "I find myself often idle, vagrant, stupid, and hollow." He was appalled at the inter- mittence of his intellectual power, which seemed to come and go like the inspiration of poets. The story of his progress toward self-reliance is the story of his advancing confidence in himself as a writer. I should not like to stress this too much, or to cheapen Emerson by emphasizing only his occupation with tech- nique. In truth, however, expression and perception were with him inseparable things. He doubtless thought of him- self as one whose business it was to apprehend reality. I think of him as one who kept a Journal for the purpose of building a universe out of words. Without a notebook there would have been no world for him; at least the world he saw would not have held together without the cement of innumerable sentences. There is more to say about Emer- son than this, but this is important and everything else is somehow connected with it. His distinction as an observer, for instance, was that while he observed heaven and earth ideally, saying to himself that "the world can never be learned by learning all its details," he yet was absorbed in details. Like his master Plato he denied appearances only after loving them — possibly because he loved them. He loved every fact. "A man must have aunts and cousins, must buy carrots and turnips, must have barn and wood- shed, must go to market and to the blacksmith's shop, must saunter and sleep and be inferior and silly." He lived on earth as well as air; respectability, moral and intellectual, was never enough for him. But this fact is intimately con- nected with the fact that literary respectability bored him too. He valued all good words, fine or coarse : "What a pity that we cannot curse and swear in good society!" Of few in his class can it be said more accurately that the writer waa the man. And what a writer ! Mark Van Doren The Democratizing of a Civilization Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. By M. Rostvotzeff. Vol. I: Social and Economic Development. Oxford University Press. $15. But the ultimate problem remains like a ghost, ever present and ever unlaid. Is it possible to extend a higher civilization to the lower classes without debasing its standard and diluting its quality to the vanishing-point? Is not every civilization bound to decay as soon as it begins to penetrate the masses? rpHIS is the problem which presents itself to Professor Rost- ■*• votzeff at the close of his remarkable study of the social and economic evolution, and devolution, of ancient pagan civilization when it had taken its ultimate form in the Roman Empire of the first three centuries of the Christian era. The total im- pression left by the book is that it is the most important study in the field of Roman imperial history since the appearance of the fifth volume of Mommsen's Roman history. In the wisdom of a mature and ripened scholarship Professor Rostvotzeff leaves unsolved the empirical problem to which his studies have brought him. It is a question, indeed, which the successive civilizations of history have not, as yet, adequately answered. Professor Rostvotzeff presents his idea somewhat as fol- lows. The Mediterranean area had developed, preceding and during the Hellenistic period, a high standard of living in all fields of human endeavor. The Roman Empire inherited these high standards. It spread them widely in Western Europe. The reasons why the world ruled by the Roman emperors failed to maintain these standards were of many kinds, psychological, social, economic, and political. All of these factors Professor Rostvotzeff recognizes. He seems to summarize them under one general observation. This is that the upper, the educated classes in the period of the empire were absorbed by the lower classes; and that this absorption resulted in a leveling of culture downward. The masses were unable to assimilate the intellectual interests and powers which had distinguished the elite leadership of the Hellenistic age and the first century of Roman imperial history. In other words, ancient society was unable to meet the problem of democratizing its culture. In the final words of his book, quoted above, Professor Rostvotzeff leaves a small loophole for optimism regarding the possibility of a successful generalizing of culture in the future. Despite that suggestion of optimism, one is left with the impression that he agrees with Eduard Meyer's dictum that the broader the stream of culture becomes the less deep must its average necessarily be. This book is an amazing attempt to formulate and follow in their flow and their changes of directions the currents of the social and economic life of the Mediterranean lands under Roman imperial administration. The author is quite justified in his claim that this is a pioneer attempt to gather all the materials now available in these two fields of historical interest for the period which he covers, to fix clearly the ascertainable facts, and to determine from these facts the general tendencies which they indicate. Many and serious difficulties arise chiefly from the sporadic character of the evidence. Upon all fields of ancient history this is true. But it is particularly marked in the case of the economic evidence. The scholar- ship developed by the ancient Greeks did not distinguish eco- nomics from politics, but treated it as a subsidiary branch of

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 369 rmrVTYVYTVYVVTTVTrVVVVVTirVTVVVrYyYVYVVVTrVYVYYV»VVTVVVVV>yy^ 7\jew Scribner Hooks The Silver Spoon By John Galsworthy Notv in its second hundred thousand ''Here is the very aristocracy of F.n^lish prose In the various characters with which Mr. Galsworthy has peopled his story there is enough of contrast at lc.ist to pique even the most casual of readers, and there is a trial scene into which the author has crammed almost enough ol drama to make a fairly complete stage play." — Pukcy Hutchinson in the New York Times. $i.oo Ignatius Loyola By Paul Van Dyke In much that h:is heen written concerning Jesuitism there has been a notable lack of both truth and data. Professor Vjii Dyke, the impartial historian, comprehensively interprets a great order and a world figure. $3- 50 Our Mobile Earth By Reginald Daly The head of the Department of Geology in Harvard University in this book writes an enthralling chapter iu the romance of science — the story of the formation of the continents. Illustrated, $5.00 By Horace Carncross The Escape From the Primitive Dr. Carncross, a well-known practising psychoanalyst, applies the principles of his science liberally to mankind as a whole. He shows mankind to be far from its civilized maturity — still hedged about by hereditary fears and narrownesses. $1.50 By Henry Fairfield Osborn Evolution and Religion in Education This volume sets forth the reasoned and tempered views of a great evolutionist who is also a religionist. It comes at the appropriate moment, following a period of bitter controversy. $1.00 By Brander Matthews Rip Van Winkle Goes to the Play This lively and discerning volume discusses everything from Brander Matthews' memories of actresses, soliloquies, and the art of acting in general down to technical questions of scene and scenic devices, claptrap, "well-made" plays, and America's drama export. $1.00 Stark Young's Heaven Trees Ever since the publication of "The Three Fountains" Mr. Stark Young's many admirers have been wishing that he would write a novel. He has done it at List in "Heaven Trees." $2.00 Sinoky By Will James This story of a cow-pony, with Will James' inimitable drawings, is full of romance and emotion, excitement and beauty — a book which stands by itself. $2.10 Susan Shane By Roger Burlingame Henry Goddard Leach, editor of "The Forum," writes: ' ' In 'Susan Shane' you have contrib- uted a permanent character to Amer- ican literary tradition. . . . I shall put it on the shelf with 'So Big' , 'The Perennial Bachelor' and 'The Professor' s House.' " $2.00 The Life of Francis Thompson By Everard Meynell Everard Meynell devoted the last weeks of his life to a final revision of his authoritative biography. It is the account of a rare personality — a spoiled priest, medical student, commercial traveller, boot- black, a caller of cabs— until fame overtook him. $150 By the Very Rev. W. R. Inge England A survey of England's present and a forecast of her future; in its discussion of England's relation to her empire and to the United States it is startling in its candor. $3.00 The American People: A History By Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker The Edwards professor of American history in Princeton University has written a book which has long been needed — a one-volume history of the United States for the adult mind. $5.00 By Walter Damrosch My MuSiCal Life Popular Edition The memoirs of the conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra in a new, low-priced, illustrated edition which retains all the text of the original. "A human document of absorbing interest. . . . Possesses remarkable historic value, apart from the fact that it makes entertaining reading." — Musical America. $1.00 The Portrait of Zelide Popular Edition By Geoffrey Scott Here at last is a popular-priced edition of what Dr. Joseph Collins has called "the finest .fictional bio- graphy that has been published in English." "It is difficult to see why any but a great novel should be set above it for interest or charm." — Carl van Doren in the Century Magazine. $1.50 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS FIFTH AVENUE AT 48TH STREET NEW YORK When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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370 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 political science. Hence no Greek or Latin author ever wrote a general book upon economic history. Only a few brochures, one upon a practical and immediate problem in the field of pub- lic finance, and a number of treatises upon the practice of agriculture, attest to their understanding of the existence and the importance of the economic structure upon which their political and social life was based. For practical aid in ad- ministrative activities the Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman imperial government gathered statistics, it is true. But they had no thought of their availability for sociological purposes. The statistics which they gathered have come down to us only in shreds and spots. Statistical aids for modern research in the field of antiquity are therefore as completely lacking as is the help which one might have had from Greek scholarship had it interpreted its own economic life in its own way and with its own peculiar and brilliant gifts. Professor Rostvotzeff is entirely conscious of these disabili- ties which were inherent in his task. His attitude is that of a person who projects working hypotheses and problems for solu- tion. This is sound method. His method being sound, his re- sults, even where he is forced to reconstruct the picture for- ward and backward from the evidence which is at hand, are always worthy of the greatest consideration. In the notes to the successive chapters, assembled at the end of the book, one finds references to the numerous books and research articles which Professor Rostvotzeff himself has written. In the writ- ing of these books and articles, covering a long period of pro- ductive scholarship, the author has assembled that complete knowledge of the ancient evidence which gives his present con- structive effort its authority. Perhaps the most marked feature of his method is his extensive and skilful use of modern archaeological researches. In this respect his method ranks with that found in the best of the modern studies in related fields, such as those of Eduard Meyer, Camille Jul'ian in his "Histoire de la Oaulc," or Stephane Gsell in his "Histoire de 1'Afrique du Nord." The general thesis of this important volume seems to rest upon the assumption that all high civilizations are urban civili- zations. After establishing the urban character of the Hellen- istic civilization of the last three pre-Christian centuries he follows this urbanized life in its vicissitudes through the first three Christian centuries until it becomes congealed in the Oriental despotic governmental form of Diocletian and Con- stan+ine. The Roman citizen armies of Augustus and of the early Empire represented the solid opinion of the educated and propertied elements of the city populations. In the second century the army levies of the Roman state were made up of country people, the peasants of the less civilized provinces of the empire. In the third century there arose a social and economic maladjustment between the urban centers of civiliza- tion and the area of agricultural production, the peasantry of the Roman world. In the third century this maladjustment produced a crisis of hatred of the oppressed country population against the cities and their culture which expressed itself in the form of assaults upon the cities by the peasant armies of the state. In this period of the crisis of the third century many of the cities were destroyed. The urban civilization of the ancient pagan world was ruined; and another, a more primitive, type replaced it. In the handling of the materials upon which this general theory is founded Professor Rostvotzeff is a master. The principal criticism of the book lies in the fact that the author has suggested explanations in too many cases. His vigorous intelligence will leave nothing at loose ends. In this effort the materials have been over-schematized. At least this is my opinion. But within this general theoretical covering there lie an amazing number of new, fresh, and penetrating ideas. The net result is a work of amazing vigor and interest — a really significant and lasting gift to historical scholarship. William Linn Westermann Primitive Sculpture Primitive Negro Sculpture. By Thomas Munro and Paul Guil- laume. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $6. T^HE first problem with which the critic of any plastic art is *• faced — the problem of disengaging from one another the various kinds of appeal which the work presents, of determining how much of the delight which it affords is due to associations, literary, historic, or emotional, and how much to qualities intrin- sic in the work itself — is modified and complicated in the case of an art as completely exotic as that of primitive Negro sculp- ture. It is true that such an art is devoid of some of those extraneous sources of interest which delude people completely anaesthetic to plastic beauty into the belief that they "like pic- tures." Being in an entirely unfamiliar tradition, it awakens no habitual response, like the suppressed "ah" which greets the stereopticon lecturer's jnece de resistance, to things like sun- sets which have always been assumed to be beautiful. More- over, it carries with it no reference to familiar situations sur- rounded by emotion, for the customs, social or religious, to which a Negro fetish relates are infinitely remote, and it cannot be enjoyed like a picture of the Crucifixion because the spectator happens to have received a Christian education, or like a picture of children at play because he happens to have been himself a parent. But if these extraneous considerations are excluded, others equally dangerous are introduced. These objects are quaint and curious; they relate to the customs of a remote, mys- terious people, and they set the mind to dreaming. Here is a reminder of savagery and strength, a tangible hint of the dark forest and bloody rites. Here, in a word, is all the fascination of the curious and the full temptation to grow rhapsodic over what is merely unfamiliar and esoteric. Hence, as the authors of the present volume are well aware, any treatment of the sub- ject which they propose is very likely to degenerate into a mere miscellany of more or less relevant ethnological fact and vague aesthetic enthusiasm. Their problem is the extremely difficult one not only of overcoming an instinctive tendency to regard the objects which they are considering as merely grotesque or hideous but also of seeing to it that any interest aroused in them is a legitimate artistic interest and not the facile enthusi- asm of the conventional mystagogue who has discovered a new sensation in which only the elect can participate. Fortunately they have followed a method which, for the brief compass which they have allowed themselves, could hardly be better. Though they freely admit that the complex appeal of African art doubtless includes — as does that of most other arts — many elements dependent upon associations, they have assumed that such associations can have no real meaning for Europeans, and hence, after the briefest possible discussion of the conditions under which this art was produced, they confine themselves to a discussion of those plastic characteristics which may be perceived by the inhabitant of New York or Paris in much the same way as by an inhabitant of the Congo. The method of analysis employed is that developed at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, of which Dr. Munro is associate educational director, and already made familiar in Dr. Barnes's "The Art in Painting." Its application here to a different sub- ject matter reveals anew its great usefulness. It requires no more than a moment's consideration of any of the forty-one plates with which the volume is illustrated to perceive that these masks and fetishes are at least not, as an unreflective glance might lead one to suppose, merely incompe- tent attempts to represent the human face or figure. However incapable of accurate imitation the artists who made them may, for the sake of argument, be supposed to have been, they obvi- ously did not intend these ovoid limbs or acutely conical and rigidly protruding breasts as copies of anything which they saw. Modification and distortion are plainly intentional and, as it requires very little further study to see, purposeful and sys-

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 371 .■■IIHIIIIIIIIIIII Illlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll Illllllllll ,,,. . . . - " mum iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiniiiiiiiii mfrnminmn m mummimum,,,,, nniimummi " By two of the most distinguished living historians THE HUMAN ADVENTURE By James Henry Breasted & James Harvey Robinson ADYNAMIC, original and absolutely up-to-date history of our civilization, based on more than a quarter of a century's research, including the most recent discov- eries about man's past, and presenting the mighty phenomenon of human progress in a graphic, lucid and absorbing narrative. /// two volumes The CONQUEST of CIVILIZATION BY JAMES HENRY BREASTED Professor of Ancient History and Egyptology, and Di- rector of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago The story of the achievements of the ancient world from primitive times to the fall of Rome, based on the latest discoveries and brilliantly told by one of the most eminent authorities on ancient civiliza- tion. The ORDEAL of CIVILIZATION BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON Author of "The Mind in the Making," "The Neiv His- tory," "The Humanizing of Knowledge," etc. The history of man's progress from the Dark Ages to the present day presented in the light of a revo- lutionary attitude toward the past and written to illuminate the bewildering problems of the modern world. I These tiro volumes represent the finest achievements of modern scholarship in relating the living past to the all-important present. Two vols. Boxed. Over 500 Illus. fcf 1,400 pages. $10.00 I TOM-TOM BY JOHN W. VANDERCOOK A fascinating account of the civilization of the bush negroes in the remote jungles of Suri- name by an accurate and sym- pathetic observer who has lived among them. $3.50 SUTTER'S GOLD BY BLAISE CENDRARS Colored woodblocks by Harry Cimino The thrilling chronicle of Jo- han August Sutter, intrepid ad- venturer of early California and the first of America's multi- millionaires. $2.50 THROUGH MANY WINDOWS BY HELEN WOODWARD The reminiscences of a suc- cessful modern business woman who reviews her eventful career with refreshing candor and humor. $2.50 THE SACRED GIRAFFE BY SALVADOR DE MADARIAGA "As witty a bit of fooling as we have read since the ironies of Samuel Butler." — London Daily Telegraph. $2.50 MINIATURES OF FRENCH HISTORY BY HILAIRE BELLOC Dramatic and significant epi- sodes from French history, dis- playing Mr. Belloc's under- standing of the- past with a sure and subtle art. $3.50 r\ \T>> THE ART OF BEING RULED BY WYNDHAM LEWIS "A brilliant essay, unusual, pro- vocative and inspiriting," writes the London Times of this au- dacious criticism of modern society. $4.00 MR. and MRS. HADDOCK IN PARIS, FRANCE BY DONALD OGDEN STEWART America's wag laureate makes a new contribu- tion to the gayety of the nations. $2.00 HARPER & BROTHERS Publishers Since 1817 When writing to advertisera, please mention The Nation

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372 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 tematic. If a leg or a brow is given a form never seen in nature it is not the result of accident or momentary caprice, for it cor- responds to other and similar distortions, so that the figure, while ceasing to be a copy of nature, becomes a series of related masses in which balance, repetition, rhythm, and all the funda- mental features of design are clearly present. The art of Afri- can sculpture was, then, indubitably an art, whatever question may remain as to whether or not it was one of great significance for the modern man. It is with proving this fact and with indicating the chief characteristics of several schools of African art that the authors of the present volume are chiefly concerned. Throughout, to be sure, there is their implied conviction that the phenomenon which they discuss is one of genuine aesthetic significance, and in a brief concluding chapter devoted to its relation to modern art they hail it as one of the forces destined to win for the sculptor a clearer understanding of the justification of his departures from the imitation of nature, a justification which rests, not upon the authority of certain such departures made in the past but upon his success in thus expressing a creative vision. They are, however, for the most part content to leave questions of evaluation aside; their chief purpose is merely to provide an introduction to an intelligent study of the objects which they treat from the standpoint of nothing except their plastic characteristics. This purpose they accomplish with con- spicuous success. Joseph Wood Kbutch New Lights The Ninth Wave. By Carl Van Doren. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2. '"pHERE is in the United States a small group of those who *■ are neither eager to exploit the novel nor content to employ its form to imitate its past self; but who are adven- turous in trying to mold it to its next equivalent. For there is new material to be included in the novel, technique to be extended, and combinations to be effected of those new tech- niques; and every such variation, as it emerges, seems to be a new mode, whereas it is probably but a single passage in a changing orchestration. In "The Ninth Wave" Carl Van Doren joins this "small unhajpy company," as Mr. Hergesheimer has called it — joins not spectacularly but with a detached awareness of what is happening to the novel. In a period of irritated small-town soul searchings and of complacent large-town acceptances, Mr. Van Doren tells about a man and how he lived through ten episodes of his life. Here, he seems to say, is neither Main Street nor Greenwich Village, but one of those others in the United States who are occupied with things of the mind, and who live tensely in innumerable ways of which the avowed emotionalists know nothing. Here is an area of poignant feeling, like gossamer, like needles, like bolts; and if you are battered upon by primitive choices, you are going to know nothing about such intensities; but if you have even begun to perceive that the race whirls in a circle and thus sees great suns as mere pin-wheels, then you may like to stand still and be touched by a heat and a light less than familiar. Every novelist should begin life as a critic, in order to be thus raw to the minutest intimations of behavior, from a blow by a word to the lift of an eyelash above an utterly expres- sionless eye. If involution is the next word in art as in coarser fields, if, having included all that is outside, the novel is to turn inward, farther and farther, if it is to bare utter secrets with the knife of a phrase and find t^ose secrets not in choice and the possible conscious reaction but in the field of the invol- untary, or in the kind of reaction which one attract", by one's mere make-up, then the delicacies of work like this are of enor- mous importance. Such a book could not have been written and would not have been read twenty years ago, because people wouldn't have cared, wouldn't have been able to recognize themselves and one another. In proceeding through these episodes in the life of a man the book, of course, discards the "line" of the novel, in the old sense. This skeleton is not new, but in its treatment is new, for the record is one of powerful and sensitized reactions to simple things. This business of the commonplace, we see, is not necessarily sordid. Between the old beautiful unrealities and the new ugly realities there stretches this middle ground of creative interpretation of every day — its gaiety, its solemnity, its question, its watchfulness, its passion. For some of the race experiences terrifically and does not explode into action, but merely flows, being fluid, in new directions and reflects, being prismatic, new lights. The book is about these. In this episodic progress the climaxes necessarily come without preparation, save in the same chapter — such as the poignant scene between Kent and Margaret following Barry's visit; and there is nothing in recent literature which grips one more fiercely than those few pages. But then the line abruptly descends again, to simpler scenes in the leisurely life of these two. You comprehend that the author is discarding weavings and preparations perhaps because he is weary unto death of "anticipatory flashes," when in life things so often go bang. But here we see the impact of the go-bang not on blood and brawn, and not even on familiar brain-paths, but on nerves and on cuticles, and on spirits experimenting on new routes; as when, without preparation, Mel is shown to be in love with Kent's wife. The episodic progress, of course, doesn't bother to weave that in either. There it is. There it would be in life. What are you going to do about it? Nothing. But you are going to be something else, it may be. For you certainly will not manifest the poverty of those amateurs at life who believe a monotonous affirmation to be tolerance. You, as protagonist, interpret, and you get somewhere inside yourself. And that is all. Interpretation does not run along like a little dog at the heels of giant happenings. Interpretation of the smallest occurrence is the happening. This, it is highly probable, will be a part of the method of the novel, whatever its next form is to be. The simple cold handling of things as they serially occur, in the knowledge that art does not consist of things fashioned and knit but of things selected and presented; and that characters need not violently act, but that they must react to and susceptibly interpret their environment. And then some day, as experimentation goes on, there will possibly emerge a new fashioning and a new knitting, one curl farther up the spiral. Mr. Van Doren's novel is trying to move toward the free- dom which in innumerable ways — from stream of consciousness to second person — this caged art form is seeking to effect. His principal audacity is in making Kent's prize dinner the summit of the "line," the ninth wave. Yet this history, laid in a college town, shows climacterically at that dinner the ghastly average that can be struck by this aristocracy concerned with things of the mind. In imparting to a reader sheer despair of the race of "educated" people, this scene is as merciless as Main Street's inducing of despair of the wealth, wit, beauty, and fashion of Gopher Prairie. The hour of triumph of this "professor," revealing to him as it does his own kind, holds an irony and a pessimism as great as the disillusionment of either small-town victim or young intellectual, no less the puppet of his period. The revelation is made, not harshly, however, but rather with the compassion of some onlooker, too mellow not to identify himself with mankind. And then in this novel life goes on, and ends on the note of going on, quite casually, and even cheerfully, as life does. It is a triumph for the episodic method and for Mr. Van Doren that one need not have a fear of remembering scenes more sharply than the book as a whole. The point is that these — so chosen, so ordered — are of the substance of the book as a whole, for by them one walks on inner levels, on involved

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation v 1^ €^ MMA ■*** «v t~>>~ 4*4* €^ €* 'A. -*Motf*tfc ^*?flM»i»«»MW^W^i«»^^^ When writing to advertiser!, please mention The Nation

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374 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 ]evels_using "involved" in its strict sense— with which the novels of the future may well be exclusively concerned. For there are in art only seven directions. Now having gone north, south, east, west, up, and down, the only place left unvisited is in. In that direction we have traveled, after all, but a short distance. It is those who are clairvoyant to motive and to heightened perception who are destined to take us farther. To that other "small unhappy company," too, Mr. Van Doren, of course, belongs. Zona Gale A Cure for Democracy U. S.: A Second Study in Democracy. By H. E. Buchholz. Baltimore: Warwick and York. $2.20. MR. BUCHHOLZ, it appears, still retains a certain amount of faith in the democratic theory, but democracy as it is prac- tically encountered in this world only depresses him. More than three-fourths of his book, in fact, is given over to a bitter recital of its failures. It is, he finds, corrupt; it is ignorant and idiotic; it is wasteful; it is oppressive. He sees clearly the eternal enmity between democracy and liberty, and has two devastating chapters upon the subject. A democratic state, on his showing, has at least one fault that is not necessarily found in any other sort of state: it is impossible for it to be a gentle- man. Its dominant functionaries are always such bounders as Palmer, Burleson, Bryan, Wilson, Kellogg, Wilbur, and Coolidge. It is, in the company of its fellows, always a cad, even when it is right, and perhaps especially when it is right. The difference between a democrat and a Puritan is but little more than the difference between a Baptist mullah and a Methodist dervish, or a prohibition agent and a pickpocket, or a Wall Street Democrat and a Wall Street Republican. The exposition of these facts takes Mr. Buchholz to page 303 of his book. He then proceeds to present his remedy. There is, it quickly appears, nothing very revolutionary about it. He does not propose to overthrow the Constitution or even to change the laws. He is quite content to suffer democracy a bit longer, and even sine die. All he proposes is that it be brought under better control than in the past — that the civil- ized minority of men, democratic in their inclinations but not actual democrats, assume a censorship over its processes, and, above all, over its chosen agents. So far, of course, there is nothing new. Every reformer since Jefferson's time has bawled for the same thing; it is the cornerstone of every democratic Utopia. But Mr. Buchholz, after all, has something new to add to it, and that something has the merit, at least, of being simple and practicable. In brief, he proposes that the censors prepare themselves for their office by "pledging themselves unconditionally to political celibacy," i. e., to abstention from the struggle for jobs. Their whole authority is to be based on the understanding that they want nothing and will take nothing — that they are incurably citizens, and not officials. The simplicity of the scheme will probably get it dismissed as beneath consideration. Nevertheless, it embodies a very sound idea. For one of the chief defects of democracy lies in the fact that the public servant, whatever his good-will, is not a free agent, and so can neither perform his own duties as a free and self-respecting man should nor keep an effective watch over his fellow-servants. Directly or indirectly, he is always running for office, which is to say, he is always in peril of his job. The fact inevitably makes a trimmer of him, and after he has trimmed awhile he begins to do it auto- matically. That is primarily what is the matter with Congress. Its members, taken one with anothu , are probably quite as decent as any other average Americans of their class. They want to be well regarded; there is even a certain pride of workmanship in them, or at least in some of them. But they are perpetual candidates for reelection, and so they have to make faces and leap through hoops. Being right is of no sure value to them; they must also be satisfactory to the bosses and popular with the mob. One sees the effects at every ses- sion. Not one Congressman out of a dozen can afford to state or vote his own honest convictions. He must first find out what the Anti-Saloon League wants, and then what the pro- fessional labor leaders want, and then what the Babbitts of his district want, and most of all what the bosses want. So he acquires the manners of a fashionable clergyman and the morals of a street-walker. Mr. Buchholz proposes to liberate this poor serf by setting up a class of experts in the public business — he calls them, very clumsily, public-opiners — all of them perfectly free to state their honest opinions. It will be their function to operate upon the mob. They will bombard it with the truth, not only about public issues but also about public servants. They will blow up such absurdities as the Coolidge myth. They will expose the motives behind the World Court swindle. They will analyze and anatomize prohibition. They will keep their spotlights upon such mountebanks as the Hon. Nervous Nellie Kellogg. In brief, they will constitute a body of political police, sworn to resist the lascivious lure of office. They will keep the mob informed — and after that whatever happens will be its own fault. Is the scheme impracticable? I don't think so. As a mat- ter of fact, it is in operation today. The country swarms with Buchholzian public-opiners, and in so far as it has any intelli- gent public opinion at all they form it. Many of them are quite as chaste, politically, as Mr. Buchholz demands. They not only do not aspire to office; they would not take it if it were offered to them. But do they save democracy from its weaknesses? Do they get anywhere with their protests and warnings? In part, undoubtedly yes. God alone knows what they save us from! Imagine what Coolidge would be doing if all the articulate men in America were as naive and idiotic as the Washington correspondents! Imagine where Bryan would have got with his scheme to raise the mob against sense if he had not been challenged ! Imagine Kansas without Ed Howe, or Georgia without Julian Harris! But the thing cuts two ways. There are public-opiners and public-opiners. I recall one named Wayne B. Wheeler. Some time ago the Washington correspondents, in the pursuit of their high duties, offered him the job of Prohibition Commissioner, vice Admiral General Andrews, slated for nirvana. He refused almost indignantly. He was not, he protested, a job-seeker. He was a public- opiner — and I have a great and dreadful fear that he came near meeting Mr. Buchholz's specifications precisely. So I leave "U. S." with a doubt. It listens well — but so did the Bill of Rights. h. L. Mencken The Rape of the Lock A Bipolar Theory of Living Processes. By George W. Crile. Edited by Amy F. Rowland. The Macmillan Company. $5. ^T^HE man of science, though he seem bounded in the narrowest 1 of specialties, is at bottom an audacious soul, aspiring to grasp the plan of the universe and to expound the same to his fellow-men. In youth he begins his enterprise hopefully by the sure method of induction from observation and experi- ment; he weighs singly the facts and examines the way they are put together; he traces slowly the pattern of nature. But as age gathers him into its clutch he comes to realize that in this way between birth and death he will have explored but a tiny fragment of the pattern. He must make a short cut. He must judge the rest from what he has seen. He may have discovered in the bits that he has examined what seems the key to the whole construction; he uses this key on the rest The observer, the experimenter, ages into the philosopher, the speculator. So Dr. Crile, eminent surgeon and investigator of tissues, has discovered the key to the riddles of life; in this volume he unlocks them. His key is something that beyond question

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 375 The Undisputed Masterpiece of Our Time ■n — — — ■ * ULYSSES By JAMES JO YCE is appearing serially in the first 12 numbers of Two Worlds Monthly Devoted to the Increase of the Gaiety of Nations Edited by SAMUEL ROTH "The Greatest, the Most Daring, and the Most Beautiful Fiction Magazine in the World* Among the Writers James Joyce A. E. Coppard T. S. Eliot D. H. Lawrence Ernest Hemingway Arthur Symons Arthur Schnitzler Arthur Machen Carl Sandburg 50 cents a Copy $5.00 a Year The first four numbers of Two Worlds Monthly have already appeared. All back numbers when asked for sepa- rately sell for $1.00 a copy. To make sure of getting all of ULYSSES, sub- scribe for a whole year immediately. As only a few copies of No. 1 remain, we cannot undertake to supply it except to those who subscribe for a whole year. TWO WORLDS PUB. CO. 500 Fifth Avenue, N. Y. C. Gentlemen : For the enclosed $5 kindly send me the first 12 numbers of TWO WORLDS MONTHLY. Name Address City When writing to advtrtitert, please mention The Nation

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376 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 plays a great role in physiology. A philosopher has said that if required to worship something in nature he would select the sun; so a biologist, if compelled to choose a signature to all things, might make the choice that Dr. Crile has made. His key is found in those differences of electric potential, with their antecedents and consequents, that occur within living things. Between the cells and within the cells, surrounding nuclei, vacuoles and granules, are membranes; on the opposite surfaces of these membranes are diverse electric charges which result in chemical and physical changes, inflow and outflow of materials. Altering the distribution of these potentials changes the processes that occur; reciprocally, changes in the processes alter the potentials. The bipolar theory says that all physio- logical processes — respiration, assimilation, excretion, secre- tion, storage, and release of energy — are actuated and regu- lated through these diversities and alterations of potential. The cautious but not hidebound biologist may accompany D". Crile a long way on this path. Advance of physiological investigation discloses more and more the important role of these electrical diversities. Here is a fertile and attractive point of view; it has possibilities. Years of inductive investi- gation will reveal to us what realities correspond to these possi- bilities. While we wait we may speculatively imagine what they will be. And this, or somewhat more than this, is what Dr. Crile attempts; in a decidedly positive frame of mind he expounds biology in terms of electric potentials. Honestly per- suaded that he hao the master key to the biological edifice, he uses it in every compartment. Where it is not clear to him how the key fits he jams it. In places he jams it badly. He believes that differences of electric potential similar to those found within the cells distinguish the diverse major parts of the body, and that here again their role is significant and decisive. The brain is the positive pole of the body, the liver the negative pole. Life requires the presence of both poles; this accounts for the fact that removal of brain or liver results in death (!). Other parts have diverse and inter- mediate potentials; these bring about their characteristic func- tions: circulation, respiration, muscular action, nervous action. At this point the accompanying judicious biologist begins to acquire a worried expression. Different types of organism differ essentially in the way the potentials are distributed. Colored diagrams show us the inorganic and organic series pictured in the dirtribution of positive and negative charges: atoms, mole- cules, colloids, amoeba, sponge; and so on up to man. For organisms these diagrams are obtained by the harmless device of presenting nucleus and nervous system as positive, outer surface as negative. All this is innocent and not unattractive, provided it be not looked on as a substitute for concrete and detailed knowledge. Cobb tells us that if all the world were destroyed except the thread-worms, these by their distribution would reveal to us most of its characteristic features, including the forms of the other organisms. We may envisage the world in terms of thread-worms; doubtless with less profit than in terms of electric potentials; perhaps also with less danger of going widely astray. On this basis too, making such assumptions as seem to him fitting, the author explains other important phenomena of biology; poisoning, tetanus, infections, fever, anaesthesia, cancer, memory, behavior, development, heredity, evolution (a com- plete portrayal of the essentials of evolution by diversities of potentials, from the atom to man). The familiarity of the author with some of these fields enables him to make a plausible picture of the course of events, electrically considered (plausible at least to those not experts in the given subject). In others he speculates, giving rein to fancy; irresponsible, unabashed, and unrestrained; airily oblivious of '..he scientific knowledge available. His speculations in the field of heredity (accounting, among other things, for the inheritance of acquired characters) are a memorable example of the dreadful results of "romancing round" in scientific territory where one is a stranger. Mendel has investigated peas and Morgan fruit-flies quite in vain so forging ahead! THE MODERN LIBRAMY Material improvements in the manufacture of Modern Library books, and the addition of a group of famous titles that have never before sold for less than two to five dollars a copy have made the first year of the Library as an independent publishing unit a striking success. The Modern Library today is the biggest selling series of its kind in the world. It is carried by every bookstore in the United States and Canada. You will find it at railroad stations and drug stores, too. Sales agencies have been established in South America, in China, in Australia. It has just been introduced in Germany and Austria. Full limp binding — pocket size — clear, large type — unabridged, authorized editions — authoritative introductions — 125 books that rank with the very best in modern literature. Woder ^ at Lu upst***** \\ a copy R3 Ttffc &end for our FREE illustrated catalogue I el D^iuS 33£3- 2AJ1 srsss* )LE^A The MODERN LIBRARY Inc. 71 West Forty-fifth Street, New York When writing to advertiser*, please mention The Nation

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 377 far as Dr. Crile is concerned; twenty-five years of intensive investigation in genetics have left him untouched ; he prefers his own untutored notions. To attempt to state the established data of genetics in terms of electric potentials might be a stimulating if unpromising task. But when the author substi- tutes his own fancies for these established data he passes near or into the lunatic fringe that hangs on every science. This is far from being as good a book as Dr. Crile's earlier "Man an Adaptive Mechanism." His subject is significant and alluring, but it cannot yet bear the weight of so pretentious a work as has here been attempted. Certain early chapters are stimulating and attractive; later ones pass into mere extrava- ganza. If the author or his editor could have been prevailed upon to put forth but a sketch, leaving large parts to be filled in by the advance of research, and to avoid as they would the plague those parts of biology with which they were unac- quainted, the resulting unpretentious booklet would have been appealing and suggestive. The publication of the book as it stands was ill advised. H. S. Jennings "Little Golden Guinea" Letters of Louise Imogen Guiney. Edited by Grace Guiney. With a Preface by Agnes Repplier. Harper and Brothers. Two volumes. $5. TV/flSS GUINEY had a delightful personality, a vivacious, ^ * original style, a shy, affectionate, humorous nature which expressed itself openly in delicate verse and exquisite essays and privately in letters to her friends and to a few fine spirits with whom she was in intellectual sympathy. Her retiring disposition combined with the impulse to express herself to the right person, and an admirable command of the means of expression made her a perfect letter writer, a master of what Mr. Lucas calls "the gentlest art." In her correspondence she let herself go with more abandon than in her rather impersonal verses and her carefully considered essays. She takes her place easily among the rare company of charming "epistolists," Howell, Madame de Sevigne, Cowper, Lamb, Stevenson, though she is not of course so important as they and has but a quiet secondary place in literature. In one way she was most nearly akin to Cowper, for she was temperamentally a recluse and even when she was traveling, physically abroad in the world, she wrote as from a retreat, coming out of her shell for a bright moment and then retiring to her books and her poetry. There resemblance ceases, for Cowper's dreams were darkened by religious melancholia, whereas Miss Guiney was sane and serene in her Catholic faith. The practical world plays rough tricks with sensitive genius. To keep her frugal pot boiling she secured through a friend of her father (Brigadier General Guiney, killed early in the Civil War) the position of postmistress at Auburndale, Massachusetts. It is pleasant to think of Lamb as clerk in the India House, of Kenneth Graham as secretary of the Bank of England, of Austin Dobson as secretary of the Board of Trade. But Miss Guiney looking "wise as an owl over quarterly accounts" is a rather pathetic figure, and the shadow of the ledger for a while almost obliterated the book of verse. How- ever, she did her work faithfully and with only whimsical complainings, for she had not a touch of self-pity and was always courageous, even gay, in the face of difficulties. And after her term of imprisonment she went back to her old loves, the seventeenth-century poets and the ancient riches of the Bodleian Library. For she lived in the past. Her active career began early enough for her to have been welcomed and petted by the vener- able pundits of Boston; it was Dr. Holmes who called her his "little golden guinea." And she had personal and epistolary friendships with many of the leading literary men of the Age of Stevenson. Her impromptu judgments of her contem- poraries are shrewd and neatly phrased. But as for most of ffM!iK^^F-i''^iiJvD^f^TNj^ t 3s. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN THE FIRST CIVILIZED AMERICAN By Phillips Russell This book rescues a great American from the myth- makers and presents him as he was in his living dimen- sion— mirthful, curious, careless, companionable, a hater of oppressions, a lover of mankind, song and witty women. A complete narrative of Franklin's life and career is given, even to the publication of the so-called "Suppressed Franklin letters." $5.00 Publication Date October 1st. THE GREAT AMERICAN ASS AN ANONYMOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY Portraying an "Education of Henry Adams" from a new angle. An Adams who turned westward rather than toward European culture. Daring, frank, timely, it portrays the anguish of a soul branded with the iron of Puritan tradition. $3.50 THE BOOK WITHOUT A NAME BEING THE 18th CENTURY JOURNAL OF AN ENGLISH LADY ADD REST TO HER NATURAL SON. "It is a notable, memorable book; vital, subtle, grave. The family of this lawless gentlewoman is owed a debt of honor as well as gratitude by those who read her record." {Time) $2.50 A MANIFEST DESTINY By Arthur D. Howden Smith Author of "Porto Bella Gold" The adventurous story of the famous filibuster, Wil- liam Walker, and his epic duel with Commodore Vanderbilt. It is history Mended with the rush of adventure — history that reveals the soul of the turgid period from 1855 to '61 that bred the Civil War. $2.50 WRITE FOR OUR NEW FALL CATALOGUE BRENTANOS Publishers New York Ji»^hiW»^P^^ffv^ When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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378 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 the moderns, she says, "there are spacious apartments to let in my minster and tiers of unoccupied shrines. ... I am grateful that I managed to be fairly born before Hawthorne and Thackeray died, and that I have had Tennyson, Emerson, Arnold, and Newman for contemporaries." But her true loves were older than the nineteenth century — the Caroline poets, especially Henry Vaughan. She had Vaughan's grave renovated and edited his "Mount of Olives." Had time and circumstances been a little kinder to her she would have made the definitive study of his text and life. Within her limits she was a sound and zealous scholar, an antiquarian, longing to find refuge in some town that retained the flavor of the Middle Ages. Her own verse is timeless, untouched by modern fact, and though she commends Philip Savage for getting "into the heart of human life, as every true artist does," her poetry is less passionate, less human than her essays and her letters. Yet she now and again shows the strain of Celtic magic in her blood; she was devoted to the poet Mangan, and responded to Yeats before many people had heard of him. She was a genuine if not a great artist, as true a man of letters as any woman who ever lived. John Macy The Religion of the State Essays on Natioi. By Carlton J. H. Hayes. The Mac- millan Company. $3. IT ERE is an exceedingly well-informed and penetrating *■ * inquiry into the most important issue of our time. For nationalism has proved itself to be the most pervasive, dis- turbing, and destructive force in the modern world. It is not evil in origin and nature. The process of imprisoning the spirit of nationality, or local like-mindedness, into a state is in itself innocent and useful, and, if an effective internationalism could arise out of a fair and free cooperation of such national entities, each preserving its own idiosyncrasies but uniting for the common purposes of humanity, all would be well. The strug- gles of subject peoples, conscious of community of stock, tradi- tions, and interests, for national self-government win the sympathy of all liberal-minded people. Unfortunately, as Professor Hayes shows in these illuminat- ing ei^ays, nationalism as an idea, a creed, an enthusiasm, has done more harm than any other "ism." It has been a cover and a breeding ground for most of the collective opera- tions of the instincts of greed, pugnacity, intolerance, self- glory, and oppression, which are the enemies of human progress. Masquerading as patriotism, it has everywhere aimed to re- press criticism and compel conformity within the nation. As irredentism it has struggled to enlarge the area of national country by enforcing obsolete historic claims or aspirations at the sword's point, regardless of the wishes or interests of the population thus inclosed. With a hyphenated "Pan" it has fed its lust for size and power by interferences with neighbor- ing peoples under the pretension that they are blood relatives. Bloating itself out into imperialism, it has pursued a "mani- fest destiny" at the expense of weaker or backward peoples whose lands it has coveted for economic gain or from sheer "kilometritis." A product of modern consciousness, it has thriven upon an unscrupulous propaganda to enlist the enthusi- asm of the millions for policies designed to benefit small classes within each nation at the expense of the nation's blood and treasure. Into this propagandism is pressed a variety of intel- lectuals, "philologists, historians, anthropologists, economists, philosophers, and litterateurs," to fur^'sh the doctrine which the politicians and the press shall pump into the popular mind by processes of mass-suggestion. But doctrine is not enough. Devotion is needed. National- ism must carry mystery and worship. It must become a religion. Not a Christian, Buddhist, Mohammedan, or other religion of humanity but a patriotic loyalty, a worship of the national A DICTIONARY OF MODERN ENGLISH USAGE By H. W. Fowler, joint author of the Concise Oxford Dic- tionary. $3.00 Most extremely useful things are uninteresting. Not so this book on English Usage. Like its author, it has a sense of humor; its little paragraphs sparkle like the sunlight on the sea. Its pages compose a collection of familiar essays, discriminating and often provocative, on the genius of the English language. PSYCHO-ANALYSIS FOR NORMAL PEOPLE By Geraldine Coster $1.25 This is a short, practical handbook which sets forth in the sim- plest possible way the main principles of analytical psychology in its application to the ordinary, normal person. It will be particularly useful to the nurse and teacher, as well as the general reader. AN OUTLINE INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS By T. H. Robinson Probable price $2.50 It is all too seldom that a fine scholar can lay aside the trappings and impedimenta of his learning, and write with the easy mastery that makes a difficult topic become crystal-clear. In this readable but authoritative book Dr. Robinson has achieved that difficult end. Impartial, plain, complete in its survey, this "Outline Introduction" will assume its merited niche as the primer par excellence in the layman's History of Religions. PREACHING IN THEORY AND PRACTICE By the Rev. Samuel McComb. D. D. $2.00 With an Introduction by the Rev. Harry Emerson FoSDICK, D. D. Stimulating lectures which encourage preaching as a fine art, an indispensable social function, and a sacred entrustment of influence. A book of popular demand to answer the needs of the modem world. THE UNITED STATES AND FRANCE Some Opinions on International Gratitude, selected with a Fore- word by James Brown Scott $2.75 In the light of recent interesting developments in the relations of America and France, the appearance of Dr. Scott's book is par- ticularly timely. What are and have been our true relations with the sister republic, and what, sanely and historically considered, is our debt to France and her debt to us? Dr. Scott offers here an authoritative summary which should profoundly affect American public opinion. THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE B\) M. Rostovtzeff $15.00 M. Rostovtzeff is a brilliant scholar, who combines daring with erudition. In this first serious attempt to connect the social and economic evolution of the Roman Empire with its constitutional and administrative development, the author makes successful use of his combination of talents. EVERYBODY'S GUIDE TO RADIO MUSIC By Percy A. Scholes $2.00 A book for the increasingly large new musical public, giving a brief but complete and simple explanation of the forms which music takes, the instruments of the orchestra, and the history of the art of music. NEW VERSE By Robert Bridges $2.00 A collection of verse written in 1921 by Robert Bridges, poet laureate of England, with other poems of that year and a few earlier pieces. A delightful volume of verse, beautifully printed, and bound in imitation vellum. A NATION PLAN A Basis for Co-Ordinated Physical Development of the United States of America. With a Suggestion for a World Plan. By Cyrus Kehr Probable price $5.00 The aim of this book is to point the way to the carrying on of public or civic work, starting with the larger area and planning progressively downward to smaller and smaller features or factors. FOR© UNIVERSITY PRESS ^American branch Bl.'^aS^HsST 32ttd STREET, MEW YORK When uniting to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 379 state. The weakening: of belief in the older religions and their churches has favored this substitution. State churches are no longer wanted, when state is itself a church. On his own national god the modern religious nationalist is conscious of dependence. Of His powerful help he feels the need. In Him he recognizes the sources of his own perfection and happiness. To Him, In a strictly religious sense, he subjects himself. A ritual of homage and adoration is devised. School-children are inculcated in worship of the national flag and celebration of national saints' days, and taught patriotic psalms. Our coun- try has a sacred mission, to extend its civilization among heathen peoples, to "bear the white man's burden." Each nation sin- cerely believes this tribal religion. This national god is, as Professor Hayes indicates, a reversion to the Jewish Yahweh, "the god of a chosen people, a jealous God, and preeminently a god of battles." The secret offspring of aggressive egoism, it naturally needs militarism for its mission and war for its instrument. The essential vice of nationalism is that it divides nations and breeds hate, jealousy, suspicion, and fear. Thus reason, justice, and sociality are banished from the combats of nations. But the subtlest poison of this perverted nationalism is its inculcation of intolerance within the nation, its repressive crusades against minority beliefs, practices, and groupings. Whenever any institution transcends the nation in its member- ship or appeal, whether it be a church, a trade union, a League of Nations, anything that appears to challenge the all- sufficiency of the national state, and to get up another wider or narrower loyalty, such an institution is anathema. So in various nations we find as the definite fruits of nationalism an anti-clericalism, anti-alienism, anti-pacifism, anti-socialism, anti-racialism. The obscurantist nature of this faith and its ultimate futility are exposed when we realize how the main forces of the industrial revolution, with its world commerce and finance, more and more transcend the political barriers and lay more and more solid foundations for an international merger of activities, interests, and ambitions. Professor Hayes ends an exceedingly profitable inquiry with an appeal for a popular education directed to the making of an international mind. "A great race even now is beginning, a race that will be run throughout the next generation or two, between the forces of nationalism and the forces of humanity, toward two respective goals of destruction and salvation." J. A. Hobson The Yankees New England in the Republic. By James Truslow Adams. Little, Brown and Company. $5. HPHE appearance of a new volume by Mr. Adams is always A a delight to me. It is so provocative. I have many a chuckle as I watch in imagination the faces of some fellow- historians of the Yankee school perusing the pages of this flapper of modernism foxtrotting so shamelessly upon the noble and holy traditions. I wonder if many will not regard the volume as another sign of these degenerate days of irrever- ence and immorality. Unfortunately those who would so class it won't read it, and the cultivated story reader will only be pained by the exposure of the weaknesses of the fathers. Much safer to live under the shadow of illusions. As befits a good exponent of the "new history," Mr. Adams attempts to probe more deeply than did his predecessors into the recesses of the social soul for the hidden motives. Not sufficient for him is the reproduction of the contemporary propaganda, conscious or unconscious, in which the more prominent and more prosperous of the community have pre- served their petty fictions of good and evil in the passing show. In the historical fold sheep are not always sheep, nor are goats goats. Hence the perplexities of the social anatomist. In Outstanding Books on the List of Henry Holt & Company Mitya's Love .... by ivan bun in With an introduction hv Ernest Boyd "Proof that real masterpieces can still be written in the Russian tongue." — A/ett> Yorl( Times. $2.00 Custody Children by EVERETT young Author of "A Gentleman of Sorts" The story of a splendid girl born to wealth but hampered by scandalous parentage and the dilemma of divorce. A brilliant picture of New York society. $2.50 Hilda Ware by J. ALLEN MARKER In which a wronged wife assists her husband in eloping with another. "An entertaining novel, involving delightful people placed in a charming setting." — Saturday Review of Literature. $2.00 The American in England DURING THE FIRST HALF CENTURY OF INDEPENDENCE by ROBERT E. SPILLER A gossipy, yet reliable study of the activities of thousands of Americans in England for one purpose or another dur- ing the half century after the Revolution. Rich in anec- dote, gossip and history. Illus. $4.00 Issues of European Statesmanship by B. G. DE MONTGOMERY Author of "British and Continental Labor Policy," etc. An informing study of the Modern State, based on the problems of present-day Europe. The author develops a theory of constructive relief, pointing out the chief dangers threatening European civilization. $3.50 Visions and Jewels . . by moysheh A work of real charm and literary art — OYVED the life story of the quaint Russian pro- prietor of "Cameo Corner," London. $2.00 Literature in the Theatre by W. A. DARLINGTON A noteworthy group of essays on dramatic themes by a London playwright, novelist and dramatic critic of note. 'An exceedingly stimulating book." — Theatre Arts Monthly. $3.50 Critical Essays . by osbert burdett Essays on life and literature by. a brilliant English rntic ranaing widely, from the Passion Play Players to Charlie Chaplin, from Vers Libre to Frank Harris. $2.00 Meditations of a Profane Man by "H" Audacious, invigorating essays, fuli of humour. "H" has astonishing flashes of insight into puzzling problems of heart and head. $1.50 Elements of Child Training by R. J. GALE Diet, discipline, hygiene, and the vital elements in the lives of grow- ing children are discussed in a practical way with suggestions for the aid of parents. Menus are listed for several weeks. $2.25 One Park Avenue New York City When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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380 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 the best of all possible worlds, i. e., New England as described by the saints, Mr. Adams finds many evidences of civic disease resulting from avarice and egotism, qualities characteristic of Puritanism and of every society which overrates business success. Mr. Adams's method is well exhibited in his account of Shay's Rebellion, to which he devotes a chapter. Far too frequently this episode has been stressed as a justification for the drastic reform of the national constitutions which was undertaken by the best and noblest of men to protect society from the ravages of social pestilence. Hence the pestilence has been described in the terms of the black death. This subordination of an important event in the history of Massa- chusetts to a subsequent, momentous coup d'etat has distorted the perspective of the so-called "critical period." Mr. Adams approaches the subject from a different angle. To him the rebellion is the symptom of a social disease to be diagnosed, lie finds it illuminating that democratically ruled Vermont escaped the evil, whereas her aristocratic neighbors to the south suffered from a widely distributed unrest and discontent among the debtor class. Mr. Adams finds that the cause was the greed, the stupidity, and the lack of foresight of the ruling oligarchies. The best minds of the Puritans had failed. The Revolution itself does not belong to Mr. Adams's theme, but the influence of the war upon the New England States is thoroughly discussed in four chapters, wherein the economic and moral effects of the struggle and the revolutionary govern- ments are the main topics. Concerning war taxation Mr. Adams writes as if he were describing more recent events. "There is no question but that great injustice was wrought by such taxation as there was. There is ample evidence to show that this bore more heavily on the poorer classes." As is well known from the work of many recent historians, the practice of graft was prevalent. The author presents a vivid picture of the Otises "figuring whether they should make one or two hundred per cent out of the soldiers' winter clothes," when those soldiers were enduring the hardships of Valley Forge. The story really ends with the War of 1812 and its immediate consequences. To this the author has chosen to add four chapters bringing the narrative down to the year 1850. These chapters take the form of essays on certain phases of New England civilization and appear to me to be somewhat superficial, being less firmly based on a knowledge of the historical sources and the nature of man than the rest of the book. So much praise has been given to the author that it will be best to close on a note of criticism. Like other historians, not excepting the reviewer, Mr. Adams is too sure of the correctness of his conclusions, too certain of his judgments. After the last trump has sounded and the Great Accountant has unrolled the Book of Life, I fear that Mr. Adams will discover that he has not copied in all cases verbatim ct literatim. Still he has made an interesting guess at the transcript. Clarence Walworth Alvord God as History The Attributes of God. By Lewis Richard Farnell. Oxford University Press. $4.25. TF it is true, as a Biblical writer affirms, that no one has ever * seen God at any time, the "attributes of God" would seem necessarily to be an elusive theme. Empirical science cannot hope to discover truth in an area that cannot be sub- jected to observation. But while God is invisible, the charac- teristics that different peoples at one jr another period in their history have attributed to their deities are observable pheno- mena and often constitute important data for the student of society. It may be of relatively slight importance for our knowledge of Greek theology to hear Sophocles declare that "nothing to which the gods lead men is base," while Euripides affirms that "if the gods do aught that's base they are not CENTURY LEADERS FACING EUROPE By Frederick Bausman Discloses the causes of growing European envy, the propaganda for repudiation of debts, and the diplomatic and military net which is being woven about us. $3.00 EUROPE SINCE WATERLOO: A HISTORY By William Stearns Davis From Napoleon's defeat to date, in a readable and authoritative survey and scholarly reference book. Illus. and maps. $5.00 OUTWITTING MIDDLE AGE bv Dr. Carl Ramus Science explains how to keep young. "Aging is a preventable disease and can be cured," says the author. $2.00 WHITE WATERS AND BLACK By Cordon MacCreagh A humorous narrative of scientific adventurings into the miasmic jungles of the upper Amazon. Illus. $4.00 EAST OF SI AM Bv Harry A. Franck The "Prince of Vagabonds" dwells in ancient cities and with primitive peoples of French Indo-China. Illus. $3.50 IN BARBARY By E. Alexander Powell Authoritative on historical, religious, racial and political questions, travel routes and living conditions of Northern Africa. Illus. $4.00 PORTS OF FRANCE Bv Herbert Adam, Gibbons The sea-faring French and their ancient havens. Illus. $4.00 SAILING ACROSS EUROPE Bv A/eg/ey Farson Across Europe by water. Intimate pictures of out-of-the-way places and peoples who have not changed for a thousand years. Illus. $3.50 PALESTINE AWAKE: THE REBIRTH OF A NATION Bv Sophie Irene Loeb History in the making; the work of establishing a homeland for the Jews; the greatest social experiment of the century. Illus. $2.50 TRAILS OF THE TROUBADOURS Bv Raimon de Loi Romantic lovers of the Dark Ages, with their ladies fair and frail. Illus. $3.00 WHALING NORTH AND SOUTH By F. V. Morley and J. S. Hodgson Gallant adventures in Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, and a history of whalers. Illus. $3.00 THE GREAT ISLAND bv Don c. Seitz An intimate narrative of the history and personality of New- foundland, a land of magic and adventurous glamor. Illus. $3.00 LINCOLN'S PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD BV Louts A. Warren Newly discovered information answers the riddle of Lincoln's heredity. An informative book, portraying a generation of Ameri- can pioneers. Illus. $3.50 BILL NYE: HIS OWN LIFE STORY Continuity by Frank Wilson Nye A rarely colorful autobiography arranged by the great humorist's son. Caricatures and illus. $4.00 TURGENEV: THE MAN, HIS ART AND HIS AGE By Avrahm Yarmolinsky The only biography of the great Russian novelist. A notable life reconstructed with movement and drama, with shrewd psychological insight. Illus. $4.00 THE NEGRO IN AMERICAN LIFE By Jerome Dnn>d A scholarly study of the black race, its history, present status, and probable future. $5.00 SHORT TURNS By Barry Benefield, author of "The Chicken-Wagon Family" Fourteen human interest tales by a master of American style. $2.00 DAYS OF THEIR YOUTH By Alan Sullivan, author of "The Jade Cod" A spiritual and understanding study of a modern English family. $2.00 AND THEN CAME SPRING By John Hargrove Middle-aged wild oats in an amusing and sympathetic novel. $2.00 THECENTUR Y CO. Publishers of Enduring Books ffhen writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 381 gods." But these statements are significant facts for the history of moral thinking among the Greeks. The character which men ascribe to their gods surely reveals the state of the human mind, however obscure the deities may remain. This fact is fully appreciated by Professor Farnell, the veteran Oxford scholar, whose masterly acquaintance with the history of religions in general and Greek religions in particular constitutes his equipment for his present task. He threads his way unerringly through the mazes of many mythologies, rituals, and creeds in quest of pertinent information. True, he touches Christianity rather gingerly, but the implication of his re- marks in this area is usually apparent. The attributes of God, as the author clearly shows, vary widely among different peoples or even among the same people in different periods, as social and individual experiences create a demand for one or another quality in the godhead. But once an attribute has established itself in tradition, it becomes a deterrent force restraining thinking when new experiences would demand revisions in the character of the deity. Thus the evolution of theologies, when historically surveyed, sheds a significant light on the history of a culture — on its art, its social customs, its politics, its moral ideals, and its intellectual- ism. The way in which a people think of their gods is an index to human character, for the deities are but replicas of mortals. Though this book is a first-rate work of scholarship, it is free from technicalities and is fascinating reading even for the uninitiated. Shirley Jackson Case Books in Brief // / Were a Labour Leader. By Ernest J. P. Benn. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.75. When those who called the British strike come to read this book, they may wonder whether the strike was such a failure, after all. Here is Sir Ernest Benn declaring not only that "politically, the Britisher is in a better position than any other citizen of any other state in the world," which perhaps was to be expected, but that the trade-union move- ment is "clean, honest, and obviously good," and that it "pos- sesses the support of the whole of the working world and the respect and sympathy of the employers," which sounds a bit strange after the denunciation of British trade-union restric- tions with which we are so familiar. Sir Ernest's present book has a decided flavor of "Good doggy! Don't bite!" The good trade unionists, who really want good wages and short hours, and nothing more or worse, have been deceived, like everybody else, by the wicked socialists and communists in our midst, who want political action by labor, the overthrow of the con- stitution, and an omnipotent bureaucratic state a la Moscow. Specially obnoxious are the intellectuals of the British labor movement. Let all British workers, employers and employees alike, get back to honest hard work, taking a leaf out of the book of the United States in the matter of improving methods, let the trade unions (and everybody else) eschew politics and stick to industrial production — and then what? "We could transform the surface of the earth, and poverty would fly like chaff before the wind. America would take a back seat." Sir Ernest is always interesting. Last Essays. By Joseph Conrad. Doubleday, Page & Com- pany. $2. With the exception of the sensitive memoir of Stephen Crane, these literary and maritime sketches betray a vapidity rather surprising in the artist who wrote "Heart of Darkness" and "The End of the Tether." It is in the short critical essay that Conrad's sheer paucity of ideas manifests itself with a painful frankness; and it is here also that the atmospheric magic which vitalizes his novel style becomes singularly irrele- vant. There is something too easy and unpenetrating, for FROM THE McBRIDE LIST BACKYARD By Gloria Goddard A woman's viewpoint on small town life — a tale of the crushing of illusion by reality. "It is the most distinguished first novel I have ever encountered," says Clement Wood. "Its objectivity and fresh imagery are delightful."— Ar. Y. Times. $2.00 THE FIDDLER IN BARLY By Robert Nathan The most mature work of a distin- guished American novelist — the story of a whimsical old fiddler. A compound of wisdom, tenderness and fantasy leavened with a dash of high comedy. $2.00 EUGENE O'NEILL By Barrett H. Clark. The first book on America's greatest dramatist, containing, in addition to a complete record of O'Neill's life and work, full bibliographies of his writings and productions. $1.00 EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON By Ben Ray Redman An authoritative study of our most con- siderable contemporary poet. Wisely and sanely Mr. Redman discusses those qualities wherein the poet's greatness lies but at the same time he takes full ac- count of the qualities he lacks. $1.00 TRANSFIGURATION By Sergeev Tzensky With an Introduction by Maxim Gorky. No more typi- cal picture of modern peasant life has come out of Russia. Translated into English for the first time. $2.50 ^^^-a THE ARGONAUT SERIES — "^— Authentic Narratives of Travel, Adventure and Ex- ploration. Edited by Arthur D. Howden Smith. I. THE NARRATIVE OF SAMUEL HANCOCK being a description of his overland journev to Oregon in 1845. $2.50 II. A VOYAGE TO THE SOUTH SEAS IN THE YEARS 1740-1741. By John Bulkeley and John Cummins A faithful narrative of the loss of his Majesty's ship, the Wager, on a desolate island in latitude 47 south. $2.50 At all bookstores ROBERT M. McBRIDE & 7 West 16th Street COMPANY Nev; York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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382 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 example, about the critical apparatus which, in appraising the genius of W. H. Hudson, selects an ability to render the ex- ternals of natural objects as his chief claim to artistic emi- nence. To the unhysterical reader of Conrad (we assume that there are some, despite the full-page advertisements) it is becoming clear that he works with complete success within a limited realm of concrete situations dealing with the sentiments of esprit de corps, fidelity to one's calling, and stoicism in the face of disaster. Is it entirely impossible that Joseph Conrad will be the Walter Scott of the next generation? The Physiology of Taste. By Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Boni and Liveright. $3.50. A handsome centenary edition of the magnum opus of this great French bon vivant. Half serious and half jocose, "The Physiology of Taste" is neither solid enough to be science nor quite specific enough to serve as a cookbook; but it possesses the full flavor of that eighteenth-century France in which the youth of its author fell. Gay, "enlightened," and worldly wise, it is one of the fine flowers of drawing-room society, and some of its anecdotes — notably, for example, that story of a drinking bout called a National Victory — deserve a place in any possible anthology of perfect examples of the raconteur's art. The present edition is provided with an amusing and appropriately high-hat introduction by Frank Crowninshield. Music Music and the External World MUSIC differs from other arts in its material and its use of this material. It makes use of a class of sounds that are used nowhere else, and it uses them, not to express the relations between physical objects or mental concepts but to express what must be called purely musical relations, relations that exist only and precisely between musical sounds; in other words, not to convey intellectual meanings, or emotional mean- ings, but to convey what must be called a purely musical sig- nificance, a significance sui generis. This significance, these relations, are, then, themselves the sole and final object of a typ._ of apprehension which is no more than a specific aural adaptation for the purpose. It is nevertheless true that music often does convey an emotional or intellectual meaning; but this is an additional mean- ing that it acquires by association. It is true, for example, that a tempo, a mode, a timbre, or a combination of these, often conveys to the listener a mood or feeling, and usually one particular mood or feeling; but it does this in the same way as thick lips convey sensuality, namely, by an association that is purely conventional — since the correlations between styles of music and specific emotions differ throughout the world — and ultimately, therefore, arbitrary. Again, music can be described in terms of time and space — a theme is said, for example, to rise or fall in pitch, slowly or rapidly; and such a description can be linked with analogous physical or intellectual activity — a descending theme, to make the example extreme, with actual descent of an object or a person. In either case, it is clear that to apprehend the secondary, the emotional or intellectual, meaning of music — as, for that matter, to apprehend even the element of purely formal design — one must first apprehend its primary, its purely musical significance. That is, one cannot apprehend the external corre- lation of a bit of music with sadne~s — the sadness of a char- acter in Goethe's "Faust," let us say — unless one can appre- hend, in and for themselves, the internal musical relations that are so externally correlated. It is true, then, that music is a language of emotions, that it can be made to express them in the sense in which words express thoughts; but this is only part of the truth. For the Inquiring Reader Publications of the University of Chicago Press that give an up-to-date picture of what is hap- pening year by year in science, education, liter- ature, art, and religion. 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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 383 The more important part is, in my opinion, that primarily music expresses only itself; that while a composer may occa- sionally have as his object the delineation in musical terms of an emotion, his problem normally is a purely musical one, in that he is concerned with tonal, and of course with formal, relations. "You find yourself," says Stravinsky, "you don't know how, in possession of, say, four bars of music. Well, the real musician is the one who knows what there is to be done with these four bars, knows what he can make of them. . . . What interests me most of all is construction. What gives me pleasure is to see how much of my material I can get into line. I want to see what is coming. I am interested first in the melody, and the volumes, and the instrumental sounds, and the rhythm. . . ." It is clearly not true, then, that music is a language of emotions in the sense in which this is usually intended, namely, that it transmits the composer's own emotions to the listener, who apprehends them through emotional sensitiveness. The composer's emotions are the impetus behind his writing, not the content of the music when written; and the listener, therefore, when he apprehends the content, does not thereby penetrate to the impetus. His own emotions as he listens are certainly not those of the composer as he wrote; nor are they, any more than the composer's, the emotions delineated by the music. For, as the composer's emotions were only an impetus, so the listener's are only a result: in any case, then, as a quantity which depends on and varies with him, the listener's response may be quite irrelevant or inappropriate to what he has heard; and if he starts with emotions — such as are implied in the term "emotional sensitiveness" — there is no telling what he will end with: it may even be a totally different piece of music. Instead, then, of penetrating to the truth behind the art, emotional sensitiveness only obscures music with personal associations that are obviously beyond enumeration or definition. What is true of the composition of music is no less true of its interpretation, so-called, by the executive artist. The variations in speed and loudness begin by setting off phrase against phrase, section against section, conveying in this way what the artist takes to be the structure of the music. Be- coming associated with emotional meanings, they now begin to convey an emotional content, not merely of music intended to convey such content but of music intended to be purely formal. In either case, so far, the emotions are objective, the content of the music. But now interpretation begins to live its own life, to be governed by its own logic; and nuance breeds nuance, until we arrive at extreme, eccentric nuances which for no good reason impress us as conveying the emotions of the interpreter himself. At first, therefore, they appear in the styles of performance of solo instruments; only recently have they been introduced into orchestral performance. Where- as, then, formerly, though we heard a symphony or tone- poem through the ears of a Muck or a Mengelberg, what we heard was a structure of the symphony or a mood of the tone-poem, today what we get through the ears of Mr. Toscanini or Mr. Stokowski, and what is so alluring is, we think, the personal elan and romantic spirit of Mr. Toscanini or Mr. Stokowski. I say "we think" because it is an illusion. We may not infer that an artist feels the particular emotions asso- ciated with his performance; that Mr. Stokowski, for example, shares the moods conveyed by a piece of music, or is himself the Siegfried conveyed by his performances. The fact is that, by whichever handle he has grasped it — and one cannot tell, for though exposition of structure is the primary, the musical aspect of the result, emotion always appears by association as the other aspect — he has done no more than acquire and use a conventional and objective technique of musical manipu- lation, no less objective for having a twofold emotional conno- tation attached to the result. His own emotions, then, are again only a stimulus; the listener's again only a result. Lippincott Books By JOSEPH LOUIS VANCE A Galloping Tale of Love, Intrigue and Breathless Adventure THE DEAD RIDE HARD The ghostly clatter of hoofs that resounds through this tale is that of the dead — riding hard for their revenge for those ghastly dayB and nights of Hudapest under the Red Terror. Not since "The Lone Wolf" has Mr. Vance written a novel so athrill with excitement and terror, with swift, forceful characterizations and glamorous romance. $2.00 PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF AUGUSTE RODIN By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI In these reminiscences Mr. Ludovici gives not only a portrait of the artist at the most interesting period of his career, but also a clear and searching criticism of his work and aims. As secretary he was in closest touch with Rodin and his work is trenchant with the per- sonality of the sculptor. 8 Illustrations. $3.00 RAMBLES WITH ANATOLE FRANCE By SANDOR KEMERI On his rambles through old Paris, Naples, Milan, Rome, the Master talks of art and men and ideas. "Anatole France to the life." — Emile Herriot in he Temps. Translated from the Hungarian by Emil Lengyel and illustrated with hitherto unpublished photographs and facsimile letters. $5.00 REMINISCENCES OF TRANSATLANTIC TRAVELLERS By CHARLES T. SPEDDING. For many years Purser of the Aquitania. A book lively with prominent people and their doings, disclosed in all the informality of ocean travel. Illustrated from photographs. $5.00 FORGOTTEN SHRINES OF SPAIN By MILDRED STAPELY BYNE A volume that throws Spain open like a great museum to the art- lovers of the world. 65 Beautiful illustrations, quaintly drawn frontis- piece and map. $5.00 NOVELISTS WE ARE SEVEN By PATRICK BRAY-BROOKE, Author of "Kipling and His Soldiers," etc. Analysis of the work and per- sonal glimpses of seven contempo- rary novelists by a well-known English critic. $2.50 A LITERARY MAN'S LONDON By CHARLES G. HARPER, Author of "London, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," etc. Here are those corners of the great city her men of letters have known and loved. 22 Pen and ink sketches by the author. $-4.50 JOSEPH PENNELL'S PICTURES OF PHILADELPHIA Reproductions of 64 lithographs. Introduction by Elizabeth Robins Pbnnelu Joseph Pennell will ever remain a dominating figure in art. Here is a gift book of permanent value, a collection that will become increasingly valuable with the passing of time. $2.50 CHAMBERS'S BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY Revised Edition of a Standard Reference Work. By DAVID PATRICK, LL.D., and F. HINDES GROOME. Over 1,010 Pages. Over 10,000 Biographies. Three-quarters Morocco. $6.00 THE PRACTICAL BOOK OF LEARNING DECORATION AND FURNITURE By EDWARD STRATTON HOLLOWAY A book of more than just information. For the first time the reader who aspires to a knowledge of decoration is taught how to learn. To be used in connection with "The Practical Book of Interior Decoration." 180 Illustrations. $4.50 At All Bookstores J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PHILADELPHIA LONDON ili'lini writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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384 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 Still less is it true that music conveys the personality or character of the composer, or such externals as the period in which he lives and its entire non-musical culture. All these are to music as oil to water; but, besides this special reason for the special case of music, the notion that an art expresses a period and its entire culture complex is false. The plastic arts, for example, might be expected to reflect matters ex- ternal, yet nowhere else, I am assured, is the fallacy so easily detected and refuted: identical cycles have repeated themselves at different times, in different places, under different systems of philosophy. And even of European music, which has had only one development, I think it can be shown that this de- velopment has been entirely self-determined, that the entire sequence might be shifted backward or forward parallel to the fixed series of non-musical events without requiring change, and that apparent correlations, therefore, are only apparent. To say, then, that a man must write music of the present generation is sense only if it means that he must use musical materials in their present state of development; it is nonsense if it directs him, when he is dealing with tonal and formal relations, to take into account skyscrapers and taxicabs. It is nonsense, then, also, to link Brahms with a so-called German temperament, Debussy with a French, Gershwin with an American; they must instead be linked with different styles of composition. Nor, I must add, should "German," "French," and "American" be u? >d or understood to mean that the musical style, any more than the temperament, is racial or innate. The beginning of a style, whether in slight divergence or in independent discovery, is quite accidental; and thereafter not only is its development self-determined but its perpetuation is automatic. Its force, in other words, is that of a tradition: an American composes in the American manner, is he acts and thinks in the American manner, because it is the manner of his earliest and most prolonged experience. For this, obvi- ously, geographical and political isolation are responsible to a large extent; whence the term "American," which — and this is its sole significance — locates the tradition geographically. B. H. Haggin Drama Alloy PLAYS like "Sandalwood" (Gaiety Theater) constitute the real tragedies of the stage. One may dismiss the mere vul- garities of the popular drama as things with which one has no real concern, and one may even learn to endure the faux bon, the cheap imitation of the real thing, with a certain equanimity; but greatness miscarried, genius stricken with impotence, tor- tures the spectator with something of the same sense of frus- tration which affects the baffled creator himself. The present play, which Owen Davis has skilfully fashioned from the materials afforded by a novel of the same name by Fulton Oursler, is such a work — something near a masterpiece struggling to be born, gold alloyed with metals which are base indeed. There are passages of dialogue so flat, so banal, and so cheap as to make the auditor writhe from very shame; but there are, by way of compensation, scenes which, especially as acted with a perfection beyond praise by Pauline Lord, are as powerful and as poignant as any which have come from an American playwright. Certain moments like that, for example, when the wife makes way at her husband's bedside for the min- istrations of "the other woman," or like that toward the end when she clings to him with an unreasonable, ineluctable tenacity which does not attempt to justify itself b'".t is made infinitely pathetic by a desperation not even trying to under- stand, are genuinely memorable. But unfortunately there are other moments, notably those in which the lovers call one another Pan and Melisande, which are equally memorable for Columbia Fall Books ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK STAGE By George C. D. Odell, Professor of Dramatic Literature in Columbia University. This work will be the first complete history of the New York stage. It will be illustrated with rare photographs of famous players and printed in a style that will appeal to collectors of fine books. Ready October 20th. First two volumes probably $7.50 each. FEDERAL WATER POWER LEGISLATION By Jerome G. Kerwin, Assistant Professor of Political Science in the University of Chicago. A study of the great fifteen-year struggle for water power legisla- tion in the United States. $6.00 FOOD COSTS AND CITY CONSUMERS By Charles E. Artman. A study of the factors in the extent and distribution of perishable fruits and vegetables in New York City. Ready October 20. $2.25 THE SEE OF PETER By James T. Shotwell, Professor of History in Columbia University; and Louise Ropes Loomis, Professor of History in Wells College. A scholarly study of the doctrinal basis for the primacy of Rome in the universal church. PRESENT DAY JAPAN By Dr. Yusuke Tsurumi. Public lectures delivered at Columbia University by the Japanese publicist and author. $1.75 Send for our New Catalogue. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 2960 BROADWAY NEW YORK Can a Man Be a Christian Today? By William Louis Poteat (Second edition, out October 1) Is religion still possible? Are the victories of intelligence insecure? Is the Christian experience alien and illogical in a world of science? "There are hundreds of thousands of honest young people who are in perplexity, and who would like to have an intellectually respectable religion. They will find illumination in this little book." — William Lyon Phelps in Scribner's Magazine. ". . . the most cogent and winning statement ever made on the religion of a scientist who adheres to the dynamic of Christ's own conduct." — The New York World. "A blessed little book it is — to be read in hours of doubting leadership, to be given to those whom the inquisitors have frightened, to be slipped into the suitcase of the lad going off to college." — The Richmond News Leader. Cloth, $1.50 Law and Morals (Second edition, out September 20) By Roscoe Pound Cloth, $2.00 The Country Newspaper By Malcolm M. Willey (Published September 15) Cloth, $1.50 An Approach to Public Welfare and Social Work (Publication date, November 1) By Howard W. Odum Cloth, $1.50 A Working Faith (Publication date, November 15) By Charles R. Brown Cloth, $1.50 Social Differentiation Bv Cecil Clare North (Publication date, December 15) Cloth, $2.50 At all bookstores or from The UNIVERSITY of NORTH CAROLINA PRESS CHAPEL HILL, N. C. When urriting to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Oct. 13, 1926] The Nation 385 the opposite reason. No flapper and her sheik, no desperately "pagan" pair in a Greenwich Village tearoom, ever spouted pas- sion more utterly unconvincing. One is tempted to imagine that Miss Lord merely manages to make certain parts seem good, but such I think is not the case. "Sandalwood" is a play so good in some spots that its badness in others is all but incredible. The theme — the unsuccessful revolt of a rather common- place man against the dulness of his life and the banality of his family — is sufficiently familiar, but it has been seized upon here by an imagination bold enough to body it forth in new and powerful forms. When the play opens the hero has taken to his bed in a sort of insane surrender to the life which he hates, and from it he is able, like Hamlet in his madness, to gibe at those whom his malady bewilders. To the sickroom . comes the woman from the outside world whom he has loved ; she nurses him back to convalescence and then, when she realizes that he can never tear up the roots which hold him fast in the suburb where he lives, she leaves him to the tender mercies of the rich brother who is "not sold on this proposi- tion," the clergyman who promises to pray for him, and the dumb, tenacious wife who brushes back the hair from his fore- head "so that he will look more like other people." Though cast in conventional dramatic form, the heightened, hectic tone of the play suggests constantly that of the more radical ex- periments from Strindberg to John Howard Lawson; and throughout both the longueurs and the crudities which mar it one sits in an expectation rewarded again and again by scenes of vividness and power. Why is it, then, that ;'Sandalwood" as a whole fails definitely to achieve that serene completeness which is the mark of artistic aspiration fulfilled? The reason is to be sought, I think, not in any mere lack of technical skill nor even in any failure in the power of the author to express the things at which he aims, but rather in the incompleteness of his own soul. His work, wherever it deals with mere rebellion, wherever it is concerned with the things from which he would escape, is passionate and real, but whenever he spreads the wings of aspiration those wings are pitifully ineffectual. Dulness, stupidity, and the disgust which they can provoke are realized from intimate experience and bodied forth with powerful imagination, but their oppo- sites — freedom, joy, and beauty — are but tinseled words bandied about by people incapable of understanding their meaning. The wife, so hideous and so pitiful, is real; the mistress is a lay figure, tawdry and unconvincing. Weary of the world which he knows, the author is impotent to conceive a better one, and he takes refuge in proud empty words. Hence it is that the play is a symptom of a tragedy, somewhat different from the one which it aims to set forth, of a tragedy which is, per- haps, the greatest of modern society. Thanks to education and enlightenment, discontent is cheap. Thousands condemned to mediocrity and dulness are aware that they are mediocre and dull. Vast armies whose forefathers accepted routine with complacency have now heard of and now long for the freedom and the joy of the artist and the creator. But if aspiration has become the property of the many, it is still, unfortunately, only the few who can fashion a life beyond dulness and platitude. "Fanny" (Lyceum Theater) is a melodrama devised by David Belasco and Willard Mack for the display of Fanny Brice. Miss Brice's talents are undeniable, but the piece is mere car- pentry and pretty bad carpentry at that. "Yellow" (National Theater) is also melodrama of a sort nearer to that once made familiar by traveling stock companies than is often seen in these days. The very scenery — for all its obviously fresh paint — is curiously reminiscent of the general utility set, and if the villain is very black indeed his villainy is neutralized by a more copious flow of virtuous sentiments from all the other male members of the cast than has been heard in the theater in a long while. Says the hero to the seducer: "I didn't know that a man could sink so low." Joseph Wood Krutch exit chivalry! IN her new novel, just published, the author of "Barren Ground" tells the story of man eternal and quietly laughs the sentimental tradition of Southern chivalry off the stage. This season's wittiest, most brilliant bonk is 'The Romantic Comedians By Ellen Glasgow At Bookstores, $2.50 Doubleday, Page & Co. A NEW VOLUME IN THE MUSICIANS LIBRARY Seventy Negro Spirituals Arranged for Voice and Piano Edited by William Arms Fisher Issued In two editions For High Voice For Low Voice THE most authoritative and complete collection of these picturesque and appealing folksongs yet issued. The arrangements are the work of the editor, together with nine other well-known Amer- ican musicians, all of whom have approached their task with enthusiasm, sympathy and skill. Mr. Fisher's prefatory essay on Spirituals is an ex- haustive and illuminating treatment of an engrossing subject. Price: Paper, cloth back $2.50 net Full cloth, gilt 3.50 net A brochure giving portraits of editors and tables of contents of all tho volumes of the Musicians Library will be sent free on request. OLIVER DITSON COMPANY 178-179 Tremont St., Boston Chas. H. Ditson & Co. 8-10-12 East 34th St., New York Order of your local dealer 'When writing to advertiser*, please mention The Nation

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386 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3197 George H. Doran Company offers for the delectation of The Nation : The great novel of our time H. G WELLS The World o f William Clissold Published 2 vols. $5.00 Brilliant romantic characterization FLOYD DELL An Old Man's Folly Published $2.00 In the manner of "Nocturne" FRANK SWINNERTON Summer Storm Published $2.00 Author of "Wife of the Centaur" CYRIL HUME The Golden Dancer Published $2.00 A doughboy's novel of the war LEONARD NASON Chevrons Published $2.00 The great human biography HERBERT GORMAN A Victorian American: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow October 15 $5.00 By the author of "Porgy" DU BOSE HEYWARD Angel Published $2.00 Six stories — six real novels W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The Casuarina Tree Published $2.00 Her best loved character MARY ROBERTS RINEHART Tish Plays the Game October 29 $2.00 By the author of" Limehouse Nights" THOMAS BURKE The Sun in Splendour Published $2.50 The facts about sex JOSEPH COLLINS The Doctor Looks at Love and Life Published $3.00 Guide, philosopher and friend E. V. LUCAS A Wanderer in Rome Published $5.00 A Cathedral novel HUGH WALPOLE Harmer John October 15 $2.00 The great literary biography HERVEY ALLEN Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe November 6 $10.00 Peer of "The Old Wives' Tale" ARNOLD BENNETT Lord Raingo Published $2.00 Illustrated by Edmond Dulac HELEN BEAUCLERK The Green Lacquer Pavilion Published $2.50 An Intellectual Holiday ALDOUS HUXLEY Jesting Pilate October 22 $3.50 A stimulating aperitif for epicures JOHN THOMAS Dry Martini Pu blished $2.50 The autumn list of George H. Doran Company, from which the foregoing are selected, [f^eWM has been described by such competent and critical observers as Edward Bjorkman, Charles Hanson Towne and others as the most distinguished array of books and authors •22k ever assembled into one publisher's catalogue in any one season. An illustrated catalogue on request. 244 Madison Avenue GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1926 No. 3198 Contents" EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 887 EDITORIALS: Dear Old Private Initiative w • Knows " A Little Poetry I,,",., Watch Massachusetts ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■" WASHINGTON'S SMOKE NUISANCE. Bj Harry S. Bressler. . . . IS GERMANY DISARMED? By Louis Fischer sji FRANCE AND HER POLITICIANS. By Oswald Garrison Villard.. IDOLS BEHIND ALTARS. By Anita Brenner THE SOCIALIZATION OF MEDICINE. By Joseph Krimsky ARE FARM-LAND SPECULATORS ENTITLED TO PITY? By Benjamin C. Marsh SILENCE. By Hal Saunders White " [E DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter • - CORRESPONDENCE BOOKS AND PLAYS Now the Skv. Ry Mark Van Doren *"" ridge. By .1 acob Zeitlin ;! edith. By Lucien Price ' Rome Simplified. By Tenney Frank *«' For Independence. By William MacDonald Books in Rrief ,';,'." Y ',-" I 7 mw Drama: "The Lion Tamer." by Joseph Wood Krutch ■)"» INTERN ATION A l RELATIONS SECTION : Russia, the Land of Contradictions. By Sherwood Eddy 4111 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA K1RCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager SUBSCRIPTION Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and .Mexico ; to Canada. $5.50 : and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising : Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1, England. IS THIS COUNTRY at last waking up? There are signs. In Illinois the candidacy of Hugh S. Magill, at first laughed at by professional politicians, is beginning to dis- turb their nights' sleep. Mr. Magill is fighting for the Senatorship as an honest Dry. Against him are George E. Brennan, the wringing Wet Democratic boss of Chicago, and Frank L. Smith, more or less Dry, both of whom ac- cepted checks in their primary campaigns from the public- utilities magnate, Samuel Insull. And — almost surprisingly in these days of complacent corruption — there are people in Illinois who take this issue of honesty seriously. IT IS IN INDIANA, however, that the great revolt is visible. There a group of fighting Republican newspaper editors is defying the Klan-named officials of the State. D. C. Stephenson, former Grand Dragon of the Klan and boss of Indiana, is in jail, convicted of second-degree mur- der. His prison meditations have apparently moved him to confession. But all the power of the State government has been set against exposure of the facts of Klan control. Stephenson got a few letters out to Thomas W. Adams, the Vincennes editor who today represents the conscience of his State, and Adams has Stephenson's documents in a safe outside the boundaries of Indiana. But the governor and his prison board have refused to permit Adams or his attorneys to see Stephenson; at first refusing any investi- gation of his charges, they finally moved toward an investi- gation under their own auspices. The governor was Stephenson's man. the attorney general, too; the mayor of Indianapolis is said to have signed a preelection pledge to consult the Grand Dragon about all appointments. Adams has had to fight against the entire machinery which ought to have exposed the corruption itself. It has been a mag- nificent fight. The Indiana Republican Editorial Associa- tion has supported him, with a few pusillanimous excep- tions, in a manner that gives hope that the press of America will earn again the prestige that it has been losing. MR. C. B. VAN DUSEN is general manager of the S. S. Kresge Company of Detroit; he is also presi- dent of the Detroit Y. M. C. A. The Kresge Company, according to Senator Couzens, pays its girl employees $7.50 a week. And the Y. M. C. A., through Mr. Van Dusen, with- drew, while the American Federation of Labor was in session in Detroit, the invitation which it had in July extended to William Green, president of the federation, to address its members. Simultaneously the Christian churches of Detroit withdrew the invitations they had, in accordance with the seven-year-old custom of the federa- tion's convention cities, extended to labor leaders to speak from their pulpits. Two churches were honorable excep- tions to this dishonorable retreat — the Bethel Evangelical Church, Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr, pastor; and the First Unitarian Church, Augustus P. Record, pastor — and a Congregational church, after wiggling and wabbling, finally opened its doors for a joint labor-church protest meeting. One or two other facts are pertinent in this episode in the history of Detroit Christianity: The Y. M. C. A. is con- ducting a $5,000,000-building campaign in Detroit, toward which the non-union Ford firm had pledged $1,500,000, the non-union Fisher Body Corporation $500,000, and the non-union S. S. Kresge Company, which pays its girls $7.50 a week, $300,000. Among the directors and officers of the Detroit Y. M. C. A. are Truman H. Newberry, who was forced to resign from the United States Senate because of campaign-fund scandals; and Charles Beecher Warren, whom the Senate refused to confirm as Attorney General; and other bankers, merchants, and automobile manufac- turers. And it was a circular letter from the Detroit Board of Commerce which frightened the churches into their retreat. THE PROTESTANT PASTORS of Detroit obviously are not in the habit of choosing their texts from the nineteenth chapter of Matthew. When a young man enters the Y. M. C. A. he is in no danger of hearing a secretary quote: "Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor": nor, probably, does it often occur to the directors that it might be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. Yet, as a matter of fact, we are not surprised by the cower- ing of the Detroit churches when the non-union employers cracked their whips. It is part and parcel of a long, long history. Let those who accused Upton Sinclair of wild exaggeration when he wrote his "Profits of Religion," let

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388 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 those who had no understanding for the anti-church feeling in Russia and in Mexico study the story of Detroit. Despite hundreds of stirring individual exceptions, the Protestant church in America is the ally of the interests which feed it. Detroit was no novelty. Protestant cathedrals, million- dollar Y. M. C. A. buildings are not built with the pennies of the millions, but with the substantial contributions of the "substantial" section of the community. And these men do not make out checks in six figures to organizations which are at all likely to interfere with their profits. NEW YORK STATE'S Water Power Commission (Re- publican) has recently given the public two more slaps in the face. It has evolved a plan for disposing of the St. Lawrence to private interests, and invited the Frontier Corporation and others to step up and bid; it has tried to give away the Salmon River in the Adirondacks. The St. Lawrence plan includes the unusual and usurious provision that if the State ever desires to buy the private company out, it must pay cost plus 15 per cent; it provides a loophole for "good-will" and other intangibles in valuation; the higher interest rate on private bonds as compared with public bonds would in fifty years add $100,000,000 to the cost of the project, and the commission asks the corpora- tions to complete only half of the job by 1934. A more ruin- ous compact for the citizens of New York it would be diffi- cult to imagine. The Salmon River project, according to the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, would bring to the State just $720 a year in revenue, although it would be the opening wedge for $50,000,000 in enhanced values for private power corporations. The commission deigned to grant the protesting organizations a hearing, but when they reached Albany they found the hearing post- poned without notice until after election! Such are the gentry who have our natural resources in charge. LATER REPORTS on the abolition of compulsory mili- tary drill from the College of the City of New York show that the authorities were not without guile in the matter. First reports in the newspapers sounded so well; the incoming freshman class was to have the choice of military training or "civilian drill" — which latter might not be so very pleasant but was at least an alternative. Then, to the surprise of those who had admired last year's pro- tests against the R. O. T. C, the freshman class voted four to one for military training. There was something strange about this; several students in the college have been kind enough to furnish us with the explanation. There was, it appears, nothing about the new course in the cata- logue of studies from which the freshmen made up their schedule of classes. Anyone who has ever performed the feat of fitting courses in where they do not want to go, will realize what a mathematical triumph a completed pro- gram is. It was days after college opened when the acting president announced the new "civilian-drill" course; the student programs of studies had already been made up. It is always hard and sometimes impossible to change them. In addition, a fee of six dollars was required for the privi- lege of wearing gray-striped "civ nan" trousers while drill- ing, and at the same time it was carefully announced that military uniforms would be furnished gratis by the Govern- ment. In spite of the difficulties of changing their programs, in spite of the six dollars which is important enough to most students of City College, in spite, one may even think, of the gray striped trousers, 144 freshmen out of some seven hundred made the choice. Student opposition to military training, then, is by no means dead; the authori- ties have capitulated only where they felt obliged to, and are still doing their best to discredit the rising tide of protest. "XTEVER IN MY EXPERIENCE have the editors of ■L* any State so outspokenly, unanimously, and vigor- ously condemned a lynching outrage as have the Virginia editors the mob murder at Wytheville," writes James Weldon Johnson of the National Association for the Ad- vancement of Colored People to the Richmond (Va.) Times- Dispatch. "Colored people throughout the United States," he adds, "have been much heartened by the attitude of the white press of Virginia." Nor does the Virginia press stand alone. We have seldom seen a more effective editorial upon the Ku Klux Klan than a recent comment of the Greensboro (N. C.) Daily News upon the reply of President Chandler of William and Mary College "to the Kluckers who presented the college with a flagpole and an American flag." Dr. Chandler, it seems, smilingly expressed his appreciation of patriotic circulars issued by the Klan in which it an- nounced its support of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution. He quoted and elaborated upon the Declaration's assurance that all men have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, each in his own way, and the Constitution's guaranty of religious freedom, while five thousand brethren headed by the Im- perial Wizard, listened. Dr. Chandler, in sum, used Klan texts to prove to the Klan that it should make of itself a sort of American Civil Liberties Union, and the Greensboro newspaper praised him for "the neatest, smoothest, and most gently subtle performance of the season." We should like to know what Northern college president or Northern newspaper editor could — and would — be at once as bold and as subtle. YET THE OLD STORY repeats itself: the sheriff is "overpowered"; the prisoners are "whisked away"; the mob is "masked" or has blackened faces; high-powered automobiles bear the victims to the outskirts of town. Re- sult: in Aiken, South Carolina, two men and a woman, Negroes, of course, were shot to death; and in Dover, Ten- nessee, one Negro met the same fate. Thus lynchings to date for 1926 reach the grand total of 24, or six more than the total for twelve months in 1925. The prisoners in South Carolina were standing trial for the murder of a sheriff a year or so ago, a murder that grew out of a raid on the Negroes' home in the course of which a Negro woman was killed. They had been convicted once; the case was ap- pealed and Hie judge directed that one of the three be ac- quitted on the murder charge; he was then rearrested on a charge of assault with intent to kill. The "mob" that took them from the jail could not wait for ordinary justice. In this case, as in so many others, the sheriff from whom the prisoners were taken had not thought it necessary to order a special guard for them or even to remain at his post to protect them. And in spite of a fine show of de- termination to discover and punish the lynchers in both States, a coroner's jury in each case has already returned a verdict of death at the hands of "unknown parties." It is something if Southern newspapers now ring with fiery denunciations of lawlessness and mob action; in the old

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 389 days they said nothing. But Southern editors and Southern legislators are still blind to the need for a federal anti- lynching law. POOR MR. EVAN WILLIAMS! As spokesman for the coal-owners in the British mine strike he has occasion almost daily to expatiate on the unprofitableness of the coal industry. The owners cannot pay another penny in wages; look at their books — they are losing money as it is; and so on. The disrespectful Glasgow Forward, with fine dis- regard for Mr. Williams's protestations, prints certain inter- esting items in the financing of the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, Ltd., the strongest combination of the fifteen different companies of which Mr. Williams is a director. The Tredegar company's capital consists of £616,000 in A ordinary and £1,115,103 in B ordinary shares. The owners of the B ordinary shares received £412,167 bonus shares in 1918 and £494,601 bonus shares in 1923. This, explains the Forward, means that they have subscribed only £208,335 in actual cash, but are drawing dividends on £1,115,103; for every two pounds invested they receive income on eleven. This, of course, is a not unfamiliar tale in high finance. But in view of the fattening of profits from this section of the industry, it ill becomes Mr. Williams to be quite so adamant about what the owners must and will have from the men. To an ordinary miner, trying to get along on two pounds a week, figures like these are appalling. The other day the wife of one of the striking miners fainted in the line that was waiting for food relief — fainted because of starvation; certain miners' families are reported to be obliged to live two days of every week without anything to eat; the relief committee is pleading every day for boots and clothing for the children, for food for the children. Mr. Williams would probably hint that the children would be fed if their fathers would go back to the mines. He can afford to wait. FORTY PER CENT of all sickness in the United States could be prevented by the application of existing medi- cal knowledge. One-half of the losses incurred in indus- trial accidents could be prevented through the use of known laws governing the operation of fatigue. The machinery of democratic government would not jam so often if poli- ticians knew what political scientists know. "Engineers have asserted that technical knowledge is now available which if put to work would practically banish poverty, more than double the standard of living, turn ugly cities into noble ones, and bring the culture of the town to the countryside. Yet science for the great bulk of the popula- tion is still largely a new mysticism. Mountains of knowl- edge are created ; mole hills of it are actually used." Thus the American Library Association in a pamphlet recently issued. The Association wonders how all this knowledge, lying quietly on the shelves of our libraries, may be awak- ened and put to work. The answer probably is, by adver- tising and propaganda. Those are ugly words chiefly be- cause they have been used in connection with efforts to tell us things we do not need or want to know. They might become words of power in connection with a program of diffusion paid for by the government, the purpose of which would be to give all human beings under the flag the infor- mation which a few human beings have. Such a purpose would seem to be an obvious one. It is so simple and obvi- ous, indeed, that it probably will never be conceived by any government. But we should love to see the thing tried — noting as time went on how much second-class mail still went unopened into waste-baskets. WHEN, WE RISE TO ASK, is the San Joaquin Valley of California going to erect a statue to Andrew Volstead and establish an annual festival in commemoration oi' the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Con- stitution? Of all the paradoxical results of prohibition certainly the effect upon the growers of wine grapes is among the most curious — and possibly instructive. Black clouds were thought to hang over California vineyards when Mr. Volstead got his famous law through Congress, but by 1920 it was evident that the clouds had a silver lining and by now it is apparent that they are raining prosperity upon California and home-made wine on the rest of the country. In 1918 California shipped 12,000 carloads of table grapes and 6,000 carloads of the wine-producing varieties; last year it shipped 15,000 carloads of table grapes and 60,000 carloads of wine grapes. This year the ship- ments of wine grapes are estimated at 75,000 carloads. A carload of grapes makes from 1,500 to 2,000 gallons of wine; New York City alone is thought to have made at least 25,000,000 gallons last year, or some four gallons per capita. For some time California feared that the saturation- point had been reached, but, as a writer in the Independent says, "it takes a vast deal of wine to saturate these United States" ! The modern parable of the vineyard seems to be that nothing succeeds like prohibition. SUPPOSE THAT YOU ARE Calvin Coolidge, the honest son of a toiling father, an American citizen devoid of artifice or elegance. You also happen to be President of the United States. That's nothing. You have found an ability to sign your name and close your mouth about all the equipment necessary for that job. Shaking hands is also important, and you have learned to do it when occasion demands. Then all of a sudden Queen Marie decides to call upon you. There is no getting out of it. She has fifty new dresses and a permanent wave, and she is arriving in Washington on October 19. She cannot call on anyone else until she has dropped around at the White House, so you might as well admit that something more than your present social equipment is demanded. You call up the State Department and ask for the chief etiquettician of the Social Usages Bureau. It's his first alarm for sev- eral years, but he springs into action at once. He puts his staff to work on their books of manners and Almanachs de Gotha, and produces for you a complete tabular report of proper clothes, gestures, order of precedence, modes of address, and procedure in the face of impending royalty. He outlines, with rare imagination, a typical day in the life of a tourist queen, including the special train, the arrival at the station, the reception committee's costume, the queen's carriage, the dress of the receiving ladies. You are advised in regard to the proper method of receiving and returning the queen's call; you discover that you had better invite her to dinner. It will be hard, but the honor of Vermont is at stake. After all, it is merely a matter of practice. Are the social customs of the court more intricate or more binding than those of the village? Prob- ably not. They are only different. Any President can learn — with a little help from his Department of State. Let the queen come on.

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390 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 Dear Old Private Initiative HOW many miles to the gallon are you getting? Twenty- three carbureters of standard makes were recently tested in the laboratories of Purdue University. Of these twenty-three only four could be said to adhere closely to the specifications of a scientifically satisfactory carbureter, involving suitable mixtures for idling, level-road operation, and hill-climbing. Some furnished satisfactory mixtures for only one of these classes and at only one limited range or speed; "a iew of the carbureters had characteristics exactly the opposite of those which a reasonable specifica- tion would require." Forty per cent could not be depended upon to reproduce their performance on different occasions. Only six permitted the engine to develop its full power; eight caused a large curtailment of engine-power through unnecessary pressure-losses. "Some automobile manufac- turers purchase their carbureters morn on the basis of price than performance. . . . This causes not only a waste of money but unnecessarily depletes our natural fuel re- sources. The difference in price between the more efficient and the other carbureters tested is so small as to be negligible." To this evidence the Federal Oil Conservation Board, in its recent report, adds that 25 per cent of the na1 ion's gasoline consumption "could be saved and the same mileage of movement provided if there were more adequate designs of carbureters and engines." The report of the Conserva- tion Board, composed of Secretaries Work, Hoover, Wilbur, and Davis, is a preliminary one, but it is sufficiently arrest- ing. It supports all the principal charges which engineers have made from time to time covering the appalling waste of a priceless natural resource — and in certain particulars goes the engineers one better. On the present basis of production and consumption, with no new discoveries of or lands, and without considering foreign fields, the United States has just six years of joy-riding left. Other estimates vary from ten to twenty years — none of which reckonings leave much hope for our gasoline civilization. In 1859 the first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania. To the close of 1925 a total of 680,000 wells had been sunk — 20 per cent of which turned out to be dry holes. From the producing wells 9,000,000,000 barrels of oil have been taken— 3,000,000,000 of them in the last pre years. The 1925 production was no less than 750,000,000 ban-els. The board estimates that there is a total underground supply, in the present producing fields, of 4,500,000,000 barrels. Which, divided by 750,000,000, works out to just six years. We have had new discoveries in the past, and under the law of probabilities we will get them in the future. The hoard expects new discoveries, but is by no means confident that they will be sufficient to maintain a production of 750,000,- 000 barrels annually for an unlimited period. The conti- nental United States has already been intensively explored for oil, although science has not yet made itself completely master of the oil-divining rod. The vast South California fields were a surprise, and it is possible that other surprises lurk beneath the strata. Yet certainly we are much nearer the end of new discoveries than we were a generation ago. The range becomes increasingly limited. It is a very dubious question how much longer our luck will hold. We produce and consume approximately 70 per cent of the world's traffic in oil. Our exports of 94,000,000 barrels are largely balanced by imports of 62,000,000 barrels — chiefly from Mexico. The total investment in the American industry is $9,500,000,000, while sales at wholesale prices last year were nearly $2,000,000,000. Despite its lordly size the industry treats its oil as a drunken sailor treats his money. Oil is found in conjunction with natural gas in deeply buried beds of sand. When the well-pipe reaches the sand, the pressure of the gas blows the oil up to the light of day. If it blows hard enough we have a "gusher," which may spout hundreds of feet in the air. If the gas can be released gradually rather than in one grand rush a very much larger fraction of the oil can ultimately be reclaimed from the sand. American practice, however, animated by the sturdy principles of self-help and free competition, favors throwing out the baby with the bath and getting all the oil it can as fast as it can, while letting the upper atmos- phere take care of the gas. The board gives us Cushing Field, Oklahoma, as a case in point. For a time, the aver- age daily waste of gas was 300,000,000 cubic feet, more than 100 billion feet of gas a year — the equivalent of 5,500,000 tons of coal. The same situation held at Cromwell, at Burk- burnet, Texas, at Eldorado and Smackover, Arkansas, at fields in the Los Angeles basin. For every barrel which reaches the pipe-line, from four to six remain irrevocably lost below ground. The board estimates that only 25 per cent of oil underground is recov- ered "by ordinary methods," and notes that some authori- ties claim only 18 per cent — one-sixth. Yet under proper engineering control nearly all could be reclaimed. The money loss for a single fid'! due to competitive drilling — two wells side by side where only one, properly spaced, should be sunk — is assessed by the board at $200,000,000. This is at Santa Fe Springs, California, where forty-five competing companies feverishly sunk wells along each other's property-lines, blew off the gas, and "let loose an unneeded flood of oil on the market with resultant disaster to the price structure, and creating conditions of increased operating costs." With inconceivable wastes in production, and with very great and needless losses in consumption — of which the car- bureter example is but one; with a supply, so far as is now known, only good for six years in America; with our great- est neighbor-fields in Mexico approaching exhaustion and the South American fields utterly uncertain in yield; with the other foreign fields — Persia, Mesopotamia, and the rest — of the most inflammable character politically — in these grave, if not desperate circumstances, what does the board recommend? The Federal Oil Conservation Board, composed of Sec- retaries Work, Hoover, Wilbur, and Davis — after making certain sensible suggestions as to the conservation of oil in the public domain during time of war — recommends that the future "must rest upon the normal commercial initia- tive of private enterprise." Before such passionate devo- tion to an outworn creed one can but remove one's hat — and think twice about ordering that new oil-burner for the furnace.

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 391 What Every Coolie Knows WHILE the eyes of that portion of the world which cares about China are fixed upon the squabbles and battles of her military chiefs, while the diplomats complain of her dissensions, China is acting with impressive if chaotic unity. Something real is happening — China is throwing off, one by one, the foreign shackles which have bound her. The tupans and tuchuns, generals and mar- shals, prime ministers and presidents who rule various parts of the ancient empire hate one another, but toward the foreigners they feel alike. Canton ceased turning over the salt taxes of that province for the service of the foreign debt, to which they are pledged, away back in 1918. Local chieftains have occa- sionally done as much, and the warlord of Tientsin, favorite of the foreigners though he was, followed suit a few months ago. And now even Sun Chuang-fong, the last hope of those who fear the progress of the Southern "Red" armies, has announced that the salt revenues of his provinces will be needed for his military campaign. Canton has gone further still, issuing a new schedule of domestic taxes which the foreigners say is a violation of the treaties; and the Peking Government has announced that it will not renew its treaty with Belgium, which the foreigners also say it has no right to do. But foreign complaints are unavailing. China's very chaos is an asset in this crisis. An old Chinese proverb says that you cannot hang a jellyfish upon a nail. The for- eign Powers had their chance to modify the treaties by mutual agreement; but instead they hemmed and hawed, and agreed to move a single step if the Chinese would move miles, and out of all the conferences came — except for the rendition of the Shanghai Mixed Court, where even the treaties gave the foreigners no excuse for their action — just exactly nothing. A diplomatic training, it happens, is a poor back- ground for dealing with a continental revolution. It pre- pares men to study texts and precedents, to live by the letter of the law — and in China today an ancient civilization is slipping over a precipice, and the rules by which the West had learned to deal with it are sliding too. The old treaties still exist on paper ; but the conditions out of which they were born have gone forever, and there is no Western- minded government in China to devise forms to bridge the gap. The diplomats know that the old status is gone — that the regime under which foreigners dictate China's customs schedules, collect her taxes, police her rivers with their for- eign navies, and govern her greatest commercial cities can at best hardly survive another decade — but they do not know enough to make concessions gracefully. Instead, they protest every violation of the old code, stand on rights that cannot be enforced, and end by making themselves as futilely ridiculous as the puppet governments which, unnoticed, suc- ceed one another at Peking. Every tuchun in China knows that he can afford to ignore their warnings, and step by step, without concert but with striking unanimity, they act accordingly. Some of the backward-looking business men of the treaty ports persist in demanding that the Powers follow a "strong" policy, and there is always danger that Great Britain, Japan, or France may heed the demand, and drag the United States with it into what may well become an inter-race or inter-continental war. (Japan, in such mat- ters, still identifies herself with the white race.) The "inci- dent" at Wanhsien, 1,200 miles up the Yangtze, where Brit- ish warships bombarded the city, killing thousands, would with any people but the Chinese have been the signal for massacres in revenge — and the West, which demands both blood and money revenge when its own nationals are killed in Eastern countries, should realize that such massacres would be only application by the mob of what it applies as the ethics of diplomacy. A correspondent in Hankow, 600 miles up the Yangtze, opposite Wuchang, which the Canton troops are still besieging, sends us a clipping listing the for- eign warships then in port. These include one Italian, two French, and four British gunboats; a Japanese gunboat and a destroyer; an American gunboat and two American destroyers. This in the heart of China, six hundred miles from the sea. And reinforcements have since been sent. Mr. Butts of the Chicago Daily Neivs reports that "the anti-foreign wave is sweeping down the Yangtze toward Shanghai"; Mr. Millard of the New York Times notes a new popularity for the Cantonese, who thumb their noses at the foreigners. Wherever a foreign gunboat sits in Chinese waters the Chinese coolie begins to see another irritating symbol of the treaties which claim for the white men superior rights and privileges. At any moment a spark may light in the international powder-magazine. Yet the newspapers of October 10 report the arrival of more American warships in Chinese waters, bringing our total to fifty-two! Do the people of America, who annually send ten mil- lion dollars to support Christian missionaries in China, care for the people whom they seek to "save"? Do they want "Christianity" to be identified in Chinese eyes with the guns and shells of foreign warships? If they do not want their years of work to go for naught, it behooves them to make their influence felt in Washington and to force our Government to abandon its unholy alliance with the Powers which do not know that China in 1926 is not the China of Boxer days. China, for all its civil wars, knows what it wants of the foreigners; does America know what it wants of China? A Little Poetry PUBLISHERS have been heard to say, when they said anything about poetry at all, that a little of it goes farther with the public than a lot of it goes. Some of them would like to stop issuing it altogether, for, except in rare cases, it pays badly. A sale of five hundred copies of even an excellent volume is considered a decent sale, and many good volumes, it seems, get nowhere. Reviewers who wish to clear their shelves of books which it is not necessary to keep will toss books of verse into the ashcan rather than waste steps to carry them to the second-hand dealer — who shrugs his shoulders at sight of the thin things and, if for some reason he has to accept them in order to get the re- viewer's surplus novels or biographies too, either stacks them in front of his store at ten cents apiece or shovels them back into the alley for the refuse-man next morning to take away. But publishers have been heard to say that a little poetry may go far. They urge the poet v/ho comes with his manuscript to reduce its size by half. The public, they know, reads poetry; it does not, they believe, read poets.

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392 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 It will absorb almost any number of anthologies wherein each poet is represented by half a dozen pieces or fewer; it clips apt bits of verse out of newspapers or magazines and pastes them in scrapbooks ; it memorizes what it comes upon by chance; it keeps some of the more likable things astonishingly alive. It does not care, however, say the publishers, for the poet as a person, as an artist, as an entity. So the man with the manuscript must ride home and trim the hoofs of his Pegasus. Poetry which does not step lightly takes very few steps. Two publishing-houses in the United States hope to make something of this situation by issuing poetry in paper- bound pamphlets selling at twenty-five cents each. "The Augustan Books of Modern Poetry" (Stokes) have so far given us portions of Shelley, Keats, Tagore, Chesterton, Belloc, and Robert Bridges; "The Pamphlet Poets" (Simon and Schuster) begin with Carl Sandburg, Elinor Wylie, Whitman, Emerson, Nathalia Crane, and "H. D.," and in- tend to go on with Edna Millay, Longfellow, Poe, Emily Dickinson, Witter Bynner, and Conrad Aiken. Eight or ten pamphlets in each series are expected to appear each year, so that a good deal of ground, if all goes well, will be surveyed. We look forward with interest to the out- come of both jntei prises, and hope that the publishers in- volved will tell us frankly, at the end of three years, how business is. There are numerous possibilities. The total number of persons who buy and read poetry may be in- creased. Acquaintance with thirty pages of Shelley, Mar- vell, Sandburg, or Emily Dickinson may stimulate an appe- tite for the poet's collected works. What would be more interesting still, changes may be forced in the marketing of new verse. The author who goes to the publisher with his manuscript may henceforth be met with a request for thirty pages only — and if that sample of his poetry sells, perhaps more later. We shall see, then, how far a little poetry will go. But there is a sense in which a little poetry can be a dan- gerous thing. The scheme we have described falls peril- ously into line with Poe's famous definition of the poem as something which is short. One of the troubles with modern poetry is that it grows painfully concentrated — whereas much of the good poetry of the world has been easy and ample. Even today we are not without our ample poets. We wonder, for instance, just how much thirty pages of Whitman will accomplish. Whitman needed space, and there will hardly be enough room in the "Pamphlet Poets" for him to turn around in. Emily Dickinson can be sampled, of course, within the compass of her allotment; but only sampled. Though she wrote brief things, she wrote many of them; and all of them, or nearly all of them, are neces- sary for a comprehension of what she was getting at, for there were many things she had to utter with her short breath. And nothing could be more absurd than a state of mind which would refuse a hearing to writers with the dimension of Robinson Jeffers and William Ellery Leonard. "Tamar" and "Two Lives," the outstanding volumes of poetry published here last year, were not pamphlet stuff; they had length of body and height of reach such as only unlimited space can encourage. But we need not grow serious. The fortunes of poetry are singularly even, year in and year out. When the major poet of his decade comes along we undoubtedly shall make provision for him. Mean- while we may welcome any new vehicle, even though it be a small one, for the communication of song. Watch Massachusetts MASSACHUSETTS, on January 1, will begin an ex- periment in compulsory automobile-liability insur- ance. More than a score of State legislatures toyed with the idea last year, and it will come up again in most of them this winter; Massachusetts leads the way. The word "compulsory" is in disrepute these days, but in a traffic jam compulsion becomes necessary. Automobile- drivers do not ask freedom to travel on the left side of the road on a bad curve; license-plates, horns, headlights, tail- lights, brakes are only a part of the compulsion to which they freely submit. Massachusetts' new law makes the protection of a car by liability insurance or bond a prerequisite to the grant- ing of a license. It recognizes that society gives the car- owner a special privilege in permitting him to roam the streets with a dangerous machine, and in exchange for this franchise the owner must guarantee to replace life or prop- erty values injured by careless operation of his machine. Most motorists have hitherto considered liability insurance a luxury. Less than a third of American car-owners have thought it of sufficient importance to purchase. Yet millions of the cars which crowd our streets are operated by owners or instalment-buyers with no financial resources whatever. When any boy with $50 or $100 can purchase some wreck on wheels and proceed to enjoy life the problem is impor- tant. American automobiles kill twenty thousand people every year, and the record of injuries looks like a war report. When the car-owner has tangible resources or an insurance policy the sufferers may get some compensation, but the only satisfaction to be gained from a bankrupt or unprotected driver is the debtor's cell, poor recompense for an injured worker's family. Why should one man, enjoying a luxury beyond his means — and an automobile is certainly that to a man who cannot pay for the damage he may do with it — be allowed to wander dangerously over the good roads and streets for which even pedestrian taxpayers have to pay? The only effective protest against compulsory-liability insurance comes from the insurance companies. They send forth volumes of propaganda against it, chiefly inspired by their fear of state insurance. Their only argument, apart from cheap talk about paternalism, is the claim that when automobile-owners are protected by insurance they will dash about the streets like reckless maniacs, filling the hospitals with the dead and wounded. If fear of financial responsi- bility were really all that kept automobile drivers in leash the drivers might better abolish these four-wheeled weapons altogether. As a matter of fact, universal automobile insurance is more likely to make the roads safer. The insurance companies will be stimulated to work for more careful licensing of drivers; and automobile-owners, fearful lest their own premiums mount, will have an added interest in supporting such a campaign. Careful investigation by the Massachusetts officials, indeed, has led them to work out a rate schedule somewhat lower than the prevailing rates for liability insuiance. And when the Massachusetts experiment is well under way we may expect the insurance companies to turn somersaults as they have done before — the companies which fought compulsory workmen's-com- pensation insurance most bitterly are now campaigning for its adoption in the few States which are still without it.

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Oct. 20, 19261 The Nation 393 . 0iVv .. ^sM'Tv j* • ■ i-. -■■■■ j-r y y' Washington's Smoke Nuisance by Harry S. Bressler

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394 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198; Is Germany Disarmed? By LOUIS FISCHER Berlin, August 31 rangement. The Reichswehr, moreover, is analyzed as a IS Germany disarmed? Professor Quidde, well-known cadre so constituted as to enable it easily to accept into German pacifist, answers Yes, and a moment later No. its ranks many times its own number of men. The re- "Germany," he writes, "is disarmed, completely disarmed emits are available— Quidde puts their strength at 2,000,- for the pu'rposes of a European war." On the other hand, 000— and have received training either surreptitiously in "The political organizations of the Right are in possession the Reichswehr at government expense or in Racialist- of munitions, and these munitions, however unimportant Nationalist associations such as the Consul, Stahlhelm, they be as far as the outside world is concerned, present Werwolf, Viking, Olympia, Young German Order, etc. a serious menace to domestic peace. They are a danger The authors of this brochure admit that the "shadow" to the republic " which they have detected would be of no significance in a But Franz Carl Endres, a German officer attached to large European war. Here they differ with Foerster and the Turkish G. H. Q. during the war, who has written on one is inclined to credit their judgment rather than his. military strategy for the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," de- "But," they add, "it is important first for small develop- mands'to know "why the Konigsberg fortress has been ments (against Poland, say, or Czecho-Slovakia), and then reinforced with fifty-three concrete buttresses. ... A for the ^suppression of every political opposition in strongly fortified Konigsberg is of value only for a Ger- Germany." man attack through the Polish corridor." And F. W. The Reichswehr, the nucleus of the "shadow," is Foerster, a German pacifist who finds it more convenient limited by the Versailles Treaty to a strength of 100,000. to live in Switzerland, declares bluntly that when Count It counts more officers and non-commissioned officers than Bernstorff announced in Geneva that Germany was totally privates. And it is anti-republican. Dr. Gessler, Minister disarmed "the German diplomat was the mouthpiece of of National Defense, admitted in a speech in the Reichstag a e-icantic lie " on ^a^ ^' 1925, that his army was not "an army of .„ ^ , • ■ i xt..* *l u u „„ «„o„„v,~ republicans" and intimated that the reason lay in the cir- Dr. Foerster insists that there has been no psycho- H . , , , , . , ,. x» • r. D , • ,, . „ „ ,f cumstance that the Reichswehr had been constructed on logical disarmament" in Germany. But in this respect ,,,.-.,,, ~ mi „ . . .. , , , . ... ,.rf . .v. „ .l., the basis of the old, pre-war officer corps. The German his Vaterland is certainlv no different than any other „■,.-,, . ,, ■c rr\ ' „~ * ii •„ ic army of todav is the haven of refuge of the remnants country m Europe. The new name for an alliance is J . - . . ~ (( ... , xi, j xv ■ » ,_ „x„ • „Tv- t, of imperial Prussian militarism. We have direct and cir- neutrahty treaty, and the race for armaments, in which . , . , , . , . ,, , , ,, , j- x • u • v, • t „4 ~ cumstantial evidence to prove that before being enrolled talk about disarmament is becoming a chronic feature, .,,„., , . , . ,. . , ,. j. „,,,,„ • m„ „„„. m „„„,;„,•>» in the Reichswehr men are examined as to their political continues as of yore. When is the next war coming/ . . . „,,,.. is being asked everywhere in Europe, and although the views" The final decislon as to the fate of the aPPllcant Powers may not be "sufficientlv recuperated from the last lies with the regimental, sometimes with the company, . ,, „ , -, ... , . ,„j commanders. Outspoken friends of the republic find the fracas nor well-enough equipped with newly invented * y weapons for the next, we are marching toward a war as 00r c ose " j- xi j ui- ^i „ -.ii, « „x A n„A «+• xi x Theodor Wolff, the editor of the Berliner Taqeblatt, directlv and as blindly as in the first decade of the century. y ' Passing from psychology to practical armaments, and has even advocated the abolition of the Reichswehr "as discussing the Reichswehr-the German standing army- "nsuitable to a republican state" and the substitution of Dr Foerster savs- a P°Pu'ar militia m place of an ominous military caste. But the professional army system is imposed by the Ver- General von Seeckt and his friends know quite definitely gailles Treaty. This Versailles-born Reichswehr is an that their organization conforms to the newest conditions expensive affair. Its budget figures are: of war. They know that the neighboring states, still burdened with an expensive outmoded military apparatus, ™lt 410 l,0" marks' are far behind Germany, which has not disarmed but merely '~R ,S1 it „ armed herself in a different way; she possesses an elite army of unusually high training [the term of service in as compared with 984 millions for the Kaiser's army in the Reichswehr is twelve years] which, with the aid of 1913. If it be necessary to remember that the present civil Fascist organizations, grains ever greater control over mark is worth only 60 pre-war pfennigs we must also the entire population and can therefore elastically adapt consider that one-fifth of the Germany of 1913 is now the mass of the people to new war methods. either ceded to the AUies or occupied by Allied troopS) and Many of Foerster's assertions find support in a de- that many sectors of the German frontier may not be tailed study of the Reichswehr's organization issued by fortified. And when Dr. Gessler argues that "the Ver- the German League of the Rights of Man. Compiled by sailles Treaty provides for three cavalry divisions, we E. J. Gumbel, of the philosophical faculty of Heidelberg, would be happy to have less," he mistakes the fact. The and by Major General Schoenaich, who turned pacifist after treaty merely says that Germany may not have more than twenty-seven years in the old German army, the publi- seven infantry and three cavalry divisions. cation arrives at the conclusion that Germany's present An imPartial expert would say that the German army armed force is a^ "Shadow" Of the pre-1914 imperial army . ,n September Prince William, son of the ex-Crown Prince, illegally in that its Subdivisions and distribution throilP-hrmt tVm participated in the Reichswehr maneuvers. Minister Gessler and the entire .. . . . *'«"""" uuuufcllOUT, ine Cabinet demanded and. on October S, obtained that President Hindenburfr Country are a replica in miniature Of the ante-bellum ar- accept the proffered resignation of General von Seeakt. who was responsible. —Editor The Nation.

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 395 could defeat Poland in a war if no other Power Intervened. There are, in fact, nationalistic circles who would feel their life's mission fulfilled on the day such a struggle broke out. The age of localized, two-nation conflicts, however, is probably gone forever. The European organism is so deli- cately attuned, its several parts are so closely interlaced by economic interests and political pacts, that the slightest disorder in one section would throw the whole body out of gear. And armies will be mere auxiliaries in the war of the future. Have we not been told that the chemical laboratory, the wireless station, the airplane, and indus- trial capacity and economic resistance will play the chief roles in coming struggles among nations? Even that most efficient nuisance and busybody, the Allied Military Control Commission, can no more prevent Germany from making preparations in such fields than it can induce the German national mind to accept the idea of general dis- armament while the whole world continues to arm. Ger- many, then, is an important factor in the problem of European disarmament. All Europe is arming, many nations with greater speed and intensity than Germany. None is privileged to begin easting stones. But whereas the war closed on a ruined German army, and subsequently Germany lost her navy; whereas a corps of detectives, operating under the name of Allied Control Commission, sought to unearth B< stores of arms and ammunition, and to dismantle all fac- tories fitted for armament manufacture, this most ambitious international effort to reduce a state to a militarj nonentity has failed. The foisting of a Reichswehr instead of a militia on Germany helped toward the failure; the Ruhr invasion was an impetus toward the formation and strengthening of illegal, chauvinist, semi-military formations; the humili- ating tactics of the Entente kept alive the spirit of hate; the failure of the Allies to destroy Germany's chemical and steel industries contributed; but, finally, no nation living in the armed camp which is Europe today could fail to want to arm itself. If Europe had wished to disarm, it might have seized the opportunity in 1919 or 1920 when Germany was prac- tically a military zero and when she could not dream of rearming herself. Nothing was done then, and now it may be too late. France and Her Politicians By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD Baden-Baden, September JO 4,"T)OINCARE can save the franc, but he won't." This 1 is the verdict of competent Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, and Germans with whom I have talked since Poincare formed his cabinet of ex-premiers. They point out that France's financial situation is not hopeless; that her debt is not nearly so large, if reckoned in pre-war francs, as people suppose; that there is still practically no unemployment; that American tourists alone left $220,- 000,000 in France last year and will leave more this year; again that the depreciation of the franc has helped France's export trade and has made foreign competition less to be feared; that the practical ending of the Moroccan war has curtailed that drain upon the budget. Yet the verdict still is that Poincare will not save the franc. Why? Primarily, it is said, because he has not pegged the franc, because he has deprived himself of foreign banker aid by failing to put through the ratification of the American and British debt agreements, and because the new taxes will not result in materially larger collections — many Frenchmen say that if they paid the taxes for which they are liable they would have nothing left, and they will not consent to suffer. It is held that the immediate an- nouncement of a pegging of the franc at 25 or 36 or 40 to the dollar would have gone far to stabilize it, particu- larly if it were known that the gold reserve of the Bank of France would be drawn upon. But the eminent financiers with whom I and other journalists have talked are convinced that Poincare has overstayed his hour, has lost the psychological and financial moment. His economies in the various government departments, his cutting the corps of army officers by 4,000 temporary and permanent men, his abolition of 176 sub-prefecture officials, his orders as to food restriction — all of these impress no one as serious or likely to make any considerable dent in the budget. Despite the marked improvement in the franc's position the best-informed financiers believe that this is only a tem- porary phenomenon and that by November Poincare will be once more face to face with a serious exchange situ- ation despite the fact that he has no large internal debt payments to meet until the new year. There is a rumor that a life-line will be thrown to him in the form of a loan by Dutch bankers, privately indorsed by some distin- guished American financial firms, with the cognizance and approval of the Treasury Department in Washington, but as yet there is nothing to confirm this. It is known, too, that the Germans would like to help stabilize the franc — upon profitable terms — not only because of the prestige it would give them but because the collapse is the most serious dsnger now confronting the reparations officials and the German Government. It is, of course, quite possible that the conversation between Briand and Stresemann at Thoiry will result in Germany's paying to France for the things she wishes most such a price — the freeing of Germany from all foreign garrisons, abandonment of the Saar plebiscite, the return of Eupen and Malmedy, a colonial mandate, etc., etc. — that the result will be a tremendous gain for French finance. Yet even that will not save her. If Poincare wins some financial stability and a further delay in facing the inevitable in this way, his will be a lucky star. The truth is that on his actual record he does not deserve such help. He has not followed the program of the Economic Commission ; he has adopted only some of the Caillaux reforms. With every day there is increasing doubt as to his Parliament's accepting either the British or American debt agreements; the latter stands no chance of acceptance without reservations. The tables are to be turned on the United States Senate — the American device of reservations is to be utilized, with what result in Washington anyone can guess for himself.

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396 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 But by all means let us give even a Poincare his due. In June men in high official positions were privately saying that September would be a good month for tourists to keep out of France. They talked of another dictatorship in Europe— one of the best known of the English war statesmen said the other day that within two years there would be only one democracy left on the Continent as the net result of the war to safeguard democracy. They even speculated as to how the French dictator would appear, and refused to alter their opinions when you asked them to name anyone who could assume the role. "A dictator walks in as unexpectedly as did Primo de Rivera," was their usual reply. But September has come and France is as peaceful as Delaware or Ohio — one could as soon expect a rising in the streets of New York or Philadelphia. As the summer flood of English and American tourists recedes, such friction as there was decreases — how, by the way, would New Yorkers like to have about 500,000 for- eigners overrun their streets so as to make French and German more often heard on Fifth Avenue than English?) France at the middle of September is quiet, hard-working, minding its own business. Doubtless the French do notj like to notice that the franc has begun to fall again, but they are happy that it is no worse. The summer breathing spell has been welcome. The tremendous crowd which greeted with cheers Briand's arrival in Paris from Geneva shows that the public is not indifferent to what has hap- pened, that it is ready to bury the hatchet with its oldest and once most dangerous enemy. When the French Parliament meets there will again be heard the demand that the national legislature be done away with or hamstrung as Mussolini has done to the Italian. We shall hear echoes of this in the United States. It is the fashion to say that parliamentary government has everywhere broken down. Has it really? Or are the parliamentarians rather than the system to blame? Idols Behind Altars By ANITA BRENNER THE old conflict between church and state in Mexico having come to a head, much foolish babble has been emitted about a "religious uprising" in consequence of "religious persecution." But, aside from the economic consequences of an economic-political struggle, nothing has occurred beyond some rioting in places where the church or chapel of some locally revered image has been garrisoned with soldiers to prevent thievery during the absence of the striking priests. The apathy of the millions of native Roman Catholics to arm themselves and fight the battle of the church excites comment only outside of Mexico, where church and Catholicism often seem identical and the doubt- ful orthodoxy of the Indians a sensational revelation. This is not, however, the suddenly discovered and cheaply mystic "return of Quetzalcoatl." For Quetzalcoatl, like the Mexi- can Indian, is in no need of resurrection; he has always enjoyed fairly good health. Quetzalcoatl, Jesus Christ, Coatlicue, the Lady of Guadalupe, Huitzilopochtli, Tlaloc, St. James— they are all blurred together and often identified with one another. Consciously and unconsciously, they are all accepted with equal reverence. No one can say just where the line of differentiation is to be drawn. There is many a secret temple that no Christian priest has ever penetrated ; in the yearning Catholic soul of the Indian worshiper many a secret corner remains unbaptized. The idols squat upon their altars, in mountain caves, inside of churches, under and within the very crucifixes, with their placid, enigmatic smiles, and tributes at their feet. Flowers, fruit, bright ribbons and papers, incense, hot food, the hearts of ani- mals, and, it is whispered, the hearts of men. Dances, cere- monies, religious pilgrimages, performed in the name of Christ and also to Texcatlipoca — these are things any discreet stranger who has eyes may see. On the top of an out-of-the-way mountain, not far from the capital of Mexico, two or three of us out for a gallop discovered a little stone chapel. It was made entirely of pieces of volcanic rock, heaped on top of one another. Across the door hung a white fringe of the tender strips from the heart of maguey leaves. Inside there was a stone cross with a most unorthodox face carved in the middle. All around, on the rocks, were little pools of thickish water, full of lumps of copal, the native incense; bunches of dried flowers, and, on the edges, candle grease and burned-out wicks. The bushes were looped to one another with streamers of white lace or muslin, and there were similar streamers on the cross. At a little distance from the chapel we found a wide, cleared space, just like a fairy-story witches' ring. On the surface of the earth were fragments of clay sculp- tures, all alike and of apparently contemporary clay. They were torsos and sexual symbols of the goddess of fertility. We were interrupted in our work of exploration by a mumbling Indian charcoal-burner, who told us that the neighborhood was dangerous. "A soldier," he stated, "who came up here once fell down at the foot of the hill and broke his neck." In the patio of a church in an Indian village, also not far from the capital, I found a fairly large stone idol. Its head had once been broken off and placed on again. Around the base of its pedestal grew calabazas, the plant identified in Indian folk-tales as especially the property of the rain or nature gods. On the calabaza leaves I found traces of dried candle grease, of copal, and, scattered around, bunches of red flowers tied with red and green yarn, the colors of the nature gods. In the courtyard itself was a deep, square pool, stagnant. This was a village in which there is no water. I asked one of the Indians if the pool were a reservoir. He said No; nobody drank water out of it. They went to a spring in the mountains, about a mile away, or got it from a shallow pool in the plaza. I asked him what the stone figure was, and he said it was an idol. He also said it belonged to the priest, who had it there "just for curiosity, to look at on Sundays when he came to say mass." During the celebration of the Virgen de Guadalupe, whose shrine occupies the same place as did that of Tinonantzin, the mother of the gods and whose fiesta is

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 397 » made in the same season as was that of Tinonantzin and some of the nature gods, who also haunted those particular hills, the Indians dance not only in the churchyard but at the very foot of the Lady's altar. I once asked them why they stopped at sundown. "In order to let the Little Mother sleep," was the answer. There is a village near the city of Queretaro where idols are still made, a friend of mine assures me. The place is famous for its witch-doctors. This same friend tells me that once a native woman of that place had an idol, and she wanted the priest to bless it. My friend is a devout Catholic. "She knew the priest would not be likely to approve of the idol," he explains, "so this woman put the idol, which was not very large, in a vase of flowers and took the (lowers to have the priest bless them. Which he did." II "The Indians are not Christians," says Dr. Nicolas Leon, head of the department of anthropology in the National Museum of Mexico, who has spent many years among the native peoples. "They do not understand what the priests say, and they do not want to understand." But an Aztec woman, whose village and family pre- serve to an unusual extent the old traditions, told me it was this way: "Before the conquest the idols were adored. They were worshiped with offerings and were given to eat the hearts of children. This was done whenever they wanted to ask for a miracle. The idols would then do their miracles. They worshiped them as much as if they were God. As if they were all God. They took them many things, and fruits, and incense, and copal, and they prayed to them like we do to the saints. "The saints came in," she continued, "with the con- quest. They destroyed the idols, and the belief in images and saints began to be used. The Popocatepetl made a great eruption because he was jealous. But he is contented now, and asleep. This explosion killed many decent people." ("Decent" is the Indian description of a man in city clothes.) Her version is significant. Today the feasts that were made to the wind and rain gods are made to the wind and rain saints; the dances of the harvest goddess have become the dances of the miraculous harvest Virgen. One miraculous Christ is the patron of the conjurers. It is all very simple, done with the simplicity of long habit; for the Indian has no need of comic-opera gesture to re- assure himself. It is habit perhaps fearful, perhaps mean- ingless, to many. Of the meaning there is no proof. There are only tales. I heard a few in Milpa Alta. Milpa Alta is a tiny village in the Valley of Mexico. It kneels at the foot of a series of mountains the nearest of which is the volcanic Teutli, revered as the lord spirit who watches over the village. A gray, harsh, sorrowful place. The narrow rock streets stumble toward the maize-fields, stoop back to themselves and down. And with the night Milpa Alta becomes a thick, uncompromising, menacing gray, with splotches of black. There is no water. After two days — picturesque, fascinating, but uncomfortable and surely unhygienic days — my courtesy weakened and I asked Manuela-Tzin, my old Indian hostess, why there was no water. She finished lighting her daily candle to the Holy Virgin, who occupied the niche above my straw sleeping- mat, and came and squatted very close to me. "There is no water because the lord Teutli will I permit it." she said slowly. "We have only the small amount to drink that we keep in the fountain in the plaza the rains. This comes from the country of the a. But neither she nor the Old Man Teutli will allow water, because they say that if we have it we will prosper, and that means that strangers will come to Milpa Alta and cause it damages." (A stranger is any man who is not an Indian. A city Mexican is quite as much a for- eigner as is an American.) "They will cause damages," said Manuela-Tzin, "with their money and their machines, and the Virgen and the Old Man Teutli have agreed that they do not want noise or automobile accidents here." Manuela-Tzin, fumbling at the fire with her bony arm, dropped suddenly from her erratic Spanish into the native Nahuea: "You may not have heard about the three men who came to Milpa Alta. They asked, like you, where the water was. We said, There is no water. " 'How, there is no water? Certainly there is water!' and they lifted up that heavy rock over there in the plaza, and the water came out and ran in the streets. We drank of it and took some home. They said to us and they said to the witches: 'If you want water always, you must take two little boys and two little girls, four bastard children, and give them to the water. Throw them in his mouth and he will swallow them, and he will then give you water.' "But the lord Teutli forbids it," insisted Manuela-Tzin. "He says that he will erupt if strangers come to Milpa Alta. The Virgen, Tinonantzin, our Little Mother of Jesus, she says also she won't have it. She says she would go away to her own country behind the Popocatepetl. And she would not come back. And, anyway, we couldn't find four bastard children." Ill I told the story, faithfully as it is here, to Dr. Beyer, one of the leading archaeologists of Mexico, and he quoted the scientist Lumholtz, writing in 1905: "Father Hunt Cortes, who has lived many years among these Indians [he refers to the Nahuas or Aztecs around Mexico City, in the same district where is Milpa Alta], told me that still today children are sacrificed to Tlaloc, that they throw them in the lake of Texcoco, and that the same custom is observed in Xochimilco and in Chalco." "And I wish," said Dr. Beyer, soberly, "I wish I knew how much truth there is in the Tlaloc stories I have been hearing lately." I heard them too. Tlaloc was the chief of the rain gods, and the season of his sacrifices and those of the Tlaloque, his brothers and sisters, began in late December, just before the rains, and lasted until the rains were well in — January, February, March, April. Then began sacrifices so that they might not send too much. The great shrine of this god and his sister, Macuil Xochitl, the goddess of spring, was near the village of Tlaloc, also on the high central plateau. "I have found," said Dr. Beyer, "in the woods and caves around there curious heaps of stones, newly built, with wreaths of flowers and ribbons, sometimes with small animals on them." I went with the same story to Dr. Leon, and he said, warningly: "Folk-lore is not a healthy amateur sport for unoccupied young ladies." But nothing has ever happened. The Indians are naive, gentle people. They will share their last corn-cake with you, they will give you a place to sleep. You are safe, as

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398 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 safe as in your metropolitan apartment. And almost as powerless as if you were in your metropolitan apartment, if you are looking to learn the things strangers do not know. The Indians do not welcome literary or scientific investigation. To them it is bare of pompous title and becomes impolite prying. They will speak little about themselves, rarely about their beliefs. If they like you, they will want to feed you all the time. That is their only effort at communication. Their attitude, if persistently or stupidly questioned, becomes one of passive, suave idiocy. Occasionally they grow sullen. And when they are goaded into action their justice is swift, smooth, silent, terrible. Not long ago, Dr. Beyer told me, it was rumored that a German youth went to Tlaloc, accompanied by two guides, on the scent of the Tlaloc and Macuil Xochitl suspicions. "What is in the caves?" the Indians repeated his questions easily. "Oh, nothing, senor. Pretty flowers." "What do we do in the caves?" They blinked slowly and scratched at the backs of their heads. "Why, nothing, schor. We are poor and must make corn grow in the fields. We cannot play in the caves." "What is the big rock in the shape of a man? Why, senor, we don't know. Only the white people, edw like you, know about these things. They know everything. They in the United States, I have heard, are all educated and all rich. They eat white bread. There are so many people that, I have heard, soon the United States will go over into its neighbor, Russia, and take her lands." "Russia is not next to the United States? Why, senor, truly I wish we had schools so we might know as much as you. But we are poor and ignorant little Indians, your servants, senor." "Feasts in those caves? Oh, no," they all laughed together at the idea. "Those are things of the ancients. All of that passed with the revolution." The young man procured a horse and went alone to the Tlaloc mountain, at whose foot lies the great stone monolith of that god. He gauged the time for the sacrifices accu- rately, basing himself on the chronicles of the early friars. He never returned. "A young fellow with pale eyes, sefiorV they said to inquiries. "Why, yes, senor, he passed our way. He told us that the United States are very rich and that soon they would take Russia to make more room." An old fellow snuffled wonderingly. "Where did he go, senor? Pues, we do not know. Over there . . . An arm gestured a vague half-circle. "Over the mountains ..." "Do you think, senor, that the Americanos from the United States will come to take our lands too?" The Socialization of Medicine By JOSEPH KRIMSKY ATOPIC of constant and serious discussion wherever medical men foregather is the prevalent and fast- growing abuse of dispensaries and hospitals by patients of means. Hospital authorities seek to impress their donors with the tremendous volume of work accomplished in their institutions and they do not bother seriously with investi- gating the financial status of their applicants. The patients follow the human instinct of getting something for nothing and the doctors fall over one another in the scramble for hospital and dispensary appointments. Meanwhile, as more and more new institutions are erected, the situation is becoming aggravated from year to year. What is the remedy? I have studied, talked, and written about this matter for years and I have come to the following conclusion: Hospitals and dispensaries must be redeemed from the thraldom of charity and placed on the same basis as public schools, high schools, and State-controlled univer- sities. Institutional treatment of disease is becoming more and more the dominant factor in modern medicine. There we have the scientifically equipped laboratories, the splen- did operating rooms, the costly and complicated X-ray and other equipment, the spacious and sanitary wards, the system and facilities of the modern clinic, the cooperation and team-work of the various special departments. Take the rapidly spreading custom of undergoing peri- odic examinations as a means of preventing the insidious onset of disease. The wealthy patient runs the gantlet of internist, oculist, neurologist, X-rayologist, dentist, laryngologist, and other specialists; the pyramiding accu- mulation of bills works no hardship on his purse. The very poor patient goes to the clinic and gets the same series of examinations, frequently by the same or similar experts, and it does not cost him a penny. The middle-class patient, and he constitutes the vast bulk of our clientele, either sacri- fices some of his bank account and is referred from spe- cialist to specialist, paying as he goes along, or he sacrifices some of his self-respect and patronizes the charity clinic. More and more as time goes on you find the middle- class citizen in the latter category. His answer is that private treatment, which today means treatment by dif- ferent specialists, is getting beyond his means. Formerly his wife was delivered of her babies by the family doctor for a very moderate fee. Now she must have a specialist, an obstetrician, who charges a royal ransom. So she goes into the hospital ward and has her specialist for nothing or for a merely nominal fee, besides receiving the benefits of modern hospital care and highly trained nursing for herself and her new-born baby. When the middle-class citizen was a boy he had his tonsils taken out by the old reliable family doctor for a mere pittance, but now Jimmy's tonsils and adenoids require the services of a specialist whose fee is a month's income. So Jimmy goes to the hospital, pays for a night's lodging, and the same specialist does the work for him and for fifteen other children in one afternoon without charging a cent. The specialist is thrusting the family physician into desuetude. He is making him as obsolete as the one-hoss shay. But the specialist has had to pay heavily for his training. He has a high office-overhead. The private patient must pay for all that. The hospital patient in the wards pays a nominal fee or nothing. The dispensary patient, and his name is legion, pays nothing also. The

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 399 private patient must foot the bill. The rich man does it easily, if not gladly. The salaried man, the pater familias of moderate income, the decent wage-earner — they also do it until an unusually prolonged or serious illness, or a spell of unemployment or business depression or perhaps a strike drives them to the doors of the charity dispensary or hospital. After that they become regular patrons. They get the best service for nothing and no questions asked. So they send their friends and neighbors. Cases like diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, and other contagious diseases are best taken care of in hospitals. Operations, even of a minor nature, are coming to be per- formed almost exclusively in hospitals. The field of the private office is being more and more encroached upon. The progress and development of medicine and surgery and the numerous specialties lay stress on preventive measures and accentuate the institutional study and treatment of disease. It is almost impossible nowadays to make a scientific diagnosis without the aid of the bacteriological and serological laboratory to be found in every well-equipped hospital. If you go into a ward and study the chart of the average patient you will be astounded at the large number of special examination reports incorporated in that chart. There is the X-ray and the blood test and the urine analysis and numerous other microscopical and chemical examinations, not to mention the long line of specialists who have investigated the patient's heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, eyes, and so on. All that is essential in the modern scientific diagnosis and treatment of disease. And all that can best and most thoroughly be accomplished in the well-equipped hospital and clinic. I return to my original premise. The hospital and clinic must be transferred from the realm of charity and placed under the control and support of the community. An objection will be raised that this will involve politics, that it will mean paternalism. It happens that the same objection is raised and the same cry is sounded whenever public and private interests clash. The end that I seek to advocate is the socialization of medical institutions which means ultimately and inevitably the socialization of medi- cine, the dedication of the medical profession to public service as an agency of the community, the members of the profession serving as public officials into whose care is intrusted not alone the cure of the sick but the far vaster function of teaching health, preventing disease, and guiding the community from childhood to advanced old age in the path of right and healthy living. I am aware that my colleagues will oppose this plan. So did Canute oppose the onward sweep of the tide. You cannot check the rush of your patients to the clinics and hospitals. You are giving them better and more efficient service there than you can in your private offices. Why not make the community pay you for your services in decent salaries rather than try to take it out of a rapidly dwindling private clientele? Is it beneath your dignity to be officers and employees of the public? Some of you are timid about the influence of politics on such a plan. An organized medical profession aiming at scientific advancement and having the public interests as its goal will always have the public backing against any sinister political influences. Will such a plan entail material sacrifices on the part of the medical profession? Recently I received a confi- dential report of a physicians' loan society and I was ap- palled at the number of needy doctors who. after many years of active and faithful practice, found it necessary to apply for loans in order to tide themselves over financial difficulties. Another report gives startling figures on the number of applicants to a home for aged physicians. The average income of the average doctor is hardly anything to boast of. He surely does not shine in the income-tax reports. He would be far better off with a regular and assured income, with the chance of promotion rtain periods of service, and with a comfortable pension on retirement. I am not speaking for the high-priced practitioner. There will always be plenty of wealthy patients to support him in the luxury to which he and his wife have become accustomed. But you and I, representing 95 per cent of the medical fraternity, have nothing to lose and everything to gain by swapping the present competitive system of medical practice for a public-health service in which compe- tition will be purely that of merit, in which our scientific work will not be hampered by the growing spirit of com- mercialism. Competition may be the life of trade, but n.edicine is a scientific pursuit that should be set free from the pursuit of the dollar. That can only be attained by doing for the health of the community what we have already partly done for its education. Hospitals and clinics should be civic, not charity institutions. The physicians working in these institutions should receive ample salaries, commensurate with their training and years of service. The right to specialize should be accorded only to those who have passed satisfactory tests and should not carry with it the privilege of more than a proportionate increase of income. The domain of public health is gradually and irre- sistibly extending its scope and influence. Years ago it limited itself to vaccination and to the isolation of con- tagious cases. Today it cares for the teeth, eyes, and throats of our school-children. It opens cardiac clinics to stem the advance of heart disease. It carries on a suc- cessful warfare against consumption. It establishes cen- ters for the treatment of venereal disease and other centers for the care and feeding of infants. It has entered the lists in the fight against cancer and diabetes. The public is awakening to the realization that the great problems of preventive medicine can only be solved by the State, using the individual physician as its officer, its agent, its employee. And, furthermore, the public is learning that in order to fight and vanquish disease you require a great number of well-equipped research labora- tories, you need the combined efforts of radiologist, diagnos- tician, clinician, surgeon, and trained nurse. You need team-work and competent supervision. All these essen- tials can be secured not in the office of the average, competi- tive, private practitioner, struggling against odds for a livelihood, but in the modern, efficient, thoroughly equipped hospital and clinic. That is the natural outgrowth of industrial, mechanical, and scientific advancement. The public health is the foundation underlying the happiness and power of the people. Every man, woman, and child, poor or rich, is entitled and should be free to secure the very best care and treatment that medical science can administer. I am my brother's keeper, and his illness, his incapacity affects me and affects the entire community in a hundred different ways. What about the cost of this system of socialized medi-

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400 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 cine which I am advocating? Can the State shoulder the burden? Well, the State is paying much more dearly now. Figure it all up in dollars and health. Add up the millions spent on quackery, on tons of health-undermining patent medicines, the hosts of victims of preventable diseases or of diseases curable if nipped in the bud by timely and scientific diagnosis and treatment. Count up the cost of reduplication and waste in private practice, in charity drives and charity management. Philanthropy in the field of medical practice has had its innings. It has rendered wonderful humanitarian work. It has created institutions of incalculable public value. It has brought us to the era of state-control and state- maintenance. The pasteurized-milk stations started by a philanthropist years ago have now become the public-health centers of the community. So shall it be with the charity clinics and hospitals. They shall become public-health centers dedicated to rich and poor alike for the maintenance of health and for the prevention and cure of disease. Today this will be decried as extremely radical. Twenty-five years hence it will be orthodox creed. Are Farm-Land Speculators Entitled to Pity? Bv BENJAMIN C. MARSH 11 HE agricultural plant of the nation is not only over- developed but grossly overcapitalized and most ineffi- ciently run. This is not exclusively the fault of the indi- vidual farmers, and it is not the purpose of this article to assess blame but to appraise causes and suggest remedies. There cannot be prosperity for agriculture so long as farmers continue to operate the present agricultural plant, even as inefficiently as at present, and with so relatively small a yield compared to the possibilities. The McNary-Haugen bill, designed to enable farmers to dump the surplus of certain products abroad and appor- tion the losses pro rata on the producers so as to make the tariff effective on domestic consumption, would — if it worked — cause such a surplus of the crops invoWed ; s to break the market. It was quite natural that representatives of our great industrial competitor nations favored it, for the obvious reason that it would reduce materially the living costs of their factory workers. L. C. Gray and O. E. Baker of the Agricultural Depart- ment, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, and Raphael Zon of the Forestry Service, after a most exhaustive study, reported in a publication of the department, "The Utiliza- tion of Our Lands for Crops, Pasture, and Forage," that with our present methods of production the maximum domestic population that can be maintained by the products of American soil is 350,000,000, "while on the basis of the German requirements in per capita acreage it would be about 519,000,000." Our present population is about 117,- 000,000. Representative William R. Wood of Indiana bluntly stated on the floor of the House this spring, after referring to the cheap land and generally cheaper money costs of production in Canada, Australia, the Argentine, and New Zealand: "Students of the agricultural economic situ- ation have no hesitation in predicting that the American farmers' foreign markets are rapidly and surely reaching the vanishing-point because of these conditions." With present costs of production of most farm products that is true except as to cotton. During the year ended June 30, 1925, the value of crude foodstuffs, food animals, and manufactured food- stuffs exported was 22.2 per cent of the value of all exports, but it dropped this last year to 16.8 per cent. Incidentally the value of semi-manufactures anr1 manufactures exported was last year 54.6 per cent of the value of all exports, as compared with 38.5 per cent in 1925. Farmers a~e told to wait till the population of the United States grows, i. e., that agricultural prosperity depends upon immigration and a speeding up of the activities of the American stork. Labor is strong enough to prevent any marked increase of immi- gration and the slogan "Fewer and better babies" seems to have a wider appeal than the plight of the farmer. In 1923 the cotton crop was 45.5 per cent below full yield per acre; 14.7 per cent of the wheat acreage was abandoned and the yield was 29.2 per cent below full, while the yield of potatoes was 22 per cent below a full yield. A full or "normal" crop would have ruined every producer. The Department of Agriculture estimated the annual crop loss from drought, flood, pest, etc., at over $2,500,000,000 on the basis of the prices of the reduced harvest. It is only calamity to many farmers which permits any profit for the rest. The farm plant is nearly as much overcapitalized as it is excessive in acreage. Much emphasis has been laid upon the distress of agriculture due to the deflation in the selling price of farm lands since 1920. What are the facts about the inflation of the selling price of farm lands from 1900 to 1920 to which little reference is made? In the decade 1900 to 1910 the value of farm lands (including irrigation, ditch- ing, orchards, and all farm real estate except buildings) increased by $15,417,566,000, or 118.1 per cent. In the decade 1910 to 1920 this value of farm lands increased by $26,353,880,000, or 92.5 per cent, and was in 1920 $54,829,- 563,000. During this same decade the assessed value of taxable land in New York City, known as the Paradise, of Land Speculators, increased by $1,701,019,000, or only 58.6 per cent, and was in 1920 $4,606,220,000. In other words, the so-called "value" of farm lands in 1920 was nearly twelve times the value of taxable land in the richest city in the world, while the actual farm popula- tion was only about five times the population of New York City. There was more "watered stock" in the "value" of farm lands in 1920 than in the railroads and all other public utilities combined, and there still is billions of dollars' worth of "watered stock" in the valuation of farm lands. Of course the "value" of farm lands fell after 1920 — the amount was $17,069,463,000, or 31.1 per cent. In spite of this reduction the 1925 value of farm lands, $37,769,099,000, was $9,284,424,000, or 32.6 per cent higher than the value in 1910, an average increase of $1,459 for every farm in the United States. Consider the tragic plight of the Corn Belt land specu- lators of Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska. In 1925 35.1 per

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 401 cent of the 566,825 farms in these three States were oper- ated by tenants. In 1910 the value of farm land was $7,506,924,000. It jumped to $15,259,539,000 in 1920, and dropped to $9,523,835,000 in 1925. In spite of the drop the average of land value per farm in 1925 was $16,802, which was $3,558 more than in 1910, while the average value of all land in farms was $89.97 per acre in these three States, compared with $40.80 per acre for the United States. The United States Department of Agriculture reports that in 1925 land rent was 23 per cent of the cost o\ pro- ducing corn, 26.9 per cent of the cost of producing wheat, ami 27.5 per cent of the cost of producing oats. It also reports that in 1925 $1,127,000,000, or 9.1 per cent of the income of all farmers, was paid by tenant farmers as rent to non-operators. That year 38.1 per cent of all farms ■ were operated by tenants and the value of such farms was a little over one-third of the total, so on the most conserva- tive estimate about $3,400,000,000 was the rent charge for farms in 1925, or 28.2 per cent of the gross income of all farmers. Land values were 76.2 per cent of all farm real estate. An almost superfluous evidence of our national stupidity with respect to agriculture was the entry of about 150,000,- 000 acres of homestead lands from 1911 to 1924, chiefly in Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Idaho. The federal Government has done its best — or worst — to make agriculture unprofitable. Mr. Bean [The Nation, September 8] is quite justified in designating the farmers' recovery as "temporary." But why call it "recovery"? Every domestic and nearly every foreign cause which produced the recent agricultural slump is effective now. Most owner farmers are as desirous for another land boom as ever. This very year vast additional tracts are being opened up to production through the com- pletion of irrigation projects, which means more domestic competition for the domestic market. It was the too rapid paralleling of railroads to the Pacific Coast, with our land policy and a plentiful supply of low-subsistence immigrants for industry, which was largely responsible for the devel- opment of our agricultural plant at least half a century too early. The railroads still want large crops near their lines and the feeders thereof to increase their tonnage. Will the American people consent to guarantee a return upon present farm-land "values" without limiting prices of farm products? A large part of these "values" do not represent "actual prudent investment." Some are not actual investment at all, and much of the actual invest- ment was highly imprudent and equally improvident. Under our present taxing system for State and local pur- poses every increase in the selling price of farm prod"cts is capitalized into the selling price of farm lands and makes the lot of the farmer at least that much harder, but a movement is now under way in the West and North- west to persuade the Government to stabilize farm values and pay off part of the mortgage debt on farms, amounting to about eight billion dollars. The underlying determinant of our farm policy, how- ever, is that we are becoming an industrialist nation, and manufacturers and bankers are determined to secure raw material cheap. The industrial vote is much greater than the purely agricultural and will keep on increasing. The "farm bloc" has disintegrated. Under the leadership of Senator Capper the locks of that Samson have been shorn. The most significant fact about agriculture is that the war and post-war deflation have shown that it can't be conducted profitably as an individual speculation. The National Grange and the American Farm Bureau Federation, hitherto strongly individualistic and "agin" the Government's doing anything more than police duty and giving advice and credit to farmers, actually i ml the McNary-Haugen principle of a government farm export corporation. That is the most significant thing in American agricultural history. The tears of farm deflation have washed away the slogan of laissez-faire from the portals of the American Temple of Agriculture, and farmers have asked — of course, the impossible — that agriculture have "equal tariff protection" with other industries and that something be done to make it work. A national policy must be worked out for agriculture. Farm landowners have secured close to one and three- quarter billions of dollars in mortgage loans at non- commercial rates through the Federal and Joint Stock Land Banks. Do the American people want to subsidize farm landowners still more with tariffs on farm products? Such tariffs will injure both producing farmers and consumers. If farmers are refused the place in the sun of Brivilege which some land-owning farmers are asking, it is quite probable that in a few years they will turn their attention to reducing costs of farm production and ending special privilege. This will involve ending speculation in farm lands, farm credit, and farm products, and real govern- ment control of freight rates and of great business com- binations. Senator Norris in his article [The Nation, September 1] referred to the bill creating a government farm-marketing corporation, which with his characteristic modesty he failed to mention he introduced. Such a corpo- ration is essential to make the farmers' cooperative movement most effective. Probably a few years will see the development of large farming corporations, because it is exceedingly doubtful whether the majority of farmers will continue to take the inherent risks of agriculture. From the stand- point of the children on the farms it is exceedingly impor- tant that they should not. John D. Black, professor of economics at the University of Minnesota, correctly sum- marized the farm situation when he said: "So far as the present is concerned, it will be highly desirable if a few hundred thousand more farms are abandoned." As a corollary, immigration should be stopped for a series of years and an intelligent and concerted govern- ment effort made to place superfluous farmers in industry with the minimum danger to standards of living. Sil ence By HAL SAUNDERS WHITE There is no thing so innocent as silence Which all men fear. Awe is in mountains; They listen always to no sound. They are so little fevered Desiring nothing but themselves; Men are afraid In their high green glacial meadows, Timid of unintending silence And of what waits to listen to no sound.

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402 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 In the Driftway THE exile of Abd-el-Krim, defeated chieftain of the Riff, to a tiny island in the Indian Ocean has raised again in the Drifter's mind a question to which — like all impor- tant problems— he has devoted considerable thought. The question is this: If you, dear reader, were told that you must live for the rest of your life in one spot, but might have your pick, what place would you choose? Of course this is not precisely the situation of the Drifter's old col- lege chum Krim. The French Government has not con- sulted him in regard to his destination; it has told him merely where he gets off. This simplifies Krim's thinking, but it spoils the discussion, and the Drifter prefers a good discussion — preferably ending in a row — to simplified thinking. * * * * * N English skipper on whose steamship the Drifter once came up the West Coast — and at sea that means not the United States but South America — confessed that when he retired it was his ambition to pass the rest of his days in Calcutta. An odd choice, many will say — hot, dirty, crowded; why Calcutta? Yet there's a reason. In considering a p'ace of permanent exile the Drifter is sup- posing, of course, that, like Abd-el-Krim, the exilee would be provided with a pension sufficient to enable him to live in the station to which he had become accustomed. A steamship captain, Heaven knows, has never been accus- tomed to much money, but he has been used to a position of eminence and command, with a lot of person t to wait on him and obey his orders. After such a life it would be poor pickings to settle down in London or rural England on a small income. A retired steamship captain would be a nobody lost in nowhere. * * * * * LN the other hand, he could be a real personage in Calcutta. With a steamship captain's income he could have a pleasant villa — if that's what they have in India — with a sufficient retinue of servants so that there would always be one to shoo the flies off and another to bow to him every time he turned around. He could belong to the British club and would be a figure wherever he went in the little aristocracy of Occidental administrators and adventurers in this Eastern port. Altogether, the Drifter thinks the skipper's choice a wise one and hopes for its realization some day. * -::- * * * BUT naturally such a solution would not suit the Drifter. He wonders first whether he would choose a city or a place in the country. He is sure of one thing — that he would not live in a suburb. He recalls the story of the man who moved to a suburb on Monday and, asked on Friday how he liked it, replied that he didn't know — he wouldn't have a chance to see it until Sunday. But instead of pitying the man because he had to toil long hours in the city, the Drifter — having seen many suburbs — feels that the poor fellow was unfortunate in that he didn't have to work seven days a week. A city is almost as terrible a place in which to live as a suburb, but it has this advantage, that it offers means whereby one may sometimes forget those terrors. THE Drifter likes to believe that he would choose a spot in the country rather than a home in a city — it would be more wholesome — but he fears he wouldn't. He can say with certainty that if he chose the country it would be somewhere in the United States, for we have the most beautiful and the most varied rural landscape of which the Drifter knows. On the other hand, the Drifter doesn't know of an American city in which he could be induced to live more than three months out of twelve if it were a matter of choice. He thinks that if he had to live in one single city for the rest of his days he would choose Paris or one of the Italian seaports, probably Naples, but possibly Palermo. Of Paris it is not necessary to speak, but one would be called upon to justify Naples or Palermo. To the Drifter Naples is the most beautifully situated and the most exhilaratingly human city in the world. To roam its streets, listening to the songs of those at work or at play; to enter into its love of life and its love of love; to live on the glorious hill of Posilipo looking out at dawn and sunset over the Bay of Naples . . . Palermo is not so gay and communicative as Naples; it has the Sicilian somberness and taciturnity. But for sheer loveliness the Conca d'Oro (the Shell of Gold), that upward-sloping valley which rises from the city to the mountain top behind it, has no peer in the Drifter's recollection. He recalls an outdoor cafe with a view across the waving lemon groves, over the glistening city, to the profound purple of the Mediterranean beyond. . . . He failed to stop there because the last tram for an hour was just leaving. . He regrets his folly to this day. . ***** HO, hum! Enticing day-dreams, aren't they? But (Holy mackerel and fried codfish!) both the Posilipo and the Conca d'Oro are probably to be classified as suburbs ! The Drifter has got into a jam again. Perhaps he'd better not try to settle anywhere for life, but just keep on drifting . . . and drifting. . . . The Drifter Correspondence For Mr. Mellon to Answer To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: According to official returns from the United States Treasury internal-revenue collections for the fiscal year ended June 30 last show an item of $1,679,434.38 for "still or sparkling wines, cordials, etc." Can you obtain a detailed analysis of this item? How much was diverted to "sacramental" use? How much was imported for "medicinal purposes only"? Are sparkling wines and cordials imported for the one or the other purpose? There is also an item called "grape brandy used in forti- fying sweet wines," which brought the Treasury $535,261. Is that brandy used for making the "sacramental" wine strong enough to come up to the various religious standards? Rockville Center, N. Y., September 27 H. Edwards Higher Education in California To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In assembly at San Jose State Teachers' College yes- terday the faculty member in charge of the program announced that the radio set of the college was at the disposal of the entire student body on that afternoon so that they might follow the

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 403 course and learn the verdict of the scrap between Champion Jack Dempsey and His Honor, Gene Tunney. More cheering and applause in appreciation of this announcement was given the speaker than any other part of the program drew forth that day, or in many past days. "Youth will be served." . California, Septcnil" FRANK L. MARTIN Something Eerie on the Erie To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Friday, September 17, was the anniversary of the completion of the Constitution, a document which says seme- thing about guaranteeing the rights of freedom of speech and assemblage. All the railroad ferry-boats on the North River were celebrating the occasion with their flags afloat. It was a beautiful and, impressive sight to see this honor to the Constitution on the part of these corporations. But on one of the Erie boats, the Passaic, the flag was upside down! Is it possible that the company recognized the in- congruity of having that particular boat acclaim the Consti- tution, and therefore put up the signal of distress? Or was the captain a Bolshevik? Or may the strikers in Passaic have planted an under-cover agent among the crew? New York, September JO Paul Jonks High Sign and Low Sign To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In Los Angeles the police must now salute their superiors and betters and go-getters in the approved military fashion, strictly according to the rules laid down in the war — the hand held rigid, frozen for a moment over the right eye, and then jerked down with a snap to the ground. In the good old days the "high sign" used to be to hold up one's hand as the Indians did, or as clergymen sometimes do, as a symbol of peace, pointing up to the sky, the sun, the stars, to the infinite heavens above, greeting one's neighbor, as it were, with a sort of a "God bless you." This saluting is different. A man, instead of being free and easy and naturally courteous and well intentioned about it, does it under compulsion, like a machine or a dummy; and instead of point- ing above we are teaching and forcing upon our children and our policemen the undemocratic and unbiblical (see Proverbs 28:21) habit of respecting persons who differ but little from ourselves, making a snappy, mechanical gesture downward, pointing below instead of above, just as much as to say to the other fellow: "Go to !" Los Angeles, September 25 Karl Spiess Robinson who lack funds to pay admission to witness this commercialized warfare can go to the radio and listen fur the returns of the battle. Guthrie, Oklahoma, Octobi Williamson War, Inc. To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Dempsey received $700,000 and Tunney $200,000 for fighting ten rounds. Since the dear people like to see blood flow and heads knocked off, why not put war on the same basis as pugilism? When nations go to war, have places of safety built on the sidelines where the onlookers can safely view the battle through field-glasses. Large admission fees should be charged, and the winner should receive the bulk of this gate-money. The fighters in past wars have received only their board and clothes, but since this kind of fighting is much more dangerous than fighting in the ring, each combatant should get a good share of the gate-money. If killed his share should go to the widow and orphans, if he has such, or be donated to some theological school for the purpose of graduating young ministers of the gospel who will preach that the Lord hates a coward and commands us to get our automatics and poison gas. People Prison Beauty To thi: Editor ok The Nation: SIR: Some time ago, while engaged in social work, I had occasion to notice the attractive, often remarkably beautiful articles that inmates of various prisons make in their time from materials purchased with their own money. In a number of prisons the men are permitted to sell these articles, but they find it hard to market them. The sale of their goods inspires them with courage, gives them renewed self-confidence, and, most important of all, gives them an added interest in life. 1 have taken the work of some of these prisoners and offered to sell it for them. I have some lovely bead necklaces and bags, neckties, scarfs, toys, handsome laces, cushion covers, rag rugs (some intend making hooked rugs), beautifully inlaid jewel and cigarette boxes, horse-hair belts, German silver paper-cutters with pearl inlays, etc. These articles ar conscientiously made and reasonable in price. I would be glad to send consignments of the goods to anyone who could sell them. (Mrs.) O. Widmayer Edge-water, Colo., Box 638 A, Rt. 2, September 18 "As Swinish as the Owners" To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I inclose several clippings reporting attacks by union carpenters on non-union carpenters in San Francisco. In some instances the victims have been severely injured — skulls frac- tured or arms broken. There has also been a'molders' war going on in the bay region for several years, and intermittently violence flares up. Several times the union forces have shot and killed non-union workers, using the gangster technique of shooting from a moving closed car. Since your journal describes the brutality of policemen and the callousness of factory-owners, might I inquire why you give no publicity to the lawlessness and violence of the labor unions? As far as my observations go, they are fully as swinish and disgusting as the factory- and mine-owners. I prefer that you do not mention my name. Berkeley, California, September 2J+ J. L. Fred H. Moore To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In discussing the first conviction of Vanzetti on a charge of attempted hold-up Arthur Warner declares in The Nation that "Even Fred H. Moore, when he took up the murder case, . . . failed to move for a new trial for Vanzetti on the Bridgewater [hold-up] charges within the one-year limit prescribed by law, thus making it impossible to reopen the case." Moore did not appeal the Bridgewater case because he had nothing on which he could take action. The attorney who had been hired to represent Vanzetti at his first trial failed to take exception to a single ruling of the court or even to ask that certain lines of examination be ruled on by the court. He was out of sympathy with the views of Vanzetti on social ques- tions and failed to represent his interests adequately. Without having exceptions in the record Moore was powerless to appeal, for the Massachusetts courts require that all exceptions be made at the time of trial. Moore for several years worked hard and unremittingly on the Sacco- Vanzetti case. He often went for long periods without being paid for his services. At other times he took his

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404 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 fees and advanced them to the defense committee to carry on investigational work. It is for that reason I wish to correct the impression that Moore failed to take every possible step to protect the interests of both Sacco and of Vanzetti. Decatur, Illinois, October U Karl Pretshold Class- Prosecution — Class-Defense To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The Sacco- Vanzetti case seems in serious danger of becoming respectable. If it does it will not matter much how the affair ends. So far as Sacco and Vanzetti themselves are concerned, nothing the Massachusetts or federal courts can do will give them back their lost years or the fine young phj and mental vigor with which they started. The crime against them is irreparable. The only thing they have left to comfort them is the class-character of their ordeal. When that is obliterated by well-meaning persons who see in it only an exception to the rule of justice rather than the example and type of class-justice, the case will be dismally lost — even if the victims should eventually be released. It is natural for the New York World, in its belated concern for Massachusetts justice, to center attention upon William G. Thompson. Thompson is not only a crackerjack lawyer but excellent window-dressing for an unpopular popular cause. It is perfectly natural for the World to dismiss with a shrug the five years befoi-" Thompson awoke to the case. Back in 1921 the World showed how little it was equipped to understand a case of class-prosecution in a series of smart-aleck articles sen- sationalizing and distorting the Sacco-Vanzetti case as the work of three super-propagandists! That the labor and liberal press should follow this lead so readily is pathetic. They gave enough space d iring those years to recording every step in the exposure of the conspiracy to know better. It was during those first five years that the essential class-character of the persecution was laid bare and the black atmosphere of hatred and ignorance in which the conviction was staged were made manifest. It was slow uphill work, Fred H. Moore doing the bulk of it. Moore's "long black hair, his somewhat dark visage, his dour manner," and his "unfamiliarity with Massachusetts prac- tice" did not prevent him from saving Ettore, Giovannitti, and Cariso from the electric chair when he was their counsel in the famous case — a Massachusetts case, incidentally, in which he learned more about court practices in that State than 1)0 per cent of the bourgeois native lawyers will ever know. It did not prevent him from wrenching a hundred "wobblies" from the grip of "justice" in the famous Everett, Washington, cases. Or from clearing Charlie Krieger of the Standard Oil frame-up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Or from taking the lead in the San Diego free-speech fight. His ignorance of Massachusetts practice is a journalistic euphemism for the court's frantic efforts to de- prive Sacco and Vanzetti of a brilliant and fearless defender. Thompson can testify to that, having come splendidly to Moore's assistance at that time. Just before Moore came to the scene a New York news- paperman was induced to go to Boston to investigate the arrest of the two Italian workers. He returned to report that there was "no story" in it, not even for the New York Call — just a "couple of wops in a jam." Several months later, with Moore on the job, it became not merely a story but the biggest story of its kind internationally. Of course, being human and fallible, he made mistakes. Five years is a long time for any human being to go without mistakes. The prosecution of Sacco and V-nzetti is a class-prosecu- tion. Their defense should be a class-defense, in which the services of kind-hearted bourgeois attorneys and philanthropists are merely necessary evils. New York, October 5 Eugene Lyons The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers a fifteen months' course of graduate study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Centers. For further information, address the Director, THE TRAINING SCHOOL for JEWISH SOCIAL WORK (Initiated by the National Conference of Jewish Social Servic > *10 WEST ttlst STREET NEW YORK CITY JOHN SEFiEL will give SIX READINGS October 18 — Stories, early poems and plays. October 21 — Xarrative poems: Everlasting Mercy and Widow in Bye Street; Dauber and Daffo- dil Fields. October 25 — First Plays: Nan; Pompey; Faithful. Plays in Verse: Philip; Good Friday. October 28 — Later Poems of the Countryside; Rey- nard and Right Royal. November 1 — King Cole; Enslaved. November 4— Miscellaneous poems. Later plays: Trial of jesus; A King's Daughter. Fee for the course, $io Readings to be given at 5:20 P. M. at the NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH 465 West 23rd Street New York City 3E& *■* NotiDeprsMant i&rbrnu norHafaitl "t fct Convenient AhimwuraBoxc* ^A^AdV GENERAL DRUG CO. 94 N. Moore Street, New York .The TODAY AND TOMORROW Series. Just Published Each $l.oo PLATO'S AMERICAN REPUBLIC By J. D. 1 l"ood ruff A deliciously funny imitation of a Platonic dialogue in which Socrates answers questions concerning his American lecture tour. THINKING ABOUT THINKING By Cassias J. Keyset How many of us do it? "Autonomous Think- ing" is Prof. Keyser's solution of most of our troubles ! E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Books and Plays Now the Sky By MARK VAN DOREN How long have standing men — by such a stone As this I watch from on this windless night — Beheld Arcturus, golden and alone, Guiding Antares and the Snake aright. The Scales were up when not an Arab walked On sand that soon was paved with names of stars; Bootes herded, and the Giant stalked Past the curved Dragon, contemplating wars. How many an open eye, bedight with dew, Over the sleeping flowers has drawn them down — Andromeda, and Berenice's few Dim tresses that shall ever flee the Crown. From such a rock whence graybeards long ago, Forgetting it beneath them, heard the Lyre, 1 watch. But there is something now we know Confusing all they saw with misty fire. For them a hundred pictures on a slate. For us no slate, and not a hand that draws. For them a pasture-dome wherefrom the gate Of Cancer led the Lion through its claws; For them a frosty window, painted over, Nightly, with flower faces in a ring — Daisies dancing up, and clouds of clover Scenting the after way, and phlox to fling Thin petals left and right till morning lifted. For us no shapely flame in all the dark; For us a million embers that have drifted Since the first fire, and not a sign to mark Where anything shall end, or which shall go With which until they both shall die to gray. For watchers once a changeless face to know; For us cold eyes that turn henceforth away. They saw each constellation take its hour Of triumph overhead, before it started • Down the broad West, whereon the death of power Was written by the Ram, and nightly charted. The Eagle and the Swan, that sailed so long, Floating upon white wings the Arrow missed, Tilted at midnight, plunging with a song Earthward, and — as they sank — deep Hydra hissed. Leo had long been growling in his lair When Pegasus neighed softly in the East, Rising upon a wind that blew his hair Freshly, until Aquarius increased The stream he aimed against the Fish's mouth, And all the stars were wet with silent rain. The llyades came weeping, and the South Sent mist to soothe the £ in their pain. These things they witnessed, and Orion, climbing Fiercely with those two Dogs announcing Kail; Then Winter, with Aldebaran loud-chiming, Baiting the frozen Bull, that turned to call The Hears to warm his anger. These they knew And knew the seasons with them, Spring and Spring- Counting the dozen Signs the finger drew That swung the inconstant Sun around the Ring. Slow Jupiter proceeded as they planned, Lingering among the Twelve in stately turn; They touched the breasts of Venus where the hand Of Mars's fiery love had been to burn. The sky was then a room, with people going Faithfully to and fro, and beasts enchained. The sky was then a midnight wastrel, throwing Riches away; and still the purse remained. But now the sky is broken, door by door. Strangers in the room obscure the hosts. The meadow is not guarded any more By watchers coming lonely to their posts. The animals are never to be named That swarm beyond our company of old — Stragglers from the herd, that we had tamed Unknowing the recesses of the fold. Those were no heroes whom we once addressed — Hercules, Orion, and the Twins. I'nwounded, they were running from the rest Far there where only now the war begins. There is a game for players still to play, Pretending that the board was never lost. But still the painted counters will decay, And knowledge sit along to count the cost. Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By Hugh I'Anson Fausset. Har- court, Brace and Company. $3.50. TV/fR. FAUSSET'S is one of the most tragically absorbing *■ stories ever written of the life of a man of genius. And yet pathetic might better describe the drama of Coleridge's life than tragic, for it shows no struggle of resolute will against a hostile fate, but a great mind doomed to frustration almost at birth by a congenital maladjustment to the practical condi- tions of existence and helpless to oppose the faintest resistance to its doom. The truly melancholy thing in Coleridge's situ- ation was that his extraordinarily subtle understanding enabled him to see his weakness and that the excuses which throughout his life he kept making for himself never effectually allayed the gnawings of his moral sense. The key to Coleridge's failure, according to Mr. Fausset, is not so much that absence of will power to which it is generally attributed as inability to cope with objective reality. "A being splendidly endowed with genius, sensibility, and intellect, large in comprehension, ele-

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406 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 mental in instinct, generous, affectionate, and enthusiastic, broke himself on the rocks of a world which he could not see." Mr. Fausset presses his analysis with a relentless scrutiny. He cannot be entirely acquitted of his besetting sin of over- simplification, but he does no essential injustice to the subject of his biography such a? the present reviewers quarreled with in his study of John Donne. r The material in this case is full to the point of oppressiveness and lends itself unresistingly to the support of the thesis. It shows the absorption of Coleridge as a child in the realm of the Arabian Nights, during manhood in unearthly metaphysical speculation, and in old age in a fine- spun theology somehow reconciled with the conventional code of morals. It is painful to follow the disintegration of mind and character as it is unfolded in Mr. Fausset's account, unsparingly but without vindictiveness. Thinking of Coleridge as the poet who brought enchantment into the literature of the nineteenth century, we are likely to forget how much of his verse is dif- fuse sentimentality and how early his creative power was checked. Admiring him as the author of the profoundest critical •emarks on Shakespeare and Wordsworth, we do not consider that these remarks were the product of a brief period of spasmodic exertion. Knowing him as the protagonist of idealism in philosophy and religion, we disregard his serious lapses into cant and hypocrisy. The student of literature may do well to judge Coleridge only by the positive fruits of his activity (it is an indulgence for which Coleridge himself would have been very grateful), but the biographer cannot avoid dwelling on the waste and disappointment as well. There may even be the intimate con- nection between the two aspects which Mr. Fausset refers to. Possibly we owe the miracles of the "Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" to the same feverish sensi- bility which led Coleridge to the laudanum bottle and the piety of Archbishop Leighton. But under any circumstances, no excuses need be made for a study like Mr. Fausset's. It some- what discredits the thinker, but it does full justice to the genius of the poet and critic; and if it leaves the man destitute of esteem, it does not obscure the qualities which won so much mitigating sympathy and protection for him during his life- time. There are few writers who could have handled with similar competence a subject calling for the appraisal of such a variety of faculties and activities. By virtue of its psy- chological penetration and its grasp of literary and philosophic values the book takes precedence over all that has so far been written about Coleridge. Jacob Zeitlin Meredith George Meredith. By J. B. Priestly. English Men of Letters, New Series. The Macmillan Company. $1.25. The Writings and Life of George Meredith, A Centenary Study. By Mary Sturge Gretton. Harvard University Press. $2.50. A LOVER of Meredith's novels asked to review biographies ■» •*■ of him feels like the old scholar who growled: "There is no good edition of Shakespeare. I have been too busy for the past few years." Mindful of your huge debt to Meredith you hate to speak of his human frailties. Until three years ago these were largely conjectural. Then Mr. S. B. Ellis's biography took out the stopple. Meredith's family skeleton was a paternal tailor shop. He began by being ashamed of it. He ended by being ashamed of it. He ended by being ashamed of having been ashamed. This smarting sensitiveness colored his whole work. Through his novels like a Wagnerian leit- motif runs this theme of some extraordinary personality battling for social recognition — in pk'n United States, trying to horn in. Evan Harrington, Richmond Roy, Diana, Aminta, Nesta, Alvan, Carinthia, even Beauchamp — the th.me per- sistently recurs. Mr. Priestly declares that Meredith was a great writer but not a great man. Mrs. Gretton is more reticent. Her centenary study is a succinct introduction to Meredith's work, biographical material at the beginning of her chapters, sum- maries of novels and poems in the middle, and comment at the end. Her advantage of personal friendship with the author, while warming and mellowing her study, is never obtruded, and her writing has uniform, smooth excellence. Mr. Priestly is more outspoken and severely critical. Of Meredith's faults as a story-teller he makes mince meat. The privilege of being allowed to associate with such superb human beings as Meredith's characters is such a bracer to one's own best standards that it would never occur to me to crab about faulty plot construction. For a well-tinkered Chinese puzzle of a plot I go to Sophocles or Ibsen. But Nevil Beauchamp, Vernon Whitford, and Matey Weyburn are not characters in fiction. They are old, dear, and intimate friends; they are comrade young men who have stood by me in many a hard tussle. On the other hand, Mr. Priestly's grasp of the novelist's intellectual range is extraordinary. Meredith, he says, is in the nineteenth century but not of it. He escapes the strain and lop-sidedness of the other great Victorians painfully try- ing to adjust themselves to the property-poverty struggle and the theologico-scientific shindy. "He is pure pagan." The agonizing of Christian theology he treats like an "inspired prophet of sanity." He simply walks away and leaves it running. He recognizes that man's animal instincts are not to be effaced but to be used. "He seems to breathe Hellenic air and turns on the body the clear unshadowed eyes of the nobler pagans." Justly severe though Mr. Priestly may be — and his study is a notable addition to a notable series — he sets one pondering the biographer's plight. A biographer's pitfall is usually to set up his private Ellis Island at the gate of the Eternal City. That biographers should be more or less encouraged to do this is far from flattering revelation of the estate of prevailing opinion. Mediocrity must be revenged on excellence, and con- ventional morals are the backstairs to it. A smaller man with step-ladder and tape-measure undertakes to measure a greater. Then occurs our Comedy of Bad Manners. Here is some valiant soul who struggled manfully his life long to enrich the human spirit. And we expect his biographer, rueing his lapses, to tell us: "He really ought to have spent that Saturday night differently." This would apply to Goethe, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Walt Whitman, Wagner, Shelley, George Eliot, Tolstoi, and most others of the best. Were you to turn on the average life the X-ray of biographical research, what would you have? Exactly the same faults as those of genius — without its great contribution. The rebuke to gabble about the human frailties of greatness is: "Do you value the product? You do? Very well. Then don't complain of the process." Meredith (I will allow no one to abuse him but myself) was vain, self-conscious, unforgiving, and sadly lacking in simplicity. But when we glory in a superb artist's superb complexity, why damn him for not being simple? Try some other shop. Our mistake is in expecting artists to have lived per- petually up to the heroic pitch of the supreme moments in their works. The Ninth Symphony and "Beauchamp's Career" are heroic worlds. But that is no reason for expecting Beet- hoven's lodgings and Meredith's crochets to have been the same. Let us cease to damn the artist for not having been also a saint. The two are different careers and none too compatible. In Tolstoi the saint slew the artist and some people prefer the artist Tolstoi to Tolstoi the saint. Con- fronted with the human weaknesses of George Meredith or of any other mighty spirit, I would steadily remind myself of Lincoln's reply to the people who complained that General Grant was addicted to drink: "Find out what brand of whiskey he uses so I can give some to my other generals." Lucien Price

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 407 Rome Simplified For Independence The Roman Spirit in Religion, Thought, and Art. 1 Grenier. Alfred A. Knopf. $6. GRENIER'S book, written for M. Berr's historical called L'Evolution de l'Humanite, has been translated by M. R. Dobie to serve as one of the two hundred volumes of the great "History of Civilization," edited by C. K. Ogden. Grenier is a mature scholar, favorably known for several careful studies in the field of Roman archaeology and religion. The subject is here restricted to "religion, thougth, and art" mo other books in the series treat of jurisprudence and of the political history. This needs to be kept in mind by the r since he will several times discover that in interpreting "the Roman spirit" the author is drawing upon certain precon- ceptions that are not allowed to appear on the stage. The sketch of Rome's religious journey from a primitive animism, through Etruscan and Greek anthropomorphism, to Oriental mysticism is reliable and tellingly written, though not quite with the sympathetic vividness of Warde Fowler's in- imitable book. In the survey of Roman art Grenier has with- out exaggeration emphasized the interest of the Roman artist in realistic humanism expressed within the forms borrowed from Greece, and we may be especially grateful for the pages devoted to Etrusco-Roman art, which the author places in its correct historical perspective. The chapters on literature are perhaps less adequate, for here he seems especially to feel the necessity of illustrating his main theme. Somehow it becomes difficult to subsume the qualities of historians as diverse as Caesar, Livy, and Tacitus under a single formula and to classify as illustrations of typical Romans Lucretius and Catullus as well as Horace and Virgil. Here, in fact, we meet the only serious defect of the book — a flaw inherent in much of our historical writing — that is, the assumption of consistency and unity where none exists. The people of Rome were ever changing groups of different individuals, constantly facing new experiences, meeting new influences, and consequently assuming new modes of expression for their shifting moods. A title like The Spirit of Rome is as misleading as would be The Spirit of the State of New York. The innate mental habit of classifying incoherent phenomena under cogent formulae and of organizing hap- hazard events into a consistent drama has received too much encouragement in continental historians from Hegelian tra- ditions and nationalistic antipathies. Honest history is not popular because it usually lacks a plot. If the historian can with Hegel or H. G. Wells select his material so as to evolve a story leading consistently up to the glorious now, or if with Spengler he can shape a cathartic tragedy from "Apollonian" through "Magian" scenes to the catastrophic Untergang, he becomes a prophet. But we have been surfeited with such fare. We are ready now to extend greetings to a "History of Civilization" written by two hundred specialists, if only because it promises to break up the eternal schema- tization. But we hope that we shall not have two hundred dramas for one. In fact, some of us prefer the confusion of the "Cambridge History," which ties each contributor down to such narrow limits that he dare not dramatize lest the author of the sequel will tack a farcical ending to his tragedy. In justice to Grenier it must be said that he avoids pre- occupation successfully through half the book and that when finally he discovers that he has fallen under the spell of his title he ends with a warning against his own schematized con- clusions. There are a few slight mistakes (the Baracco head is not Caesar, the restoration of the Etruscan temple on page 22 is incorrect, and Catullus's mistress was not Clodia Metella). In essentials the book is reliable, and fully deserves Its place in the ambitious series. The translation is generally adequate, though on page 226 it exchanges the roles of Clodius and Milo. Tennby Frank 'onqueat of tin- Philippines by th< '■. By Moorfield Storey and Marcial 1'. Lichauco. G. 1'. Putnam's Sons. $2. '"TUUS hook has been prepared," its authors tell us, "in order to laj before the people of tin- United States the facts relating to the conquest of the Philippines." The ulterior purpose in presenting the facts, however, as the reader eventually discovers, is to urge independence for the islands and With all respect for the high intentions of Mr. Storey and Mr. Lichauco, the second object is not necessarily the logical accompaniment of the first. It would not be so even if govern- ments acted logically, as in most circumstances they do not, and the attempt to write a quod erat Irandum in place of a non sequitur is likely to cause the book to be dismissed by many as inconclusive special pleading, when in fact it ought to be widely read and solemnly pondered. What Mr. Storey and Mr. Lichauco have done is to frame a powerful indictment against the United States for its treat- ment of the Filipinos. The story is a repellent one of conquest and cruelty, of pious pretense and official arrogance, and of "uplift" and "civilization" used as smoke-screens to cover mercenary and unenlightened plans. The incidents, of course, are peculiar to the occasion, but the principles run on all-fours with those which all the expansionist nations, Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, have developed to propagate imperialism and bring weaker peoples under the flag. Mr. Storey and Mr. Lichauco appear to think that if the facts had been fully known in this country something different might have happened. No doubt some of the facts have been withheld, or at least have been made scmewhat difficult of access, but the essential truth of what was going on has been well enough known all along to those who cared, and while the book marshals the material skilfully, it adds extremely little to what was common property before. What weakens the book as an argument for Philippine independence is its failure to recognize, or at all events to pre- sent with sufficient clearness, the fundamental change which was worked by the Spanish-American War in the temper of the American people. Thanks to that war, the United States be- came for the first time conscious of world power, and the con- sciousness set it by the ears. From minding its own business and leaving other nations to mind theirs, it took to meddling, first, of course, with a remote Asiatic business with which it had no vital concern, and later, in the World War, with a vast European quarrel from which it saw a possibility of deriving some prestige. Under the stress of international meddling, transformed by the Great American Hypnotist into a campaign for global democracy, the question of what the Constitution intended or what former generations had deemed wise gave place to the call of power, dominion, a voice in world affairs, international suspicion and fear, and money, and under the delu- sion of this new-styled greatness the nation has continued to live. This is why the independence of the Philippines, which Messrs. Storey and Lichauco regard as a kind of moral obliga- tion of the nation, has virtually ceased to be regarded as either necessary or desirable. The issue remained, but it was aca- demic. What has been said by Presidents and Congressmen and politicians generally about independence as an ultimate aim is now seen to have been only a thin garment of gauze to hide the nakedness of "practical" policies, but it meant nothing at the time and has no value now. It is refreshing to find two able men who still think that politics and ethics have some inherent relation one to the other, but the situation which they deplore will not change until the nation shall have got rid of the kind of politics that now controls it, and adopted more rational standards than it now favors in dealing with the relations of peoples. William McDonald

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408 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 Books in Brief The Writing of History. By Jean Jusserand, Wilbur Cortez Abbott, Charles W. Colby, and John Spencer Bassett. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50. The authors of this book, acting as a committee of the American Historical Association, have been set the task of dis- covering what is the matter with historical writing in America, and of suggesting remedies for the situation. The decline, if not the virtual disappearance, of such interest as greeted the works of Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, or Parkman seems to be a fact beyond question, and the ravages of popular neglect appear to have continued unchecked during the very period in which the association has been organizing and promoting historical research and publication. The main trouble, apparently, is that most American historical scholars do not know how to write, and are not really cultured persons to begin with. They are learned in a narrow way, they turn out monographs of por- tentous number and bulk, and their methods are scientific to the extent that history can be treated as a science, but what they write is neither easy nor delightful to read. Most of our writ- ers of history, moreover, are professors, and American uni- versity life does not encourage, in students or teachers, a gen- erous reading of classical works in history or any other subject. The scientific method, in other words, has all but clone to death historical writing as literature, at the same time that our quantitative intellectual standards have left small place for broad outlook, .-rtist'-y of style, and the leisure that permits of taking pains. About all that the committee have to offer by way of remedy is the suggestion that students of history would do well to read more, and that in any event they should write better. There would be hope for American culture if, in the face of our unreformed universities and multiplying endow- ments for research, one might expect that such r suggestion would, in the course of a hundred years or so, be seriously taken to heart. 1825-1925 — A Century of Stupendous Progress. Joseph McCabe. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50. This book was written to prove that the last century has witnessed more progress in every respect than all the other cen- turies combined, and that this progress is solely due to science. It is not uninteresting, but subtle minds will search it vainly for a satisfying definition of progress, and in the overwhelming array of statistics they will find another proof that statistics, like the Scriptures, can be quoted to prove anything. Social Struggles and Modern Socialism. By M. Beer. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company. $2. This last and least valuable of Beer's five-volume "General History of Socialism and Social Struggles" is little more than a syllabus on Socialist agitation in Germany since 1800, with side-references to similar agitation in a few other countries. Briefly, pithily, and dryly it covers the Paris Commune in six small pages, the recent Russian Revolution in three. Of some possible use to the historical student of socialist struggles, it is uninteresting to the general reader and worthless as propa- ganda. It should be added, however, that the entire set of five volumes presents an authoritative outline of the struggle of classes in both ancient and modern times. Fot<r Years Beneath the Crescent. By Rafael de Nogales. Translated from the Spanish by Muna Lee. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.50. More than a mere account of the adventures of a Venezuelan soldier of fortune as a high officer with the Turkish army dur- ing the late war. It is a travel bocK as well as a gruesome adventure story; its analysis of conditions in the Ottoman Empire and its comments on the Young Turkey movement and the Armenian massacres make it an addition to that "authentic" history of the war which is painfully emerging from a mass of propaganda. Written with absolute candor by a man who regarded the war as a job and brought no bias or patriotism to bear on his work, it reveals its author's personality as nothing short of amazing. General Nogales combines the ideals of medieval chivalry with a mind that displays the keenest pene- tration as well as a refreshing naivete. Four Novelists of the Old Regime. By John Garber Palache. The Viking Press. $3. A story of the life and works of Crebillon fils, Choderlos de Laclos, Restif de la Bretonne, and Diderot, the latter con- sidered purely as a novelist. Inasmuch as the eighteenth- century French novel is a field very inadequately surveyed in English literature, this is a valuable study. Mr. Palache's sum- mary of Restif's autobiography, "The Story of Monsieur Nicho- las," forms the most interesting section of the book. The intro- ductory chapter on the eighteenth-century French novel is dis- jointed; the style in general is sophomoric; and the plenitude of footnotes will probably prove annoying to the general reader. But the book as a whole is extremely creditable spadework, if nothing more. Economic History of Europe to the End of the Middle Ages. By M. M. Knight. Houghton Mifflin Company. $3. This is a readable narrative of European economic de- velopment from the beginnings to the close of the Middle Ages, the first of two volumes edited by Professor A. A. Young which will complete the account to date. Mr. Knight disclaims originality and uses little illustrative material. The back- ground of local and world politics is given with relatively abundant detail, geographic factors, variations in economic technique, and consumers' economics get scant attention. Gen- eral readers who know modern business terminology will approve the constant use of the patois. The editor declares this book the best introduction to economic history. There is, indeed, no better. Drama 'The Lion Tamer" r|',HE form — artificial characters moving against a stylicized * background — which Alfred Savoir has chosen for his fan- tastic comedy, "The Lion Tamer" (Neighborhood Playhouse), is one beloved by insurgents of the theater. Its possibilities have been argued with a wearisome copiousness by enthusiastic theorists, and we have had not a few well-intentioned efforts to realize them upon the stage. Thus some years ago the pretentious vacuity of "He Who Gets Slapped" was endured for the sake of its form, and only last season the insignificant merits of "The Chief Thing" were at least seriously weighed for the same reason. Never before, however, in America at least, have we seen the genre attempted by anyone as tech- nically adroit as Savoir, and it must in fairness be said that no unadulterated exponent of Art has done so much as he to demonstrate its merits. One may distrust a cleverness as unflagging as his; one may doubt if so adroit a juggler can do more than juggle; but the fact remains that "The Lion Tamer" is a delight from beginning to end — original, witty, unflagging, and picturesque. The conception upon which the author has founded his play — a conception of the struggle, eternal and inconclusive, between the logical idealist and the brutal master of things as they are — is not inevitably profound. Even the fantastic characters which he has chosen to embody it — the lion tamer of a travel- ing circus and the English lord who follows him from town to town in the religious hope that sometime, somewhere the lions will realize their superiority and devour their master —

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 109 are not so obviously apt as to foredoom the play to success. But from the moment when the curtain rises upon the Lord per- forming his nightly vigil at the circus bar until it descends upon his son, come to take his father's place and in every n undistinguishable from him, the invention of the author never falters. With all the skill of a playwright, both born to the theater and made master of its secrets by lontr practice, he keeps the ball rolling in an always une\ direction. The idea plays hide and seek with the farcical situations; it winds in and out of the fabric, appearing unexpectedly in the midst of the most amusing situations; and, though it is never far away, it is never intruded. As the lion tamer, so blusteringly sure that the world is ruled by force and fear, matches wits with the idealist who clings with such desperation to his faith in the ultimate triumph of reason and justice, the whole fan- tastic proceedings take on the relevance of a dream. The con- flict spreads to involve the love of the premiere equestrienne and the balance swings now this way, now that. Farcical though it all is and dextrously though it avoids even a moment of heavy solemnity, it nevertheless seems poignant and true for the very reason that neither cynicism nor faith ever wins a decisive victory. It is the idealist himself whom the lions finally devour because, though he once consented to attempt the task, he never really wanted to conquer with a whip; but no sooner is he gone than his son is there to take up the battle where his father had left it, and he too is destined to his victories and his defeats. Since the beginning of history, so the playwright seems to say, men have been both good enough and bad enough, wise enough and foolish enough, to furnish a very respectable case for the cynic and the idealist alike, and doubtless it is temperament, not evidence, which makes either. Those who have followed the development of the company at the Neighborhood need hardly be told that the play is one which they are peculiarly fitted to perform. Nowhere else in America, I think, has the tradition which insists that acting depends, not upon the exploitation of personality but upon the conscious control of the voice and body, been so consistently followed. Nowhere else do we find actors who so nearly realize Gordon Craig's ideal of the marvelously articulated puppet, who so firmly grasp the principle that a role is something to be created by a mind which uses the body as a sculptor uses clay, not something to be approximated as near as may be by giving rein to the temperament of the performer. Hence it is that they play better than the members of any other com- pany, can grasp and maintain a style of consistent, significant artificiality such as this play requires. Ian Maclaren, Otto Hulicius, and Albert Carroll, as well as those who undertake minor roles, are admirable, but the performance of Dorothy Sands in the extraordinarily difficult part of the equestrienne Arabella is the outstanding achievement of the production. Her suppleness, variety, and never-failing expressiveness are not less than superb, and they have, withal, no direct relation to her individual personality. Here, for one, is an actress who is not parading a somewhat glorified version of herself upon the stage but one who has actually created a role. "Deep River" (Imperial Theater), for which Laurence Stall- ings furnished the libretto and Frank Harling the music, con- stitutes not merely an interesting experiment but a very con- siderable achievement in beauty and interest as well. The scene is old New Orleans upon the occasion of the annual Creole Ball, and Mr. Stallings, for his part, contributes a play in which he reveals again as he revealed in "Spring Flight" a fresh and vigorous feeling for the picturesque contrasts of early Ameri- can culture. The scene in which the three Kentuckians, come down the river for the ball, clash with the representatives of the French aristocracy is as vivid as anything in "What Price Glory?" and though the requirements of the libretto prevent the development of more than the sketch of a play, that sketch is enough to indicate that the author is capable, sooner or later, of realizing the dramatic possibilities of certain American ■ils that have never yel been used in drama. In the first and Mr. Mailing's music is hardly more than a pleasant accompaniment to the play, but in the second act, left largely in his hands, he rises to his opportunities and creates, through the music alone, a thrilling half hour in the presence of the Voodoo queen. "The Captive" (Empire Theater) is a play considerably less sensational than its theme. It deals clearly and inti ingly with a life of a Lesbian who has married in thi thus conquering her abnormality, but it is, after the fashion of the school of French drama to which it belongs, more full jf logic than of life. Its high moment, the moment when the husband of the heroine's inamorata recounts the horrors of his marriage to a woman who is somehow not a woman, depends upon declamation rather than drama, and I, at least, never failed to feel that the characters of the piece were more ele- ments of a syllogism than living personages. "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (Times Square Theater), like the book from which it was taken, is as sketchy as a comic strip, but it is hilariously funny and, within the limits of its form, shrewdly penetrating. "The Immortal Thief," with which Walter Hamp- den opens his season at the Hampden Theater, is an unfortunate work which undertakes to tell a story woven about one of those crucified with Christ, but it never succeeds in being more than pompously feeble. In "The Good Fellow" (Playhouse) George Kaufman and Herman Mankiewicz manage to extract a good deal of fun out of Mr. Mencken's favorite character, the in- veterate joiner of lodges and marcher in parades. Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATER □ The Neighborhood Playhouse, 4Mr£S£ gSMi Y> First play of the new Repertory Season A Satirical Comedy by Alfred Savoir Every evening (except Monday) at 8:30. Matinees Wednes- day & Saturday at 2 :30 SUBSCRIBE NOW TO OUR 13TH SEASON THE LION TAMER Address Subscription Secretary, ice Grand St., for information □ LECTURES D V. F. CALVERTON "The Work of Jacob Wassermann" Friday, Oct. is, S.-jo p. m. VERNON LOGGINS "The Aesthetes of the Nineties" Saturday, Oct. 16, 4 p. m. At Mr. Loggins' session Genevieve Taggard 7 E. 15th St. will read from her own poems. At the RAND SCHOOL THE THEATRICALIZATION OF LIFE" First lecture in America in Russian by N. N. EVNEINOFT, author of "The Chief Thing", "The Ship of Saints", etc. General discussion by Russian writers and artists. Sunday, October 17th, 8:30 P. M. Rand School Auditorium, 7 E. 15th Street Part of the Proceeds to ero to Homeless Children in Russia. Admission 60c and $1.00 Advance tickets from I. I. A. Kiltin, Russian Children's Fund 64 EAST 7TH STREET Tel. DRY DOCK 1617 JOHN COWPER POWYS AT LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL Fridays at 8:S0 P. M. "THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PEOPLES" Oct. 15 — Hie French People '• 22 — The German People " 29 — The Knglish People Admission 50c 244 East 14th St., N.T.C. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Russia, the Land of Contradictions* By SHERWOOD EDDY II IN the light of these basic facts, may I evaluate some elements in the present situation in Russia that are evil and some that are good, certain things that seem to be a menace and others a possible contribution to the rest of the world. Among the evils I would list: 1. The severe abridgment of liberty. As the sympa- thetic British Trade Union delegation admits, "in practice there is a complete control not only of the press, the plat- form, and the political machinery but of the schools, the universities, and army." There is little liberty of the press, though a wide range of criticism of the Government is permitted provided it is not seditious. For the present, the Soviet officials frankly profess dictatorship rather than democracy. They believe that other countries have a veiled dictatorship of the privileged one-tenth, while they claim a frank dictatorship on behalf of the hitherto unprivileged nine-tenths who constitute the working masses. Their state control of life at almost every point is exceedingly irksome to any liberty-loving Anglo-Saxon, and one feels a weight has been suddenly lifted as he leaves the Russian frontier. 2. The Communist Party is frankly materialistic, atheistic, and anti-religious in its policy. This is not sur- prising when it is remembered that, despite the deep mys- tical religious piety of many of the Russian people, the revolution was not only against a corrupt state but against a reactionary church that often presented a sad caricature of religion, and at times was an adjunct of the police depart- ment and the spy system. Although the teaching of religion in the home is not forbidden, nor is preaching in the church, the organized religious instruction of youth under eighteen is. The churches seemed almost as well filled as before the war, but there was a conspicuous absence of youth. The philosophy of the Communist Party is based upon force and their avowed policy is world revolution. This party has a membership in fifty-two countries and its plan of revolution is a frank challenge to our whole social order. The policy at this point is undoubtedly serious, but it need be feared only where rank injustice or misery leads the workers to despair or where liberty is denied. Moham- medanism has just such a program in theory, where accord- ing to the sacred Book all "infidels" are to be offered their choice between Islam, tribute, or the sword. But although this is their authoritative pronouncement, we do not feel ourselves in any real danger from Islam, either by its propaganda or by the sword. Our security is in the meas- ure of our organized intelligence, justice, and liberty. It is so in the case of Russia. Our danger, if there is any, lies not in the strength of the Soviet system but in what- ever weaknesses there may be in our own. These Soviet evils, however, are very real — the restriction of liberty, atheistic materialism, and a program of world revolution by violence. *This is the concluding instalment of the report issued by the com- mittee which Sherwood Eddy headed, and which visited Russia in August of this year on an unofficial investigation of conditions there. The first instalment was published in the International Relations Section for October 13. An impartial standpoint calls for the appreciation of the good as well as condemnation of the evil in Russia. The following points may be noted: 1. There are elements of value in their ideal which play a powerful part in the shaping of the life of the people, even though they have not always lived up to them, as we have not to the principles of our own Declaration of Inde- pendence. "With the fundamental aim of suppressing all exploitation of man by man, of abolishing forever the division of society into classes, of suppressing all exploiters, . . . in order to exterminate all parasitic elements of society, ... to deliver humanity from the grip of financial capital and imperialism . . . the Third All- Russian Congress . . . associated itself with the policy of the present Soviet administration in its repudiation of secret treaties . . . and in its efforts to attain at all costs a democratic workers' peace, ... a peace without annexations or indemnities, on the basis of the free self- determination of nations." It aims "to end the domination of capitalism, make war impossible, wipe out state boun- daries, transform the whole wTorld into a cooperative com- monwealth, and bring about real human brotherhood and freedom." All these things are to be accomplished not by a selfish scramble for special privileges but by cooperative endeavor, seeking equal justice for all. Of all the Soviet ideals none is more remarkable than that the leaders of the largest united republic in the world should endeavor to rise above personal profit and sordid private gain to the standard of unselfish social service for the common good. It was a noteworthy advance in co- operation when the early Christians had all things in com- mon and shared with all who were in need. It is praise- worthy when the missionary, the minister, the doctor, and the teacher accept a profession where public service and not private profit is the measure of worth. But what shall we say when the political and economic leaders of an entire nation rise to this height? No member of the Communist Party is permitted to receive an income of more than $112.50 a month, or $3.75 a day, or less than the wage of many day laborers in America, although writers may earn a little extra. The man who goes in for profiteering for himself is scorned almost as a moral leper as in no other country in the world, and if he is a member of the Com- munist Party, after a fair trial, he is executed or expelled. All but two of Lenin's cabinet had shared with him nearly twenty years in exile, poverty, or imprisonment. Whatever its name or label, many of these elements in their ideal are closely akin to the Christian virtues. 2. Russia provides a vast laboratory for social experi- ment. In a world often petrified in tradition and custom it may be of value to have at least one country free to test certain theories by a system of trial and error. Apart from a few high-minded intellectuals or men of noble birth and good family, like Lenin, who weathered the revolution and were seasoned in suffering, the Soviet system is on a vast scale a government of humble workingmen and peas- ants trained in the school of adversity in practical life. Many of them had no more schooling than Lincoln. Russia presents the first complete revolution in history in the entire political, economic, and social life of a people. Here for the first time on such a scale is attempted the full sharing of all privileges with the poorest. Here the best that can

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Oct. 20, 1926] The Nation 411 "AFTER 44 YEARS," says Hendrik Van Loon, "of plowing through unreadable stuff I got hold of The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, and hasten to recommend it. Here at last is a hook that has told me what 1 always wanted to know and never quite could discover." What Others Say HENRY 11 \/I.ITT in The New York Sun: I fear this vol- ume will never be used as a text- Is. It is too fascinating, too brilliant, too clear, too human. !' >: !\ DEWEY: Dr. Durant humanized rather than merely popularized the story of philosophy. FREDERICK NELSON in The Hartford Times: A bril- liant piece of exposition, so swiftly moving and so exciting that we found the usual quota of novels dull in comparison. ERNEST SUTHERLAND BATES in The Saturday Re- : Here is a book to delight the heart. The character of the philosophers' problems and their answers have been presented with a persuasive clarity rarely equalled. The Story of Philosophy is now available in a New Re- public Edition. Like its pred- ecessors in this special series, the Wells' Outline, Van Loon's History, Strachey's Queen Victoria, etc., it is an expensive hook made inexpen- sive to our readers through a special printing of a large order. Our edition is identical with the regular $5.00 edi- tion, except that the New Re- public's ship emblem appears in blank on the cover. With a year's subscription (regularly $5.00) the joint price is Exc/i 1 ma tory Com m en t ( leorge A. I )on MAGNIFICENT! I leywood Broun : EXCITING! John Macy : PROFOUND! John Ilaynes Holmes: PURE GOLD! Stuart P. Sherman : FASCINATING! Philadelphia Record: BRILLIANT! American Mercury: EXCELLENT! /"A the past few years several shrewd thrusts have all but unseated the ancient idea that a non-fiction book, to be considered worthy, must be as dull as the doldrums. And now comes li ill Durant with proof indisputable that even philosophy — that bashful ghost who is supposed to haunt only the darker nooks of stately lecture halls — can be made real, intelligible, and stirring to the lay reader. It's a book adapted as if by special design to the tastes of New Republic readers. RE PUB LIC 421 West 21 « Street NewYorkCity For the enclosed $7.50 please enter my subscription to The New Republic for one year and send me postpaid "The Story of Philosophy." NAME CITY STREET ._ —STATE .. .N-10-20-26 When -writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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412 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 be provided in science, art, music, the theater, the educa- tional film, physical culture, recreation, and enjoyment, not for the favored few but for all the poor. Although only a third of the children are in school, because the country- is so poor, yet the Government has determined that educa- tion shall be compulsory and free for all. Although too poor to carry all the new laws into immediate effect, Russia has the most advanced labor legislation in the world. In spite of its admitted bitter poverty it provides such relief for the poor, such social insurance for unemployment, for sickness, accident, old age, and every other disability that it puts America to shame with her often-neglected poor and her unscientific and unnecessary unemployment. 3. Finally, with all its own glaring evils and mixed motives, it may be a good thing to have a nation that stands as a challenge to all the rest of the world, wherever capitalism is ruthless, wherever imperialism has long exploited the weak, the poor, and the helpless nations and darker races, to free from "enslavement millions of laborers in Asia, in the colonies, and in the small nations." It may be a good thing to challenge the thought of the world as to how far China. Korea, the Philippines, India, Egypt, and Africa have a claim to autonomy in their own right, or how far they are merely a means for exploitation for the profit of the stronger imperialist nations. Here stands a nation like an "Adversary," an instru- ment, a weapon against injustice everywhere, even though it has itself been most cruelly unjust to its own former exploiters. Does impoverished Russia challenge rich America for its backwardness in many of the most ele- mental forms of social insurance, in its frequpnt denial of the most elemental right of collective bargaining and the claims of labor unions to representatives of their own choosing; in its failure to regulate inordinate and exces- sive wealth and income when found side by side with poverty unrelieved; in its failure adequately to protect the farmer from exploitation and to extend the cooperative movement as has been done in Russia, England, Germany, Denmark, and other lands; and in the gradual extension of social control wherever it can be efficiently operated without graft and disgraceful party politics? No favor should make us unmindful of the glaring evils in Russia nor should Pharisaic hypocrisy blind us to the evils in our own land. Practically all the American party favored recognition of the present Russian Government without in any way committing themselves to the approval of the Soviet sys- tem. I personally favor recognition on the basis of Presi- dent Coolidge's message to Congress of December 6, 1923. It has not been the policy of the United States to base recognition of other governments upon approval of their practices. Did we approve of all the evils of the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, or the Sultans of Turkey? The present Government has proved itself a stable and enduring government of the Russian people. There is no alternative in sight. All the other leading nations of the world have recognized the Soviet Government and established trade relations with it. Our American party believes it is not compatible with our economic interests or our moral ideals further to withhold recognition. To refuse recognition will breed growing suspicion, hostility, and hatred. Logically the ultimate alternatives are either trade and cooperation or the possibility of war. No policy of peace or world disarmament, no plan for the economic recovery of Europe and of the world can succeed which ignores the crucial position of Russia. Is it better to drive Russia into opposition as an outcast Ishmael among the nations, to stir up trouble in every dis- contented nation and class, or to bind her hand and foot with trade agreements, treaties, and relationships into the cooperative life of the world? Was it better to outlaw Germany as an enemy or bring her as a cooperating friend into the League of Nations? Positively, in proportion as the present Government of Russia is stabilized and bound by trade agreements and political obligations the whole policy of the Third International for world revolution is defeated. And conversely, in proportion as the Govern- ment of Russia is driven into the position of an enemy outlaw we unwittingly further the cause of world revolution. President Coolidge in his message to Congress said: "I am willing to make very large concessions for the pur- pose of rescuing the Russian people. . . . Whenever there appears any disposition to compensate our citizens who were despoiled, and to recognize that debt contracted with our Government, not by the Czar but by the newly formed Republic of Russia; whenever the active spirit of enmity to our institutions is abated, . . . our country ought to be the first to go to the economic and moral rescue of Russia." These three conditions the Russian Govern- ment is ready to fulfil, and through its Foreign Minister in his note to the President of December 16, 1923, has "announced its readiness to enter into negotiations with the American Government and to remove all misunderstandings and differences between the two countries." Yet for three years we have refused even to confer with them as to their readiness to meet our own conditions. Mr. Hughes put his finger on the crucial point at issue between the two coun- tries when he said: "Most serious is the continued propa- ganda to overthrow the institutions of this country." There is evidence to show that since Lenin, Stalin, and Chicherin won the day for the policy of the fulfilment of economic and political agreements the present Government of Russia does not and will not interfere with our Government by propaganda or otherwise, but the Third International, com- posed of the Communists of fifty-two nations, has and will continue to work for revolution by propaganda and all other mean's. This they can do with much greater freedom if the Soviet Government is not recognized by the United States than if the foreign ministers and representatives of both governments were present in Moscow and Wash- ington to stand watch over any agreements made between the two countries. To realize this dual relationship let us take an illus- tration. Suppose the people of India had protested to Mr. Hughes against the propaganda of foreign missions which was attempting to overthrow Hinduism and establish Christianity in India. He could truthfully have replied that our Government financially does not and never would sup- port such propaganda, but that it neither would nor could prevent voluntary missionary societies from so doing. As an individual churchman Mr. Hughes might have contrib- uted to this missionary propaganda. Now the Russian Gov- ernment is much too busy at home fighting for its very life to interfere with our government in America. But individual Communists cannot, will not, and do not desire to prevent the activities of the fifty-two nations in the Third International from so doing. At two points the illustration of India is not parallel. The missionary propaganda is one of moral suasion, while

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Oct. 20, 19261 The Nation r.i>M)S Mexican Government & Railroad Bonds These bonds at prevailing prices otTer attractive investment and specu- lative possibilities. Detailed information furnished on request Correspondence invited. J. SANTILHANO Specialist in Mexican Issues 50 Broad Street Tel. Ban. 44it> mi \ri k Modjacot Shpeel llsh M.uionctte Theatre 95 Second Ave. Orchard 7162 Playing every evening Saturday and Sunday matinees THE Dl Bl K. and Puppet playa i\m kin i MANHATTAN BEACH HOTEL. N. Y. LIVE in a modern, fireproof hotel by the seashore for less than in the crowded city. Homelike eomforta. moderate priced restaurant, maid, valet and telephone service. Winter rates: — $12 per week for two. 87 minutes from Time* Square, B.M.T. Phone Esplanade 3000. POSITIONS WANTED Pis or Ra-s, ireh. Ph.D. Gorman, n.-h. English Literature. Preparatory, col- lege subjects. Translations!. Research. Librarian. Travel plans. Main S947 or Box 561, care The '■ SOR medical student desires any kind work ire The Nation. BOOKS THAT BOOK VOL' WANT! We hold 1.250,000 vols., second hand and new, every conceivable subject. Books on approval. Also Rare Books, Out of-Print Books, and sets of Authors. Catalogues free (20 issued). Outline requirements and interests. FOYLES, 121 Ch.rinj Cros. Roid, LONDON. ENGLAND POPPIES FOR SAL.E COLLIE Puppies that will bring joy to the kid- dies and the grown-ups aa well. Handsome, pedigreed dogs with character, disposition and in- telligence bred in them. Not kennel dogs. On approval anywhere. Newtown Square 75-W. W. N. Van Dyck, Broomall, Delaware Co., Pa. MISCELLANEOUS American Telephone and Telegraph Company And associated Companies BELL SYSTEM One Policy, One System, Universal Service "Nobody lifts anything— nobody sweats" There are in Amer- ica industries so vast that each would need the man-power of half the nation if there were no ma- chines such as these with their General Electric motors. In every step of manu- facture, mining and forestry, through mill and factory, motors do the man- ual tasks v/ith great saving of men and money. said Sir Ernest Benn, an emi- nent British publicist, after a tour of America's industrial plants. He was deeply im- pressed with our vast invest- ment in labor-saving machines. American industry employs hundreds of ingenious ma- chines to save men from gru- eling tasks. And, wherever electricity is broadly applied, the worker's day is shorter, he is well paid, and he accom- plishes much. GENERAL ELECTRIC MKanisuiKHffian AURORA HEALTH FARM fcdRhisTovvt,d (Not a sanitarium; not a boarding-house) NEW JERSEY Beautiful country : elevation 700 ft. : only one hour from New York. Open all year. Suitable for those requiring diet, electro- and hydro- therapy. Ideal for rest and convalescence. Personal medical super- vision. Homelike atmosphere. No bed-ridden, contagious or men'^1 cases. Robert Schulman, M. D., Medical Director. Adolph Weizenhoffer, M. D., Associate Physician. Telephone— MORRISTOWN 18 2 0. Your Fall Problems If you want to rent a house or an apartment or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section «f The Nation, read by honest landlords and desirable tenants, Rates on application. Special three-time rate, Dept F. P., The Nation. True food is the foundation of Good health Jru/bod Fresh Vegetables Whole Wheat Products Satisfying Diet for Diabetics No animal fat used 153 W. 44th St., East of Broadway IDEALISTS, THINKERS, TRUTH SEEKERS:— The Creed of Natural Religion (a folder) is FREE to you. Elements of Honest Law sells for one dollar and every cent realized goes to help Honest Law and Natural Religion. Write for them to-dau Lever 700 N. 43rd Street Philadelphia, Pa. When uniting to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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414 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3198 the Communists rely upon force; and the organized Com- munist Party stands behind and dominates both the pres- ent Russian Government and the Third International. Facing these same factors, however, and hating Bolshevism as much as we do, the governments of Britain, Germany, and France have recognized the present Government of Russia, have entered into trade agreements which are scrupulously fulfilled, and believe that they are better able to fight the Third International with Russia bound than with an outlaw free whom they cannot control or defeat. We, therefore, advocate the recognition of the Soviet Government on the basis of President Coolidge's proposals. We would absolutely oppose the Third International, not by violence or by falsehood but by putting our own house in order. ,We would remove all just causes of discontent on the part of labor, and establish such a system of justice, freedom, enlightenment, and prosperity that labor will no more want revolution and Russian poverty than it will want either the sword or propaganda of Islam, much as it may respect the devotees of that or any other religion. Upon returning from Russia I was sorry to see garbled sentences of a sensational character misquoting remarks made by me in Moscow and associating the Amer- ican group with the Y. M. C. A., with which, of course, it had not the remotest connection. While in Russia I spoke three times. The first was in response to an address of welcome by the Society of Cultural Relations. While not whitewashing Russia nor making a sweeping condemnation of other countries as represented, I did say that Russia would, with all her own faults, stand as a challenge wherever capitalism or imperialism were ruthless. As I said repeatedly in Russia, I am not a Comm.inist or a Socialist; I am in a modest way a capitalist; and with all the shortcomings of our own social order, I believe we can best work out a solution by an evolutionary, educational, constructive program, based upon Christian principles and not by the revolutionary, destructive program of Communism. My second address was at a meeting where we frankly laid before the Russian leaders our criticisms of all the evil of their system, including their abridgment of liberty, their policy of world revolution, the lack of security for trade if based upon a revolutionary policy, and the unjust and unscientific teaching of dogmatic atheism to their youth undor eighteen, while they forbid the organized teaching of religion to them. The third meeting was in an open debate upon religion in Moscow. During my visit there I said to a friend: "Fourteen years ago I was conducting religious meetings in this city under the Czar's rule. I venture the prophecy that within five years I shall do so again with the full approval of the present Government." The most enlightened member of our party said it would never take place. That prophecy was fulfilled not within five years but within five days. During our meeting for criticism when I asked the Soviet leaders why Russia was the only important country in the world where I was not permitted to hold religious meetings the editor of the Atheist replied that I had liberty for such meetings. To test his statement I chal- lenged him to a public debate on the following Sunday, upon whether or not there was a God ar 1 a rational ground for religion. At three days' notice the hall was filled, all of the thousand seats were sold, the proceeds being donated to a children's home. The debate lasted for nearlv five hours, when the hall had to be cleared for another meeting. There was apparent the same deep heart hunger, the same vital interest in religion that audiences had shown fourteen years before, when without police permits we were holding meetings in the students' rooms during an epidemic of suicide under the Czars. This was the first time in nine years such a debate had been held by a foreigner, but I believe it will not be the last. A considerable measure of liberty, as guaranteed by the constitution, will probably be consistently maintained. On my last day in Moscow at eight o'clock in the eve- ning I joined the company of two thousand waiting each night in the long line for the doors to be opened at Lenin's tomb. From eight to nine each evening, six nights a week, some thousands of the youth of Russia file by, year in and year out, in silence before the body of a man who they believe lived with a passion for humanity, after twenty years in poverty, prison, and exile, only to fall from the final effects of an assassin's bullet after a life-long struggle against a system that he believed was one of fundamental economic injustice. The great writer Gorki could not picture Lenin "without the beautiful dream of the future happiness of all mankind, the dream of a bright and joyful life." He speaks of "his almost womanly tenderness for his fellows"; and writes "an ode to the sacred frenzy of heroes, among whom Lenin is the most heroic and most frenzied of all." With almost passionate devotion a Lenin cult is developing among the youth of Russia. Near by Lenin's tomb stood the shrine of the Iberian Virgin with peasants crossing themselves and praying for miraculous healing and blessing. Just above it was the inscription "Religion the opium of the people." Contributors to This Issue Louis Fischer is a European correspondent of The Nation. Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of The Natioyr, spent last summer in Europe. Anita Brenner wrote The Jew in Mexico in The Nation of August 27, 1924. Joseph Krimsky is a practicing physician of New York City. Benjamin C. Marsh is the managing director of the Farmers' National Council. Jacob Zeitlin is professor of English at the University of Illinois. Lucien Price wrote Witchcraft: Then and Now in The of October 4, 192:2. Tenney Frank is the author of "Roman Imperialism" and "Economic History of Rome." William MacDonald is the author of "Three Centuries of Democracy in America." Sherwood Eddy has just returned from Russia. SENATOR R. F. PETTIGREW wrote not Ions before his death a remarkable book entitled IMPERIAL WASHINGTON, of which The Nation said: "Twelve year? as South Dakota's representative in the Senate gave him first-hand knowledge of politico-economic currents, of intrigues, 'deals', steals, of the interplay of forces behind the scenes. He knew personally ten presidents. He speaks therefore with unexceptionable authority. ... It is a stirring human document, irresistible in many of its facts and in its fervor." Cloih, iil pages, $1.25 postpaid. Charles H.fKerr & Company. 347 E. Ohio Street. Chicago When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation F O U N D Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBKU 27, No. Contents KD1TORIAL PARAGRAPHS *16 •UIALS: . 'ledum and Tweedledee ing Up the Slums Investors, Beware ! J* . in the Encyclopaedia 4Z0 OVERLORD OF EUROPE. By Oswald Garrison Villard 421 rS ON STAINED CLASS By Helene Mulling 422 HERTY VT THE BAR. By Edgar Mela 423 i s SILENT PARTNER \ m Journalist 424 RANT PRESS AT ELECTION TIME. By Albert Lurry -126 :< OK ADOLESCENCE. By Marion Bachrach 428 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 420 CORRESPONDENCE 430 BOOKS AND PLAYS: Race. Bv Virginia Moore 431 ,-,- Bj M:\rkVanDoren 431 hington at Last ? By Claude G. Bowers 431 f of the Pudding. By Joseph Wood Krutch 43'2 h an Old Perplexity. By Alice Beal Parsons 133 ■iitive Mentality. By Joseph Jastrow 433 Brief 4S ' Drama: The Mind of Werfel. By Joseph Wood Krutch 435 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Japan Returns to Feudalism. By Harry Emerson Wildes 436 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH ■ saoino Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWLSOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager utioN Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, $ .\.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1, England. THE FAILURE OF THE JURY to convict the ex- Attorney General, Harry M. Daugherty, and the Alien Property Custodian, Thomas W. Miller, is not as dis- heartening as it appears. It was an extremely difficult case because, the statute of limitations having run, these men could not be tried on the direct charge of bribery, but only on the charge of having conspired to accept bribes. That rendered the task of the prosecuting officer extremely difficult and this particular jury could not be convinced. We sincerely hope that the District Attorney, Emory R. Buckner, will not be deterred from moving for an early retrial. If so, we trust he will this time follow the sug- gestions made from time to time in these columns as set forth in the article by Mr. Mels elsewhere in this issue. No stone must be left unturned to bring these men to justice, or to establish their innocence. They should be eager for a retrial. If the case is dropped now it will simply strengthen the prevailing popular belief that there is one kind of justice for men who can pay their lawyers $50,000 or $60,000 and another for the poor men who fall into the clutches of the law. It is admitted that Daugherty destroyed bank records to cover up his actions and that some of Merton's Liberty bonds passed to Mr. Miller's account. Shall people say that Republican politics prevented the bringing out of the truth and convicting these men? ONE OF MUSSOLINI'S COLLEAGUES, after denying assorted reports that Mussolini was . undergo an operation and to declare war on Turkey, thai the chi the Fascisti had resigned and thai Italy was buying up Portuguese colonies cheap, continued 1 am just about tired of denying reports such as these. If things continue in this way 1 shall have to establish a special office for denying falseho Ilis Excellency might find it cheaper to let the opposition press and the foreign correspondents function freely. As it is, with the responsible unfriendly press suppressed no one takes any denial at face value and any hostile rumor is taken seriously abroad. If Mussolini wants the friendly truth believed he must set the unfriendly truth free too. Cen- sorship of a nation's news is an admission of weakness and an invitation to liars. RUSSIA in these days is not so much censoring the news as trying to censor the production of news. The statement of the opposition leaders within the Communist Party, repudiating their manner of opposition, is an extraor- dinary document. We disagreed with the majority of the Central Com- mittee [it said] on a number of principal problems. These views we still retain. But we categorically repudiate the theory and practice of the freedom of forming groups and fractions. . . . We declare that we definitely give up frac- tional methods of defense of our views because of the dan- ger of such methods for the unity of the party. Here is the doctrine of party discipline frank and unlovely. These men have fought for principles in which they still believe but, for the sake of party unity, they renounce the struggle. They would make of the party an inhuman super- machine and of its members mere mechanical units. In a time of crisis such a doctrine can be understood; in the long run it can only lead to a deadening uniformity. As a matter of fact these men deny their own interpretation of history. Their opposition is not born out of their own heads; it grew out of the changing social structure of the soviet state, and the same economic forces which have thrust them into oppo- sition in the past (as Louis Fischer will show in an early issue of The Nation) will throw them or others into a new workers' opposition in the future. Economics and person- ality have thrown Stalin and Trotzky into conflict before, and will again. Lenin foresaw their personal incompati- bility with uneanny accuracy. Max Eastman has just re- vealed Lenin's long-concealed "testament." Trotzky, he said, was "the most able man" in the Central Committee, but suf- fered by his "too far-reaching self-confidence" and absorp- tion in administration. Stalin, he thought, suffered from "administrative impulsiveness," iacked patience, and was too much a nationalist. Stalin now holds the reins, and Trotzky's second revolt has failed in its first attack. But permanent peace cannot be built upon the cornerstone of bureaucratic autocracy. THE WAR IS OVER in Czecho-Slovakia. Germans have been admitted to the Cabinet. Hitherto ministries have been composed as nationalist coalitions — Czech Social-

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416 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 ists, agrarians, and conservatives uniting against similar assortments of Germans and Slovaks. It was ridiculous; it was war. German schools and theaters were closed; the use of the German language was proscribed. The years have dampened resentments born of Austrian rule and minimized racial self -consciousness. The new Czech Cabinet is a bour- geois coalition; and Czech and German Socialists will fight arm in arm against it. This is common sense. Nearly a third of the young republic's population is German; under any normal regime its interests are as divided as those of the warring parties that make up Germany. If the new coalition means that the Czechs have given up their hope of turning German children into little Bohemians, they may end by finding themselves nearer their goal of national unity than they had dreamed. Czecho-Slovakia's declaration of peace has a meaning far outside its borders. The Ver- sailles provisions for the protection of national minorities have not worked; Poland and Rumania still find dissonant groups of persecuted races at odds with the nationalist pow- ers that be. The Czechs point the way out. CANTON'S CONQUERING ARMIES are sweeping on in Central China, to the consternation of those treaty- port foreigners who have cheerfully minimized the na- tionalist movement. Their successes, indeed, have reached the danger-point. Lesser militarists are tumbling out of opposition into alliance with them. This produces immedi- ate victories ; but it dilutes the spirit which has made Can- ton. Have these patriotic Southerners leaders enough to train in Sun Yat-sen's principles all the brigand armies that are falling into their arms? Feng Yu-hsiang's diffi- culties were partly due to similar successes in the North; the Christian general found that allies who came to him in moments of triumph could not be counted upon in the hour of trial. Chiang Kai-shek, the Canton general, after leveling the ancient walls of Wuchang, opposite Hankow on the Yangtze in the heart of China, has moved down the great river and threatens Shanghai, the metropolis at its mouth. Revolts have weakened Sun Chuan-fong's rear, and the students, always fervent nationalists, are organizing in the centers of opposition to Canton. This tactic, learned from the Russians, of winning civilian support to an army, is peculiarly effective in China. NAVY DAY is celebrated in the United States on October 27, the birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, one of the navy's staunchest friends. And while the Navy League urges an America "strong enough to gain respect for its ideals" the Reserve Officers Association of the United States pleads for action against the subversive organizations which are so unpatriotic as to be working for peace. The Asso- ciation to Abolish War, the Association for Peace Educa- tion, the Intercollegiate Peace Association, the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Woman's Inter- national League for Peace and Freedom, the Woman's Peace Society— these are among the fierce and predatory organizations from which the Reserve Officers are trying to protect the country. Of course they have mellifluous and soft-sounding names; but the dangerous fact is that these societies are really opposed to war; they want war to be abolished! Probably if these gr ups of wrong-headed per- sons had their way they would eradicate the army root and branch. "As a Reserve Officer," pleads the president of the association, "don't you believe it is your obligation to be informed of the forces constantly working against pre- paredness?" Indeed, and indeed. And in order to stop this dangerous trend in our modern society, why not follow the suggestion of Major General Mark L. Hersey? The General wants military training for girls as well as boys; not rough, manly drill, of course, but bugle bands or fife- and-drum corps. If you catch the female young enough and subject her to the advantage of military discipline almost from the cradle, will you not have fewer women's societies working for peace, that un-American goal? THE BOTTOM HAS FALLEN out of cotton prices, due to the anticipated over-production of this year's crop. Government surveys show from two to four million more bales than world markets can absorb at prices which net the farmer a reasonable return. At the ruinous prices fore- cast, a slump of $500,000,000 in the purchasing power of the South is inevitable, with a resulting backwash in the automobile, radio, furniture, textile, and other manufactur- ing industries. In these desperate circumstances a meeting was called in Memphis of governors, heads of cooperatives, bankers, United States Senators, and business men. At the ominous hour of midnight, October 12, resolutions were passed demanding that 4,000,000 bales of this year's crop be held in storage. This was to be financed by the Federal Intermediate Land Banks, the last days of October being set aside as "acreage reduction week," in which a drive for a 25 per cent reduction in acreage next year should be made. The Government is being petitioned from all sides to aid both in financing and in acreage reduction. All of this puts the Administration in a most uncomfortable situa- tion because of the strong line which Mr. Hoover and his friends have taken in respect to acreage reduction of rubber by the British Government. Rubber and cotton are not far from the same basic cost per pound to produce, but at the present writing the former sells for about four times as much, and the clamor of the cotton-grower for some of the same medicine is understandable. Restriction of produc- tion to meet requirements is rudimentary common sense. We hope it can displace, in cotton and many other things, the tragic chaos and waste of laissez-faire — provided always that ample requirements are allowed for in the budget, and that an artificial shortage is not created, raising prices against the ultimate consumer. WHEN WHITE MEETS YELLOW on the Pacific Coast it is usually the latter who is the victim. Hence one sits up and takes notice when it appears that the tables have been turned in Oakland, California. At least we read in the newspaper of the University of California, the Daily Californian, of September 30 that Parents of the striking students of the John Swett School in Oakland were threatened with arrest yesterday by Fred M. Hunter, superintendent of schools. The charge would be the violation of the State compulsory-education law. All but thirty-seven of the white students of the school have been removed by their parents as a protest against the continued refusal of the school authorities to deny the eighteen Chinese pupils entrance to the regular classes. A committee of the mothers of the striking students, armed with affidavits that the superintendent had promised the removal of the Chinese, have canvassed the district in an attempt to have the parents of the remaining thirty-seven white children withdraw them from the school. The school authorities are entitled to all praise for standing

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 417 up so unflinchingly in behalf of the Chinese pupils, but are they wise in attempting to punish the outraged white par- ents? A little studious neglect might serve better. The parents and their children are enough punished through deprivation of school privileges. Leave them alone, and, like Little Bo Peep, they will come home, probably not wag- ging their tails but carrying them discreetly between their legs. IN THE OLD DAYS the railroads openly gave rebates to politicians and pressmen and others whose favors they desired. Nowadays they do it only a little less crudely. The Daily Worker (Chicago) quotes from a circular sent by the secretary of the Illinois Press Association, before its annual meeting at the University of Illinois, to editors and pub- lishers in the home State of Mr. Insull: Those who would like to do so can write to th railroads for transportation the same as they have done in the past. In other words, you go to the ticket agent and buy your ticket, take a receipt for the money paid for this ticket, send the receipt to the railroad company passing through your city and they will give you enough advertising to pay for the* amount of the ticket. This applies to yourself, all members of your family, and any members of your news- . paper staff. The number is not limited. The Worker calls this "plain and open bribery of the press arranged so as to evade the laws which prohibit the issuance of passes by railroads to others than their employees." We would like to know what the Committee on Ethics of the Illinois Press Association calls it. ALL HAIL THE MORALS of Indiana— of Jeffersonville, Indiana, to be precise. And all hail the pupils of the Jeffersonville school who are protected from subversive influences by the forthright action of their principal. The latter gentleman knows a pair of legs when he sees one; he knows that legs are improper when they are female; conse- quently, when a nine-year-old schoolgirl comes to school in knickers, revealing the fact that she is bifurcated above the knees, he knows that his duty bids him send her home, thus sparing the rest of the pupils the horrid sight. For three weeks Virginia Aleen's mother, who seems to have decided that there was something not quite sound in the principal's attitude, has sent Virginia, attired in knickers, to school in the morning and after lunch. And for three weeks, twice a day, the principal, strong in his righteousness, has sent her home. Right-thinking persons in this great nation who agree that a nine-year-old girl in knickers is a corrupt- ing and dangerous spectacle will rejoice that our youth is to be kept pure in Jeffersonville at least, and that education progresses apace — but not on two legs. Never that. OUR ESTEEMED CONTEMPORARY, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, has, or thinks it has, or thinks it might have a considerable number of Roman Catholic readers. Naturally, therefore, it takes no chances on hurting their feelings. During the World Series between the New York and St. Louis baseball teams a high panjandrum in the office of the Public Ledger noticed that the players of the latter city were referred to in a 48-point head as "Cardinals." Never again, said he. It might offend some pious church- man, and orders were issued throughout the office accord- ingly. The next day, therefore, dispatches from St. Louis were edited so as to eliminate the dread word. The city was said to be gay with "Card colors" and "Red Bird post- ers." The article continued: "One large poster called the Card 'Our National Bird.' " But somehow the cartoonist was forgotten. Innocently lie made a drawing showing two fig- ures. New York and St. Louis, in a race. St. Louis was dis- tinguished by — a cardinal's hat! The cartoon got into one edition. Then a hurricane swept through the office I which the late blow at Miami was a zephyr. The next edition contained another cartoon — by another cartoonist. It de- picted a gnome sitting on the branch of a tree painting the autumn foliage. The caption was ".Jack Frost." We wonder if Philadelphia's Roman Catholics are duly appreciative of the tender way in which their feelings have been coddled. A PLOT OF GROUND five feet by ten is not much for a garden. But to the children of New York's East Side, where crowded tenements spill their contents of humans and animals and general house-furnishings all' over the street, it can be a little paradise. Five feet by ten: but fifty square feet of earth uncontaminated by glass bottles and old shoes; fifty square feet of dirt — good dirt, not nasty dirt; fifty square feet of property in the confines of which the tempo- rary owner is his own master. He may plant radishes to eke out the family larder or American Beauty roses to soothe his own soul. He puts the seed in the ground and before his eyes the miracle is enacted; the seeds sprout, the sprouts rise, the leaves open, the buds appear, the flower and fruit follow in their time. This cycle of the year, ignored as com- monplace by more fortunate ones, is brought into the slums of New York under the auspices of the New York Plant, Flower, and Fruit Guild; the gardens are on Rockefeller In- stitute land, in Avenue A. Twelve years ago, when the plan was first tried out, eighty children responded; this year a thousand came and two hundred had to be turned away. But there are other empty lots and vacant corners in the city. Surely this is the most intelligent, the most far-sighted, and the most profitable use to which such places, ordinarily the repository for every sort of refuse, could be put. WE HAVE WELCOMED the Crown Prince of Sweden, and Trudy, and Mother Corson, and Suzanne, and Queen Marie. Broadway has cheered, and ticker tape has feathered the air; the khaki boys have marched, the bands have played, and Mayor Walker has welcomed the national guests with appropriate — brief — speeches. If only the Mayor could solve the subway problem as well as he solves the problem of welcoming speeches! An historian might interpret American popular psychology by studying the Sunday-supplement photographs of these crowds. As a matter of fact, Queen Marie, despite the enormous blare of newspaper publicity that foreshadowed her coming, did not get a tithe of the welcome that greeted Trudy, and not as much as did Suzanne. We have a fondness for tinsel crowns in these days, but we love the laurel wreaths of athletic championship still more. There was a time when America would have hissed a king or queen; that, doubtless, was silly, but linked with it was a passion for the men who fought tyranny in Europe which we might regain. We named streets after Kosciuszko; we sent a ship down the harbor to greet Kossuth; but in 1924 we refused to let Karolyi speak, and in 1926 we do not even know that behind Marie's fifty Paris dresses are the groans of thousands of political prisoners clapped into jail without trial, and the cruelty of Europe's rottenest "aristocracy."

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418 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 Tweedledum and Tweedledee THE indications are that the Coolidge Republicans will lose control of the Senate and probably of the House. We are strengthened in this belief by the tips being sent out from Washington from news sources favorable to Mr. Coolidge that, if the election goes against him, he will interpret it as having no possible meaning in regard to national policies. The various elections, it is being ex- plained on behalf of the President, have degenerated into purely local contests and, therefore, have no bearing what- ever upon any national issue. Nevertheless, knowing the ways of politicians, we are perfectly certain that if the election should result as Mr. Coolidge wishes it to, the heavens would ring with Republican assertions that the people have overwhelmingly sustained the President, his every wish, his every utterance, his every act, his every policy. That it is necessary now to discount defeat through the avenues of Coolidge publicity is proof that the White House expects the worst. Yet we, too, believe that the election, however it goes, cannot be interpreted as a mandate on any single issue, any more than could most of the recent primaries. This is not so much because +he elections have degenerated into local contests as because the opposition stands for nothing, offers nothing, and affords no hope of any constructive reforms. We do not doubt that those are correct who, like Mark Sullivan, declare that the Democrats do not wish to control Congress. If they did they would be called upon to think, to act, to be consistent, and to plan; and Heaven knows they are totally incapable of these things. Never did Con- gressional leadership so collapse as did that of the Demo- crats during the last session of Congress. The session seemed to begin brilliantly for the opposition. There were any number of openings in the armor of the Administration. The farm issue was at hand as if made to order, par- ticularly in its relationship to the tariff. Nothing happened. What leadership there was passed to, or rather remained w th, the insurgent Republicans. A couple of skilful, vigor- ous debaters on the Democratic side, such as are to be found by the dozen in the British Parliament, could have made the Administration as sick and sorry-looking as it de- served to be, providing, of course, that they were backed up by their party. But their party was without harmony as it is without guidance or principle. It not only upheld Mellon, it sought to outdo him in tax benefits to the rich. It had no policy of its own in regard to the war debts — or anything else. It is so shot to pieces on the question of the tariff that it is impossible to conceive of its drafting an honest or radical tariff-reform bill if it should control Congress. Why should there be a rush to vote for it? It is fortunate, therefore, that there are at least local issues in some States; that here and there a colorful per- sonality like that of "Al" Smith should stir public interest, and that in three States, at least, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, questions of civic righteousness should be presented to the electorate. So confused is the situation as to the Wets and Drys that there will be no possibility of either side's claiming a decisive v'ctory. In some cases the choice between the candidates is so poor that one should not be surprised if the vote should prove to be the smallest in years. Why, for instance, should anyone care whether Senator Willis, or his opponent, ex-Senator Atlee W. Pom- erene, is chosen to represent Ohio? Both are windbags of incredible dulness. In New York, on the other hand, the contest is between Senator James W. Wadsworth, Jr., and Justice Robert F. Wagner, a Tammany man of German an- cestry, of the same type as "Al" Smith. Senator Wads- worth is a militarist to the backbone, an imperialist, a de- vout upholder of the present order. He carries on the narrowest Remiblican traditions, but we must add that he does it with a boldness and directness most unusual in politicians, and we cannot withhold from him our praise for his courage in taking an unequivocal stand on the liquor issue. When it comes to the details of legislation he is useful in the Senate, yet his defeat is, we believe, most desirable. In Illinois, in Indiana, in Pennsylvania the issue is one of corruption in political life. Since the prospects are for the election both of Congressman Vare in Pennsylvania and of Colonel Frank G. Smith in Illinois, it is at least satis- factory to note that there is small chance of their being allowed to take their seats. The voting in those States and in Indiana where the Republican Party has been a mere tool of the Ku Klux Klan will be significant only as it indi- cates whether or not the American electorate is beginning to turn against the wholesale corruption in our public life. In Colorado there is a most interesting contest for the Senatorship between ex-Governor Sweet, a good liberal, and Charles W. Waterman, with the chances favoring Mr. Sweet. In Oregon there is a three-cornered fight, variously depicted as turning upon the Administration of President Coolidge and as not having anything to do with it. Senator Stan- field's independent candidacy in defiance of his party lead- ers makes the Democrats hopeful that they may obtain a seat in that State. In Maryland Representative Tydings is certain to defeat his Republican opponent, Senator Weller. In far-away Arizona and Nevada the sitting members, Sen- ators Cameron and Oddie, are opposed by able and vigorous Democrats whose election is much to be desired. As for Massachusetts, every possible effort is being made to reelect Senator Butler, whose candidacy is treated at length else- where in this issue of The Nation. However one may rate the statesmanship of David I. Walsh, no one who believes in the old-fashioned principles of liberty and free speech in America can vote for Senator Butler, who has demanded that there shall not only be no criticism of a President in war time, but that no unfavorable comment shall be per- mitted in time of peace. For the present the hope of political progress in Amer- ica continues to lie in the independent Senators of Repub- lican faith, headed by the veteran George W. Norris of Nebraska, who has again shown his high-minded patriot- ism by campaigning in Pennsylvania against Congressman Vare, the candidate of his own party. It is heartening, indeed, that this group will be reinforced by Governor Blaine of Wisconsin, by the reelection of ex-Senator Brookhart in Iowa, and of Senator Nye in North Dakota. If in their, hands should lie the balance of power in the Senate the country might rejoice. Meanwhile, this election merely em- phasizes anew the need for an honest and able third party, for lack of which our whole political life languishes. !i

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Oct, 27, 1926] The Nation 419 Cleaning Up the Slums HENRY FORD set sail with the magnificent assurance to get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas. Now comes Mr. August Heckscher sailing back to get the men and women out of the slums of New York by Easter — or thereabouts. The impulse in each case was, and is as decent and generous as the practical realization is dubious. But perhaps Mr. Heckscher has a better fighting chance. ;His proposal certainly deserves more than the shrug of the shoulders which the embattled realtors will give it. August Heckscher, as all the world knows, is one of those super-philanthropists indigenous to the American scene. His $4,000,000 Children's Foundation, his parks and his playgrounds, have given him no little front-page space, and have done no little good. When he proposed a $40,- 000,000 farm for educating slum children, New York City officials said that the money could be spent to better effect in the slums themselves. Whereupon, as a "special emis- sary" of Mayor Walker, Mr. Heckscher went abroad and proceeded to make a study of slum-reclamation projects in Europe — particularly in London, Berlin, and Hamburg. He found Berlin, for all the financial pressure she was under, putting $40,000,000 into housing for the poor last year, while London appropriated $34,000,000 for the same pur- pose. Both were municipal, not private-charity, enter- prises. Meanwhile, he points out, tenements in New York which were condemned in 1885 as unfit for human habita- tion are still good rent-producers, with forty years' de- preciation added to their unspeakable wretchedness. He finds that 70 per cent of New York families have incomes of less than $2,500 per year, thus utterly barring them from adequate housing facilities. In this impasse he proposes — take a deep breath — that "500 wealthy and public-spirited citizens each promise a contribution of $100,000 annually for five years." The State and city of New York shall jointly contribute a like sum over the same period. This will provide $500,000,000 "to get away to a real start on New York's most pressing and im- mediate problem." The total cost of eliminating the city's slums he places at $1,500,000,000. "The job could be com- pleted in from ten to fifteen years." He plans five-story "walk-ups," with perhaps some ten- story model tenements equipped with fool-proof automatic elevators. He plans buildings more attractive than the English type, with shade trees, playgrounds, and plenty of air-space between. For himself, Mr. Heckscher is said to have promised many millions of his personal fortune. Now, this is an honest and altogether generous pro- posal. The difficulties are practical ones, and reflect no discredit on Mr. Heckscher's praiseworthy revolt from an intolerable and degrading situation. He speaks the utter truth when he says: "New York's slums are a disgrace to the city and the nation. So are those of other great Ameri- can cities." Better a thousand times that his plan be car- ried out, whatever its shortcomings, than that nothing should be done at all. The first difficulty is to find 500 millionaires with even a tithe of Mr. Heckscher's sense of social obligation. Granting that they can be found, the next difficulty is to yoke them in double harness with the city and State gov- ernments. Governor Smith last spring proposed a housing law in which public authority should take the lead, with no philanthropy in the enterprise at all. The bill received very Wide and very favorable attention, including that of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The Republicans blocked certain cardinal provisions as a matter of practical politics, but who doubts that Governor Smith will return to the engagement? To this proposal Mr. Heckscher pays not the slightest attention, if indeed he has heard of it at all. Granted that the two plans have equal chances of ultimate realization, there is no question that a straight- forward job on the part of the State is infinitely to be pre- ferred to a quasi-charitable enterprise in which control falls between three stools. If undertaken by public legisla- tion, furthermore, all housing improvement would fall under some rough conception of regional planning; care would be taken, with the power to enforce it, that the elimination of slums in Manhattan should not mean their prompt de- velopment in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Under the Heck- scher plan this might readily prove to be the case. The task is too great, and the ramifications too wide- spread, to be solved successfully by private charity — even in nine figures. The Smith program is indeed the reverse of the shield of private charity. That the man on horse- back should fling a saddlebag of gold to the crowd still remains something less than justice. Free citizens should build their own houses, and should finance them by such levies as will tend to keep land speculators and bankers permanently off their horses. Until this day of reckoning comes, we must perforce welcome all honest slumming- parties. Investors, Beware ! THE Supreme Court has just rendered a decision which marks an epoch in American history. It has confirmed the confiscation by the Alien Property Custodian of some 4,500 patents, worth perhaps half a billion dollars, for which the nominal sum of $50 each was deposited in the Treasury. The Supreme Court admits that this is confiscation, but states that the confiscation of private enemy property is not unconstitutional, that the procedure did not violate the criminal law or commit fraud, and that the confirmation of the deal by President Wilson placed the sanction of validity upon it. The Supreme Court did not say, as in- deed it could not say, that the transaction was not grossly violative of international law. The patents thus acquired were distributed by the Chemical Foundation to the owners of the chemical in- dustry of the United States, who were thus more than re- paid for the propaganda money they had spent to mes- merize the public conscience. This propaganda has con- tinued throughout the years since 1919. The confiscation was perpetrated not for the benefit of the United States but for the benefit of private monopolists. Justice Stone, as Attorney General, in seeking to set aside as illegal so outrageous a piece of confiscation, remarked "It will be a dark day for this republic when public officials, charged with public duties and responsibilities, can do the acts dis- closed by this record without any consequences to them and to those who claim under them." For the first time in American histoiy the Supreme Court has upheld the confiscation of private property — as it assumes, in time of war. For one hundred and fifty years the United States has upheld the immunity from confisca- tion of private property in time of war. It must be said

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420 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 that Congress in 1917 and 1918 did not dream of departing from this tradition. But, persuaded and deceived by A. Mitchell Palmer, that arch-enemy of Bolshevism, and sup- ported by Senator Underwood, it passed an amendment in 1918 (on the allegation that Palmer should not be making profits for absent owners), conferring on the Alien Prop- erty Custodian the power of sale, "in like manner as though he were the absolute owner." This was loose language, and Messrs. Palmer and Garvan took advantage of it to per- petrate a raid on the private property intrusted to them as trustees. International law was smashed. The conse- quences will be borne by the owners of private property, both foreigners in the United States and Americans abroad, for generations to come. When they are robbed of their property in future wars, they may thank Messrs. Palmer and Garvan, who established the precedent which will be applied. Nor will it be necessary to wait for the outbreak of war. Mere political differences may lead to reprisals between nations and to the confiscation of private property without war. This patent confiscation took place several months after the armistice. It was done, therefore, purely in the interests of spoliation and greed, not for the pur- pose of winning the war. It is but a short step from the post-armistice confiscation of German and Austrian patents to the confiscation of patents of all other aliens, and from the confiscation o' foreign private property to the confisca- tion of domestic private property. The transaction is but another sign of the disintegra- tion of the foundations of capitalistic society. Those who have participated in the deal do not realize that they have created a precedent which undermines the security of all private property in the United States and of every Ameri- can investment abroad. That legal safeguard against con- fiscation which such investors had is now taken from them, and they are exposed to the whims and accidents of inter- national politics in a way never heretofore contemplated. Americans now have 11 billions invested abroad, increasing at the rate of perhaps a billion a year. Foreign governments confiscating any part of this property need only refer a protesting United States government to the decision of our Supreme Court in the Chemical Foundation case. We have made Russia and Mexico look like amateurs in the arts of confiscation. Peace in the Encyclopaedia OLD-TIME readers of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (we suspect there are many such) have long re- garded any one of the twenty-nine volumes of the Eleventh Edition as both the ideal hammock-book and far more satisfactory for the passing of a winter evening by the fire than any of the detective stories or romances com- monly recommended for such purposes. They will greet with glad accord the three new volumes which have just been issued and which seem to mark a return to the great traditions of the work. It is now sixteen years since the Encyclopaedia was completely revised and reprinted. During that time the proprietors have issued two sets of volumes before the present ones; and neither was satisfactory. "These Event- ful Years" was hardly more thai, a collection of competent magazine articles, and the volumes which constituted the so-called Twelfth Edition, prepared amid the hazes of war- time myopias, were not up to the standard of those which they were intended to supplement. Americanized adver- tising methods and an appeal to a wider audience than' the old Encyclopaedia had ever contemplated also exerted' an unfortunate influence. The planning was done from a| slightly journalistic angle; in the allotment of space there were obvious concessions to popular interest in matters of no more than temporary importance; in general the Britan- nica seemed to be abandoning its position of undisputable supremacy as a summary of the world's knowledge from the scholar's viewpoint in order to compete in the already overcrowded field of merely popular education. Fortunately no such criticism can be successfully urged against, the new volumes. One might, to be sure, pick some quarrels — though far fewer than formerly — with the proportionate space allotted to certain topics. Thus it is obviously absurd, sub specie aeternitatis , to allot four pages to recent developments in biochemistry and more than ten pages to the battle of Jutland; war-shadows still cloud many pages; but the work as a whole, judged by first tastes and tests, seems to be once more worthy of its great predecessors. The scholar in search of either a specific fact or that sense of refreshment which comes from the contem- plation of any subject treated with competent knowledge and detachment may turn to it feeling reasonably sure that in its pages he may, for the time being at least, leave the idols of the market-place far away. Occasionally, to be sure, he will be disappointed. Only a blind partisanship, com- pletely out of place in a work of reference, could have led J. C. Squire to leave James Joyce unmentioned in his article on recent English fiction or caused another curiously se- lected editor of the London Mercury, the author of the notice of Bertrand Russell, to devote the major part of the small space allowed him to a sneering attack upon Mr. Russell's intellectual integrity. Such lapses are rare and the majority of the articles are marvels of clarity, conden- sation, and objective presentation. The very titles of these articles reveal succinctly the direction of contemporary discovery, taste, and achievement. In the Thirteenth Edition, Freud was unmentioned, the Quantum Theory unheard of; today the latter gets three pages and the psychological system of the former two. Even in smaller things changes are recorded with minutest exacti- tude. Thus even in the last former supplementary vol- umes Theodore Dreiser was accorded only one line at the end of a paragraph which spoke in high praise of the novels of William Sydnor Harrison; in the present he has an article to himself, and that fact alone is more significant than anything which a critic or scholar can say of the novelist's reputation. The Britannica is a sort of Hall of Fame for men, for ideas, and for sciences. To win in it a niche is to have achieved a distinction as significant as any which either the degrees of a college or the acclaim of the populace can give. Whatever is there has had a certain significance in the world; whatever is not there lacks that special meaning. Curiously enough, the gigantic work begins by mak- ing itself ridiculous. This majestic panorama of the world's knowledge, this grand survey of the terrestrial globe from the Aaland Islands to the Zuyder Zee, this great cooperative effort of the patience and learning of our civi- lization is dedicated, humbly and "by permission," to a pair of amiable gentlemen neither majestic nor learned — George of England and Calvin of America. Not since the present Prince of Wales assumed his presidency of the Royal Society has any such cosmic joke been solemnly perpetrated.

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 421 America, Overlord of Europe By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD Paris, October 3 THE mess into which the United States has got as a re- sult of throwing over its wisest national policy in 1917 and entering the World War grows worse and not better. The dislike, yes, hatred, of Americans increases,* and not merely because of the debt problems. Even among Europeans who believe in the League of Nations and its future there are many who bitterly resent what they term America's forcing the League upon them and then with- drawing from it. That the League in their opinion is a great instrument for good does not prevent their sense of indignation as to the way in which it was given to them by Woodrow Wilson's insistence and because of the subse- quent refusal of America to share in its benefits. But that is perhaps the least of their grievances, for, paradoxi- cally enough, the longer the United States officially refuses to join the League the more is it forced by economic causes into playing a leading role in European life, which must inevitably lead to further entanglements and further friction. Thus our financiers have become the arbiters of the financial fortunes of half of Europe, and since our Gov- ernment practically compels our bankers (though dis- claiming the actual use of its power) to obtain its sanc- tion for any foreign loans, Washington is really in the position of saying when or whether help shall be extended to Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, and other countries. Even when permission is given by Washington, our Wall Street leaders arouse bitter antagonisms, as in Belgium, by insisting on the balancing of the budget and even, per- haps, indicating where the cuts should be made. That they are within their rights in so doing and are merely applying sound financial principles in the making of loans does not decrease the anger of the Belgians that the for- tunes of war have made America the only market for sur- plus money and the only place in which they can obtain adequate aid. They resent foreigners becoming the finan- cial dictators of their country, and for those foreigners, namely, ourselves, the position into which they are thus forced becomes one of increasing difficulty. The result is that Europe is slowly but surely being driven into an anti- American union which may yet have grave consequences if we continue trying to compel foreign nations to pay us their war debts and insisting that we will not reduce the tariff walls which prevent out debtors from paying us in goods — their only means of payment. Now, by another turn of the wheel of fate, the United States is being placed in the position of becoming the arbiter of perhaps the most important proposal for the peace of Europe ever made — the proposed Franco-German alliance, discussed at Thoiry by Messrs. Briand and Strese- mann. It is an open journalistic secret that these two gentlemen had no difficulty whatever in stating their re- spective points of view and reaching a general agreement. The difficulty was that when they came to discuss ways of accomplishing their program they invariably came up against the United States, usually in the form of the Ameri- * See Mr. Villard's America's Crop of Hate in The Nation for August 11, 1926. can Commissioner General of Reparations, Parker Gilbert. France needs money; Germany is willing to pay. But the German railroad bonds cannot be mobilized and sold without Mr. Gilbert's consent. More than that, they cannot be of- fered for sale in America, even if Mr. Gilbert should con- sent, unless our Government approves. Mr. Coolidge has already, in his official role of spokesman for himself — that is, in his Mr. Hyde role — declared that while, of course, the Government would not think, oh, dear no, of compelling the American bankers to its point of view, it would still look with disfavor upon the floating of the German railroad securities in America until the French Government has ratified the Franco- American debt agreement. This is nothing else than a deliberate effort to make use of France's plight to blackjack her into approval of the debt agreement. "You can't have this unexpected relief from Germany," says Mr. Coolidge, "unless you satisfy us first." Now, this may or may not be good tactics in obtaining what the American Government wishes, but one thing is certain: it is bound enormously to increase the dis- like of America and its government in France, if not in Germany. Moreover, it has put the United States into the position, for the moment, of blocking steps toward the stabilization of French finance and also of holding up what is, as already said, the most important move for real Franco- German peace in the memory of man. Nor does it minimize the situation to say that by hurrying the debt ratification the French can clear the way for their bargain with Ger- many, or that it will be only a couple of months at most be- fore the agreement will be ratified. A delay of even a week is a bad thing, for the psychology of Thoiry may vanish. It is, moreover, quite serious to allow the United States, at the very moment when it asserts its desire to keep out of all European politics, to be put into the position of passing upon what in the first instance is a strictly Franco-German matter. On the other hand, there is the danger that the sale of these bonds in the United States will transfer from France to America the onus of making Germany pay. What makes our position seem more hypocritical to Europeans is the fact that Mr. Coolidge has repeatedly stated that if Europe showed the will to peace the United States would help in every possible way. Thus, speaking at Cambridge on July 3, 1925, he said: If there be differences which cannot be adjusted at the moment, if there be conditions which cannot be fore- seen, let them be resolved in the future by methods of arbi- tration and by the forms of judicial determination. While our own country should refrain from making political com- mitments where it does not have political interests, such covenants would always have the moral support of our Gov- ernment and could not fail to have the commendation of the public opinion of the world. Such a course would be sure to endow the participating nations with abundant material and spiritual reward. On what other basis can there be any encouragement for a disposition to attempt to finance a revival of Europe? The world has tried war with force and has utterly failed. The only hope of success lies in peace with justice. Yet when a marvelous opportunity for this very thing

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422 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 offers, he says: Just wait until I take advantage of your fix to grind a pet ax of my own before I help. Dr. Strese- mann has already appealed to Mr. Coolidge. Speaking at Cologne on October 2 (since Thoiry) he declared that the words quoted above from Mr. Coolidge's speech of July 3, 1925, were, in his opinion, as applicable to the Thoiry pro- gram as to the Locarno treaties or the Dawes plan. No, replies Mr. Coolidge, France must sign on the dotted line first. So we get in deeper and deeper, always offending, usually blundering, leaving Europe more mystified and more vexed and finding ourselves more and more in the position of autocrat of the financial world. A sensible government would set to work at once to obtain a conference of all the nations involved. Here it is only fair to say that Mr. Coolidge faces an almost united sentiment in Congress, irre- spective of party, in favor of exacting the last penny from our former Allies. Rarely in the last thirty years, during which I have been observing our politics, has Congress been as united on any issue. To ascertain what the reason for it is would repay the most careful inquiry. Are the mem- bers reflecting home sentiment? If so, what makes their constituents so insistent? Is it due to the fact that they realize that we failed to win a single one of our objectives in the war, and that since the 77,000 dead cannot be recalled to life, they have a determination at least to get back the only remaining thing — the money? Well, of course, under the settlements as they stand America is not getting the whole of the money — nothing like it. And whether it takes two years or ten years Con- gress and the country will have to be made to see that they can never recover the total; that the idea th.it nations will continue to pay us for sixty-two years for a war which ended in 1918 is utterly preposterous. No man or woman of real common sense and fair knowledge can believe any- thing of the kind. As to that, sentiment among Americans abroad and Europeans of influence is united. If Mr. Mellon did not learn that on his trip to Europe then he is hope- lessly dull. He was told it by every banker and public man he met. Thomas W. Lamont sees it and so, it is safe to say do most of his colleagues in the big-business world. It is idle to point out that these bankers get their 7 and 8 per cent on the European loans they are now making, and to say that if they get such good terms the American Gov- ernment could have obtained better rates in the settlements. It could have had it insisted upon them. But whether the Allied nations should have given us better terms or not, the fact remains that we shall never see any considerable amount of the principal. Let us face that fact, hov disagreeable it may be! Meanwhile the thing remains a constant irritant, and constant irritants grow increasingly serious. I do no: mean to say that if we were to cancel our debts tomorrow we should immediately have the love and gratitude of all our European debtors. Far from it. From France I should expect no gratitude whatever. People who owe you money, whether individuals or nations, are the same. Nothing ruins friendships so quickly and thoroughly, and if you write the debt off as a bad one, be our friend cannot pay, he has an unhappy feeling that he has not done the right thing; or that anyway you wed it to him to help him out. That this sort of thing would result from our intervention into the war ought to have been foreseen be- cause there are precedents in plenty. I am told that John Morley said that the day America entered the war was the saddest of his life. I don't know if this is so, but it may well have been. Not, of course, that he wanted the Germans to win but that, great statesman that he was, he foresaw some of the inevitable consequences of America's crossing the ocean. There are written words of his which express his reprobation of the Treaty of Versailles and the way the Allied leaders were swept into situations they never dreamed of when they entered the war. No one can yet surely tell where we shall all land if this debt situation continues; how deep the bitternesses will go, how lasting and harmful the animosities. It is at present a mess, utter and complete, and no exit from it can please all or satisfy abstract justice. The money is not worth it if it could be got. Nor would a thousand times as much gold compensate us for the hate being engendered, for it may take generations and gen- erations to overcome what is already there. The cancer will grow. It is not benign. Even in England our best friends feel increasingly hurt that we ask so much more of them than of the other Allies. They are too good sports, most of them, to say so, but the hurt is there. Capacity to pay! They laugh at it. How can capacity to pay be fixed in 1926 to measure capacity to pay in 1936, or 194G, or 1956, or 1966? No, no! Those Americans who want to safeguard what remains of good-will toward us in a war-wracked and war-cursed world must gird up their loins and go to work. No matter where abstract justice or technical rights may be, the debts have got to go. They will in time by the acts of others, if we do not move. But when we move, let us demand and get in return such things as disarmament, the abolition of poison gas, the submarine, the war airplane, and other things we have a right to ask, since in these inventions of the devil lie not only the seeds of other wars but the genuine possibility of the complete destruction of our modern civilization. The Saints on Stained Glass Bj HELENE MULLINS saints on stained glass windows have an air Of charming affectation, for they seem To have endured strange sorrows in a dream, To have in dreams had lovely griefs to bear. Perpetually faithful and sine They cultivate no wit nor subtlety To elouc themselves in any mystery, They are as passionless as they appear. Each with a halo and a wistful face, They bow before a cross or lift their eyes Above an empty cross to empty skies, And all their attitudes are full of grace. The saints on stained glass windows are like old And vivid legends; time is powerless To ieave on them one mark of its caress, To disarrange their garments by one fold. Each with a pride as if about to pass Into some other world, each with amazing Credulity, perpetually gazing On some bright vision just beyond the glass.

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 423 Daugherty at the Bar By EDGAR MELS THE aroma of politics hung heavily over the trial of Harry M. Daugherty and Thomas W. Miller for con- spiracy in connection with the return of $7,000,000 in stock of the American Metals Company to the German owners, the Mertons. The ghost of a former President, Warren Gamaliel Harding, stalked into the juryroom and listened to the deliberations of twelve more or less good men and true. The awe of a name, the fear of hurting a political party, the "what-of-it" feeling which has followed every expose of the Ohio Gang — all these combined are responsible for the disagreement of the jury after sixty-six hours of wran- gling, debating, and — sleeping at the Hotel McAlpin at gov- ernment expense! The trial was a record breaker in many ways — some not pleasant to contemplate. Presided over by a learned judge, prosecuted by Emory R. Buckner and six young men who had reputations to make, defended by a brilliant crim- inal lawyer and a learned but cautious barrister, the trial was one of the most expensive recorded in the southern district of New York. It cost the Government a full $100,000. It cost Daugherty $50,000, at least. It cost Colo- nel Miller more than $50,000. Buckner had labored long, perhaps even lovingly, over the evidence. He had gathered it from the four quarters of the world: from Germany, from Switzerland, from Ohio and Boston and Washington and New York. It was docu- mentary evidence, verbal evidence, but mainly circum- stantial evidence. And circumstantial evidence is ap- parently hard to grasp and harder to digest so far as juries are concerned. So far as the direct evidence was concerned, it resolved itself into assertions that Colonel Miller had done this and had not done that; that Daugherty was an utter ignoramus; that Senator Goff was the villain in the play; and that John T. King was a shrewd yet generous person of the Republican persuasion. The Government showed clearly that King had asked a percentage for getting the claim through the Alien Cus- todian's office. In this he was within the law. He had asked Jesse Smith to use his influence with Daugherty. Certain moneys were paid; certain Liberty bonds were turned over to King, some to turn up at Daugherty's bank in Washington Courthouse, others in brokerage accounts of Miller. It came out that Daugherty had destroyed cer- tain ledger-sheets and other documentary evidence. The most damaging evidence was that which traced some of the Liberty bonds to Miller. Apparently this made the case for the Government a certainty. That it did not is a wonder, for here was about the only direct and uncon- troverted evidence of the whole trial. It is at this juncture that subconscious politics and the memory of Harding ap- peared on the scene — to remain to the very end of the trial. It is known that two of the jurors refused to vote for the conviction of Miller on the ground that they knew or surmised they knew that the bonds in question had been used to pay a Republican campaign deficit and that Miller came by them honestly. The same held true of Daugherty's destruction of the ledger-sheets of his bank. Here again the G. O. P. legend came into being. Mai Daugherty ad- mitted, almost sotto voce, that the bonds his brother ob- tained 'were given for a political purpose. So the jury decided that a dead President's good name was at stake, and they gave the defendant the benefit of the doubt. The preparation of the case for the Government has been called brilliant. The presentation was not — very. Why did Buckner not follow up the trail opened by Mai Daugherty? Why did he not ask a few leading questions about Harry Daugherty's amazing written statement, when he at first refused to appear before a grand jury — that by speaking he might have to drag in the name of Harding, whose lawyer, he, Daugherty, had been? Why did not Buck- ner ask from whom Miller received the bonds, and why? Was Buckner afraid? Did he fear that perchance the Administration which named him Federal District Attorney might be smirched? Had he asked a few leading questions he would have opened up a flood-gate, the public would have had a real sensation. The Nation, in a series of two articles on the Alien Custodian scandal, on April 14 and 21, and again on May 19 in an article on Daugherty, pointed the way to Buckner. The Nation stated among other things that Colonel Miller had obtained the incriminating Liberty bonds from Vin- cent A. Carroll, city prosecutor of Philadelphia. Carroll sat in the courtroom for two days. Buckner could have placed him on the witness stand. He could have asked Carroll from whom he received the bonds he afterward delivered to Miller. Why did Buckner not follow such a course? He might have brought to light the story told in The Nation last April— that Ned Thurston, of the Republican State Committee of Massachusetts, a friend of King, had left the bonds in Carroll's office for Miller. Buckner might have ascertained that the bonds were given to pay a deficit in the Senatorial campaign of T. Coleman du Pone. Why did not Buckner summon J. J. Roskob, head of the General Motors, a Du Pont concern? Buckner might then have corroborated the Carroll-Miller story. Was the name Du Pont the stumbling-block? Now as to Daugherty. Did Daugherty destroy the ledger-sheets to save himself? Did he destroy them to save Harding's good name? Or did he invent the Harding leg- end as a camouflage — as a master-stroke of cleverness — to explain the otherwise unexplainable? I have Daugherty's own word for it that Jesse Smith, his "collector," to quote the former Attorney General, de- faulted in $300,000 he had gathered for Daugherty. Mai Daugherty confirmed this indirectly when he stated on the witness stand that he and his brother had tried for some time to get Smith to give an accounting of moneys due them. What moneys? Smith had no income outside that which he gathered in devious ways in Washington. Smith got bonds from King — that was proved in court. He de- livered them at the Washington Courthouse bank. That was proved. But why should he have turned them over to Daugh- erty's bank when he could have sold them elsewhere?

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424 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 Was Smith's "special account," which was destroyed with the ledger-sheets, a blind? And if so, for whom or what? That Mr. Harding had any connection with this account in any form, I will not believe. The alternative is that the account was used to pay off the one-million-dollar deficit of the Harding-Coolidge campaign of 1920. A Republican Senator of the highest reputation for honesty, who stands high in the counsels of his party, told me last spring that the graft of the Ohio Gang paid this deficit. Did Buckner know this? If he did, why did he not call Will Hays, who at the time of the cam- paign was Republican National Chairman? If he did not, why did he not follow the lead opened by Mai Daugherty's testimony? The greatest disappointment from a governmental viewpoint was Richard Merton, its principal witness. Buck- ner undoubtedly expected him to tell much that Merton did not, or would not, relate. Merton was a badly scared witness, despite his mental brilliancy. There were many reasons for this. Perhaps he feared Steuer's cross- examination would bring into the limelight that he was not Merton at all but Richard Moses, son' of an oi-thodox Jew who left his millions to his children with the strict pro- vision that they could have the money only if they remained orthodox. As the children had social aspirations, they transferred the millions to incorporated business organiza- tions, thus voiding the provision of their father's will, and then changed their name. A London Jewish paper summed up the situation thus: You may change your name to Merton from Moses, But heaven knows, you can't change your noses. At any rate. Merton undoubtedly was a happy man when he was permitted to sail. That he will return in case there is a retrial can be answered in the negative. The world does not like a squealer — and Merton squealed. Should there be a retrial there may be a new develop- ment. Miller was desperately anxious to take the stand. He wanted to tell where and why he got the bonds, but his counsel would not let him. If he is placed in jeopardy again he will probably take the witness stand. Then watch the political fur fly. Silent Cal's Silent Partner By A BOSTON JOURNALIST SENATOR WILLIAM M. BUTLER of Massachusetts, Silent Cal's silent partner, is petitioning the people of his State to renew his lease on the Senate seat which was vacated two years ago by Lodge's death and givei to Butler by a follower who then occupied the Governor's chair. Butler has none of the sporting blood in his veins that frequently rushes to the heads of his distinguished namesakes, Smedley D. and Nicholas Murray. Fertility of intellect, glibness of tongue, and an ingratiating manner are a few of the qualities which this successful lobbyist and mill master lacks, but as the cause is a noble one, to spare President Coolidge the humiliation of being repudiated in his home State and to perpetuate the grip now held by the New England textile interests on the United States gov- ernment, Butler is carrying his yoke manfully and piously. Hitherto, Senator Butler's political career has been under cover. A lobbyist by instinct and training, Butler is in his own element when he is pussyfooting among am- bitious legislators, in pursuit of privately negotiated favors for public-service corporations and the textile interests. In emerging into the murky daylight of American politics, Butler probably reasons that if Calvin Coolidge can run the gantlet of public scrutiny, anybody can. In this, Butler's first trial as a campaigner, the opposi- tion is annoying. David I. Walsh, Democrat, is an earnest and vivid spellbinder who expounds the benign principles of Thomas Jefferson with rather blunt and disconcerting references to page and paragraph in the record of the cor- poration-controlled Administration at Washington. Walsh has a phenomenal record as a vote-getter. Thousands of Republicans indorse him whenever he enters the field. In 1918, in the contest for the United States Senate, he de- feated the late John W. Weeks. Walsh made his most amazing run two years ago, though he was beaten for the Senate by the venerable Frederick H. Gillett. Butler had then been threatening to oppose Walsh. But Harding died and Calvin Coolidge, who like Butler received his political training and advancement under the political banner of the late Senator W. Murray Crane, millionaire manufacturer and political boss, was elevated to the Presidency. Butler was immediately called to Wash- ington to steady the strong Presidential right arm. Sub- sequently, Butler proved his political ineptness as director of the Cleveland convention which nominated Coolidge, and as a reward for his clumsiness was made chairman of the Republican National Committee. He had to postpone his Senatorial career, and in 1924 the President drafted Gillett, then Speaker of the national House, for the Massachusetts fight. How dangerous Walsh turned out to be, even in that year, may be judged by the balloting for Senator which resulted as follows: Gillett, 566,188; Walsh, 547,600; Gil- lett's plurality, 18,588. As there were 12,716 votes cast for the Socialist candidate, and 22 scattering, Gillett's plurality over all was a slim total of 5,850 in an aggregate of more than a million ballots — this in the year when Coolidge's plurality over Davis in Massachusetts was more than 400,000. Butler asks his constituents to observe the wave of prosperity which has descended on the land, as reported to the White House spokesman by eminent bankers and trust magnates and faithfully recorded in the faithful press. A slightly discordant note is apparent from the New England textile centers, including Senator Butler's home town of New Bedford, where the workers in Mr. Butler's four cotton mills have been out on the pavements much of the time for the past year. In order to improve the condition of his mill employees, Mr. Butler was one of those who strongly urged that the cotton schedule in the Fordney-McCumber Tariff be raised to 45 per cent. The immediate benefits of this measure were reflected in the extra and stock dividends de- clared by Mr. Butler's companies, until the buying public went on strike against high prices, when it became neces-

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 425 sary to curtail production. In intimate talks to the unem- ployed textile workers, the Senator is assuring them that everything will be all right as soon as he is elected and can induce to use his executive control over the tariff to jack the cotton rates up still higher. Assembling the incidents in Mr. Butler's life story in an orderly way, beginning with his birth on "Johnny Cake Hill," New Bedford, sixty-five years ago, the biographer finds nothing remarkable from the time, at the age of five, he sat on the knee of U. S. Grant, whose Administration held all records for corruption prior to Harding, until our hero arrived on Beacon Hill, Boston, a youthful member of the legislature. Butler was a success from the start. In early youth, he was a bookkeeper. A cashbook and ledger were the primer of the preacher's son in the struggle for fortune and fame. Later, he studied law — and hung out his shingle in the old whaling town of New Bedford. It was as a fledgling lawyer that he went to the legislature. He played the game, and so ingratiated himself into the esteem of the public-service corporation and big industrial interests, with private axes to grind, that they moved heaven and earth to elect him to the State Senate, and soon had him installed as presiding officer of that body. It is on the upper branch of the Massachusetts Legisla- ture that the interests depend to kill all legislation which the House passes that they regard as inimical to their pocketbooks. The corporations have always controlled the upper body and have used great discretion in the selection of its presidents. William M. Butler proved eminently sat- isfactory, and so later did Calvin Coolidge, who also once presided over the Massachusetts Senate. In time Butler, though unknown to the general public, came to be regarded among the gentry who make politics their business as the most powerful under-cover politician in the State. For more than thirty years he did not aspire to public office. But Butler, whose corporation-law practice grew more and more remunerative, had a finger in the political pie all the time. If "Uncle" Murray wanted a politician's head, Butler saw to it that the decapitation was neatly performed. If there was a Speaker of the House, or a President of the Senate to be chosen, "Uncle" Murray made the selection, and Butler saw that it was accepted. Upon the death of Murray Crane, Butler became the recognized under-cover leader of the Crane forces. The Crane crowd never liked Lodge, with whom for many years it had to divide control of the party in Massachusetts. In their later years, Crane and Lodge were often out of step, notably on the League of Nations issue. Nobody denies that, in his own furtive sphere, backstage State politics, Butler was a skilful worker. He was introduced to national politics as soon as Coolidge, following the death of Harding, returned to the Willard Hotel as a temporary White House. Butler flitted in and out of the Presidential suite for a few weeks, then retired to his private yacht and awaited his appointment as the Coolidge convention man- ager for the approaching campaign. Coolidge had no opposition for the nomination. Corral- ing enough delegates to assure this required no spe- cial sagacity or aptitude. In his first real test as a political manager on a national scale Butler was a total loss. He tried to boss the job of nominating Coolidge's running mate by the domineering methods in vogue in his New England cotton mills. After working himself into a nerv- ous frenzy in abortive attempts to nominate first Borah, Lowden, for the Vice-Presidency, with both men re- fusing to accept, Butler then trotted out the aged keynoter of the convention, Representative Theodore L. Burton, and he was rejected. When finally the White House telephoned the su.uMrestion that Dawes be nominated as the only way out of the dilemma Butler accepted with bad grace. The delegates named Dawes. Butler grabbed his hat, turned his back on the convention, and left the hall. In only one objective did Butler succeed at the Cleveland convention, and this was by virtue of his influence as the new party boss in his home State. He showed his vindictiveness against Lodge, inherited from Crane, by handpicking the Massachusetts delegation and relegating the senior Senator from Massachusetts to the background, thus humiliating a better man. Echoes of the Butler-Lodge feud are heard in the pres- ent campaign. Wilfred W. Lufkin, Collector of the Port of Boston, was appointed through Lodge. The collectorship is the biggest political plum in New England. Lufkin was begrudgingly reappointed by the present Administration because Butler feared to antagonize the remnant of the Lodge following on the eve of election. The story is that if Butler is elected, every Lodge man will walk the plank. The death of Lodge occurred a few days after the last Presidential election. Prominent Republicans of the State and nation turned out for the obsequies. One of the cynics among them was heard to remark: "It looks like another landslide for Lodge." Among the professional mourners was Brother William M. Butler, sworn enemy of Lodge in life but very friendly toward him in death. Services were held in the old Unitarian Church facing Harvard College. Butler and Governor "Cunning" Cox were caught by a photographer of the Boston Post emerging from the edifice. The Governor was smiling happily. The two hurried back to Boston together, Butler going to his business office, the Governor to the State House. And almost before the under- taker had time to arrange the floral tributes on the grave of Lodge at Mt. Auburn Cox had announced his appointment of Butler as Senator. Upon Cox's subsequent retirement from public office he was made a vice-president of the big- gest national bank in New England, although the outstand- ing failure of the Cox administration on Beacon Hill was in the management of the State finances. Butler is sharp enough not to run on his own record. This is a rimless doughnut in the matter of constructive legislative achievements. As a young legislator on Beacon Hill thirty years ago he opposed every progressive bill that came his way. He twice voted against giving women the vote in municipal elections. He voted against the direct election of United States Senators. He voted against a bill to reduce the hours of street-railway employees from twelve hours to ten. No bill that Butler has ever introduced in the United States Senate has been acted upon, nor have there been many serious enough to merit consideration. Among the Butler bills and resolutions were one "To purchase painting entitled, 'Our Glory — the Battleship Oregon' " ; another "to survey Inner Oak Bluffs," where he has his summer home; another "to authorize an appropriation for reconditioning the U. S. S. Nantucket." He also introduced resolutions "for the participation of the United States in the Third World's Poultry Congress" and "for display of our national flag in United States courts."

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426 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 This is the positive side of the Butler record in the Senate. The negative side is somewhat more imposing. He voted against the Walsh report on the oil scandal and in favor of whitewashing Teapot Dome. He voted against the motion for a Senate investigation of Mellon's alum- inum company. He voted against a resolution for investi- gation of the alleged monopolization of electric energy by the General Electric Company. When the President nomi- nated Charles Beecher Warren, one of the chief agents and promoters of the beet-sugar trust, then under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, for Attorney General, Senator Butler not only voted for confirmation but made a feeble and futile effort to lead the Administration fight to save Warren on the floor of the Senate. Butler voted to untax wealth right down the line when the revenue bill was under consideration. He voted to lease the Government's $150,000,000 plant at Muscle Shoals to private interests; in other words, for selling out to the power trust. When the resolution was first introduced to consider appointment of a Senate committee to investigate campaign expenditures, Senator Butler voted against it, but switched later, when it was obvious that the measure would pass, reluctantly giving his indorsement to the investigation in view. Later, when Senator Neely, West Virginia, introduced a resolution denouncing the primary scandals in Pennsylvania and Illinois and proposing to put the Senate on record against campaign expenditures of more than $25,000 by a candidate for the Senate, Senator Cameron, Old Guardsman, talked this measure to death, orating on the Verde River irrigation scheme until the gavel fell. The New York World reported next day that the first Senator to grasp the hand of Cameron and to congratulate him on his noble effort was Senator Butler of Massachusetts. But reactionary Senators no longer make their records an issue. If the opposition asks Butler about his record, he solemnly warns the people of Massachusetts to stand by Coolidge like the God-fearing men and women they are. As Butler remarked in the Methodist Tabernacle at Oak Bluffs: "Now is the time to show that righteousness exalteth a nation." The Immigrant Press at Election Time Bv ALBERT PARRY GLENN FRANK has remarked: "The time will probably never come when English will be the one language spoken and written in the United States." These words were uttered in 1920, when the i..uota bar- rier for the immigrants was not yet invented. Five years of the Johnson atrocities, launched in 1921, failed, however, to diminish the use of foreign languages in the United States and did not affect to any noticeable extent the powers of the foreign-language press in America. One-tenth of the population of the United States is still served by the foreign-language press. The latest statistics show over 900 newspapers and magazines, published daily, weekly, semi-weekly, monthly, and semi-monthly in thirty- seven different languages, other than English, in various cities and towns of the United States. This fact has great political significance, for there are millions of voters among the readers of these papers and magazines. The two major American parties are aware of this. When dates of general or local elections draw near, the press serving the strangers is favored by the hungry glances of the party campaign managers no less than the great American dailies serving the natives. Strange to say, there still are naive campaign man- agers in both camps, Republican and Democratic, who imagine that they will get all the space in the foreign-lan- guage press they need (and of course all the votes of its readers) by merely sending to the editors glowing circulars with candidates' biographies and speeches marked: "For Immediate Release." When an editor comes across a bulky envelope of such nature in his mail he is not likely to call upon anyone of his small and overburdened staff to translate the item from English into the language of his paper. True, most of the immigrant sheets are fed with translations from English. For almost all of their ne>vs they depend on the American dailies. I knew a case where a New Yo*-k Rus- sian daily waited for the next morning's Times to translate the news of a slight rain! The foreign-language journalists will translate weather, murders, fires, cases of rape, and news about their home countries, but not American politics. Speaking of the Czecho-Slovakian press in this country, Edward Hale Bierstadt lamented: Small space is devoted to American politics. The immi- grant does not quite understand, and little effort has been made to help him. Even a Presidential election takes third or fourth place in the news matter. This is due rather to the neglect of the immigrant by the native-born than to any constitutional apathy on the part of the immigrant himself. The case of the Czecho-Slovakian press holds for the papers of other nationalities in America, with a few excep- tions. As to the causes of it, the immigrant's apathy, in our opinion, has more to do with the phenomena than the native-born's neglect, and this apathy is quite plausible and forgivable, even to an American eye of more or less in- telligence: the foreign editors, like any editors, look for news; weather, murder, fire, and rape are news, but Ameri- can politics is machine made and therefore not news. The American public itself is coming slowly to a realization of this; the foreign population of the country realized it much earlier, with the help and encouragement of their editors. But the party campaign managers still believe in the ir- resistible powers of their circulars. Some of them still do not know that foreign editors are not always as dumb as they sound when they speak English. They also do not know that an average foreign journalist in America hates the sight of typewritten news — he would rather translate two columns of dry material from a newspaper than a short paragraph of most lively and amazing happenings from a typewritten or mimeographed sheet. The campaign man- ager should see the bored expression with which the aver- age foreign editor views his "For Immediate Release" and

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 427 with which he releases the circular into his waste-b Few campaign managers, either of the Republican creed or of the Democratic variety, realize how far away many foreign-language editors and iheir subordinates keep themselves from American life, and how crude their knowl- edge of the native language, customs, and polities is. nam Mitrie Rihbany, the editor of Kowkab Arm a Syrian newspaper in New York, confesses in his auto- biography that at the time of the Presidential electioi L892 he, hearing cries of Democrats that Harrison was beaten because "he is in the hands of the monopolists, who grab the people's money and put it in their own pockets." thought that since there was a city of Minneapolis "the Minneapolists were the highway robbers." Yet this editor showed more interest in American politics than the average foreign-language journalist before or since. He prided himself on being a staunch Republican and he enlightened from time to time his Syrian audience with "learned" edi- torials on all the sides and questions of American politics! Some years ago there was a Russian editor in New York who directed bitter attacks against "the dirty hire- ling of capitalists, the Presidential nominee Mr. Scatter- ing." He thus understood the reports of a Republican convention, where, during one of the ballots, two or three candidates received fewer than half of the total votes, while the rest of the ballots were recorded as "Scattering." II Fortunately for themselves the campaign managers do not restrict their efforts to the editorial departments of immigrant newspapers. They attack the advertising de- partments as well, and here they do get some results, first, because they distribute dollars and cents along with the eloquence, and, secondly, because the men who run the pub- lishing and advertising departments are of a more busi- nesslike and more Americanized type than the men of the editorial departments. Consequently the campaign man- agers' eloquence finds its way into the foreign print, mostly in the form of advertisements and sometimes in the form of editorials and news items dictated to men on the editorial staff by men from the advertising department. On the whole, campaign managers get their dollars' worth from the advertising departments of foreign news- papers, but even here mistakes were and are rampant. Politicians feel that the foreign-language press is a con- siderable power, which can be used by them to a very good advantage, but they do not know how to use it. The foreign publishers in their turn do not know much about American politics, their acquaintances among politicians not ranking above petty district leaders and other small fry. State and national committees (and these plan and distribute advertising) are entirely out of their reach. Consequently, intermediaries early appeared in the field, men who could easily, if they wished to, take advantage of the ignorance of each other of the two sides. The most notorious type of such a go-between was found in Louis N. Hammerling, head of what was formerly the American Association of Foreign Language News- papers. This imposing title condoned nothing more than an advertising agency, which started with no newspapers under its control but soon had several hundreds of them in its fold. Hammerling, a poor Austrian immigrant, was formerly connected with a small Polish newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and was also employ, solicitor of ad- vertisements for the United Mine Workers' Journal. Local politicians east an appreciative eye upon him, and Mr. Hammerling did not let the opportunity slip by. Soon we find him in New York, where in 1904 he took charge of the foreign-language press for the Republican Party in the campaign of that year. Apparently be delivered the goods expected, for he continued to serve this party through the year of 19 16. In 1908 he decided to settle in New York permanently in order to milk the fat cow of the Republican Party and to bully the simple calves of the foreign-language press in a more efficient way. He bought the so-called Italian- American Advertising Agency, changed its name to the high-sounding one of the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers, and began his work. In 1912 the Republican National Committee distributed through him over $100,000 worth of advertising. In 1916 the Republicans bought through Hammerling 30,000 lines in the dailies, and 40,000 lines in various other publica- tions, 70,000 in all, for which Hammerling paid to the foreign publishers $52,500, but for which he charged the G. O. P. over $100,000. We must add that Hammerling made the foreign publishers accept a good part of the $52,500 in stock issued by his organization, and they never saw either dividends or their investment back. Frank Zotti, the editor of' the Narodrii List, a Croatian newspaper, related of Hammerling's ways with small papers : As soon as they would get the 30-inch advertisement for the second insertion they would receive a letter from Hammerling stating that their paper has no circulation and that the company wants to withdraw, but that he will use his influence so that the company will keep the adver- tisement, but that he cannot pay the rate. He would pay him a little less rate, if he gets the advertisement again, but he would advise the publisher to keep the "ad" for the time being, and show his good-will. In this way a good many of those poor fellows kept the "ad" for fifty-two weeks and got paid for two weeks. This particular instance is cited in connection with the commercial advertising distributed by Hammerling, but he used similar methods with equal success in his efforts to make the foreigners vote for the Grand Old Party. These methods helped Hammerling to amass a great fortune, and when, under fire for his alleged pro-German propaganda, he was compelled to leave this country, he returned to the land of his humble birth as a much-respected millionaire. In his dealings with the press he acquired a taste for journal- ism, and now, with the money of the fooled Republicans and cheated immigrant publishers, he runs his own news- paper, the New Reform, in Krakow, Poland, with a circula- tion of 100,000. Yet he was seldom cursed by his victims. The ban- quets arranged by him at the heyday of his glory were attended by distinguished Republicans, a few Cabinet mem- bers among them, who eulogized Hammerling as "presi- dent of 500 or 600 foreign newspapers," one who never failed to deliver the goods at elections. The foreign- language publishers appreciated the advertisements, which without him they would never get and for which, instead of the paltry twenty-five or fifty cents of other agents, he paid them sometimes as high as seventy-five cents per inch. Foreign publishers tell me that their rates stand now at

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428 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 the point to which Hammerling brought them, and they mention Hammerling's name in warm voice. When a few months ago Hammerling arrived in New York on one of his mysterious trips he was greeted by most appreciative articles by most of the foreign-language newspapers — with a few exceptions. Ill These few exceptions warrant a special chapter. In- deed, if not for them, the situation of the foreign press in its relations with American politics would be wholly un- bearable. The intelligent minority consists largely of the German and Yiddish newspapers. We note that German newspapers, almost the only national group of all the foreign papers in America, did not become clients and vassals of the almighty Hammerling, a German by nativity and mother tongue! The German editors and publishers of long and well-established papers are, as a rule, well versed in the politics and business methods of America, and neither campaign managers nor advertising agents can prey on them as easily as on editors and publishers of the more recent immigration. The German newspapers can be classed with the native American press in the way they treat American politics. American politics is news to the German editors. The chief of the New York Foreign Language Information Bureau said in a newspaper interview on the eve of the Presidential campaign of 1920: "Germans have been here so long that they are in local politics. The average reader of a German paper is much more interested in Bill Miller's chance for the town council Uian he is in the fate of the Kaiser." The Jewish editors appeared in this country much later than their German confreres, but what they lack in years of American experience they make up by their racial in- telligence and inborn shrewdness. The Yiddish papers dis- play some independence in their dealings with campaign managers. The newspaper with the greatest circulation — the Socialist Vorwacrts — is entirely out of their reach. The rapidly growing Communist Freiheit is closed to their en- deavors too. The other smaller papers, while open to traffic with the Republican and Democratic parties, are rapidly waning in influence. Yet even with them the campaign managers and advertising brokers are obliged to be decent. Twenty Years of Adolescence Bv MARION BACHRACH RECENTLY I heard a lecture alluringly entitled The Problem of the Adolescent — Can the Parent Under- stand? The amiable professor spoke with calrr assurance of the milestones which must be passed in the "normal" adolescent period. That was the time for testing one's wings, for leaving the home nest, for fitting oneself for a mate. Through rebellion against authority one came to achieve independence; through tentative loves one freed the libido from its home moorings. Even a little dabbling in radicalism was pardonable for adolescents. If one got burned sending off intellectual fireworks, one had all the more respect for Rotarians when the adolescent fever had passed. There never was a doubt in the professor's mind that the fever would pass. The impression he gave was that the passing would be swift and sudden. In movie phrasing there would "come a day" when from a welter of drunken orgies and socialistic meetings sedate men and women would emerge, as the professor put it, "psychically independent, emotionally free, capable of leading normal, heterosexual lives." As I left the lecture room my own image suddenly con- fronted me in a mirror. I was pleased with that glimpse of myself. I looked like the person I like to think myself — an intelligent and mature woman of forty with no nonsense about her. My clothes were smart and modish, but they were also suitable. My hair lay soft and well-groomed un- der my becoming hat. There was dignity in my bearing and a pleasant repose in my face. "Middle-age isn't so bad." I thought. "It's fighting against it that makes it ugly." Until suddenly I realized with a start what a pitiful fake this image was. For all my brave show of maturity was I really anything more than a bewiluered girl, tricked out in her mother's clothes; that pitiful, wretched, and yet vivid creature testing herself against the mysterious forces of the real world; that adolescent whose stormy inner life had been so neatly laid bare by the lecturer's scalpel? I might be an anomaly — but what I knew of my friends made me doubt it. Certainly I put up as good a bluff as any of them. It was fifteen years since I married my lovable and sympa- thetic husband. Our marriage had been a happy one. Our home was comfortable and well-ordered; our children were robust and jolly. I had a job. And I managed to conduct myself on most occasions with dignity and sense. But — I kept right on adolescing. The lecturer had a real feeling for adolescents — at least for young ones. He said, in substance, that their im- pulses were healthy and growth-promoting. It wasn't that they particularly wanted to get drunk or stay out all night or row with their families. Those things were only abor- tive, irrelevant symbols of their vigorous urge to cut loose, to stand on their own feet. That seems to me to fit old- time adolescents like myself, as well as the novices to whom his statements were confined. Basically my desires are the same as they were when I was eighteen, and as conflicting. They are only more sharply defined, more poignant, and they have perhaps found new "abortive and irrelevant sym- bols." I do not very often drink or stay out on wild parties, and my rows with my family are models of civilized reason- ableness. But am I any less rebellious now that I have a husband helping my parents direct my welfare? Am I more independent since I have two children? Have I been "emotionally freed" because I love three people, besides those I already loved at eighteen? My impulses are as healthy and as growth-promoting as they ever were. And their expression, though different, is just as absurd and inadequate as when I sauntered hatless on the campus, cut classes to moon by the lake, or smoked forbidden cigarettes in the dormitory bathroom.

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 429 Take first of all that matter of rebelliousness which is eo universal and so accredited a part of adolescence. As a licensed adolescent of eighteen I rebelled against my par- ents. They were unusually intelligent and understand folk. But they were my parents. It was therefore natu- rally imperative that I put them in their place by threaten- ing to leave home and work in a sweatshop, by joining the Socialist Party, and by filling the house with radicals and tobacco smoke. Mild enough manifestations of revolt, you must agree. But according to the experts in adolescent psychology, even such mild juvenilities should be over by the time one is — say — twenty. Yet, under my impressive mask of matronliness, there are days when I seethe with a revolt the intensity of which shames my wildest student upheavals. For look: I must revoll against my parents still, because to them I am still a child. My mother complains that my clothes are imprac- tical or unbecoming — unless she has chosen them herself. My father thinks my political opinions childish and imma- ture. They agree in criticizing the way I bring up my children. And to the old reasons for revolt is added a new one. I must rebel against my husband because to him I am not a child but (absurd!) a woman. And as a woman he expects me to pay my bills promptly and to accept all sorts of social and domestic responsibilities which I find irksome and irrelevant. So I fume and boil inwardly because my parents would deny me the privileges and my husband would demand of me the obligations of adulthood. You will already have classified me as a psycho- neurotic of the worst sort. But before I proceed to even darker revelations, let me remind you of one thing — no one suspects my infantilism. The admirable person I saw in the mirror of the lecture hall is the person my family and friends know. My mother has never guessed that I persist in wearing purple merely because she dislikes it. My husband doesn't know how I long to thumb my nose and put out my tongue when his partner dines at our impeccable table. "And capable of leading normal, heterosexual lives." The ultimate achievement of adolescence! I'm not sure that I know what a "normal" heterosexual life is. Judged by the usual standards I am neither prudish nor morbid and unpleasant. My parents revealed "the facts of life" to me at the approved time and in an approved manner. I believed them, and marriage and the birth of my children justified my confidence in their veracity. Yet do you think that my curiosity is satisfied? Or that, because I have been happily married for fifteen years, I have never had a vagrant fancy or never cast a longing eye on romance? True, I am a respectable woman and I do not underesti- mate the value of security. But surely I am not the first matron who has secretly believed herself a Pompadour wasting by a suburban hearth. "Psychically independent and emotionally free." Emo- tionally free! Well, so far as I know, I was never in love with an uncle or debauched by a nurse-maid. At the age of twenty I was free enough to fall in love with my husband and eventually to accept marriage and two children. It seems to me that with the proper adolescent period I left emotional freedom behind. I am an ambitious woman. But last year I gave up a chance for advancement and a trip to Europe because I could not bear the thought of a year's separation from my husband and children. Emotional free- dom— bosh ! I do not think it would be worth much to us if we had it. But I am sure that I at least am tied as tight as a hangman's knot and that freedom, and in fact maturity itself are but mirages that elude us through a lifetime of adolescing. In the Driftway RECENTLY the Drifter had occasion to look for some papers in a rarely visited cubbyhole and, much to his surprise, pulled out a bulky pile of envelopes, sealed, stamped, and addressed in his own handwriting to various friends. Except for a slight layer of dust, it was an im- posing pile of stationery, but the Drifter was completely baffled as to what it might be. One by one he turned over the letters in a daze until gradually the cold, clammy truth began to seep into his noddle. It all came back to him, not with the quick, clarifying flash with which a drowning man's past is said to disclose itself, but with an oozy, un- comfortable sensation like that by which, when hunting through the pantry in the dark for an odd piece of apple pie, one realizes he has dipped his fingers by mistake in a bowl of cold chicken gravy. ***** THE Drifter stumbled backward into a chair and, recon- structing the events of the past year, recalled that early in December, 1925, he had resolved to do his Christ- mas mailing early. He had bought a fine assortment of Christmas cards, made up a list of persons to whom they were to go, and sat down one night fully three weeks be- fore the 25th to prepare them for the mails. He did not stop until all the cards were safely inclosed in their en- velopes and the latter were sealed, stamped, and addressed. Then, as it was still too early to send out Christmas cards, the Drifter piled them neatly together, stuck them away in a cubbyhole — and never thought of them again. ***** WHAT to do? The Drifter's first thought was to write a little note of explanation, have it manifolded or printed, and then pop all these slightly belated Christ- mas cards off in fresh envelopes containing also the story of the delay. But this seemed like considerable work, be- sides which it would involve the purchase of a large batch of new stamps unless the Drifter undertook to pull off those already stuck on the sealed envelopes. This is all right in the case of one or two letters, but it is tiresome beyond that point and besides it leaves the envelopes look- ing a bit mussy. So the Drifter reflected further and de- cided simply to mail the envelopes as they were. His friends would blame the post office for the delay and would get a good bit of kick out of telling the story or by writing indignant letters to the newspapers denouncing the slow- ness of the mails. ***** BUT, thinking further and more craftily, it occurred to the Drifter that next Christmas was not so far away. Why not conserve the labor he had expended last December by carrying it forward to the coming holiday season? Fortunately, Christmas cards are not dated. The dealers are too wary for that — it would spoil the sale for any stock they had left over. So the Drifter put his pile of envelopes back in their cubbyhole. His friends will receive them for Christmas, 1926 — if he -does not forget again. The Drifter

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430 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 Correspondence Americanized China '^SbSLHbBL aS^EJ To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: Evidently the novelists are wrong on this point of the gracious manners of the Chinese. There is, however, an- other explanation of the bad manners of the Chinese delegates at Geneva [Nation 123:312]. It is just one more instance of the Americanization of China, which Mr. Gannett pointed out some time ago: Charleston, Ford, chewing gum, and now — bad manners. The chief Chinese delegate to the League is called Chao- Hsin Chu. Chu is his last name and the hyphen conies between his first and his middle names. The Nation, after all, is an American periodical ! Cambridge, Mass., October 8 CHAO-YlNG SllILL An Army That Liberates To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The Chinese people have been the most peace-loving and law-abiding people since the beginning of history. They hate particularly the type of militarism practiced by the North- ern selfish militarists who, since the revolution of 1911 which made China a democracy, have stationed all over the spiritual as well as physical provinces of the South. Chief among these provinces are Hunan and Hupeh. These militarists taxed, squeezed, and smuggled the very life and soul of the poor masses of people who live in this rich river valley of the Yangtze. The soldiers robbed the merchants, storekeepers, and eve . peddlers wherever they went. They were feared and hated. This hatred has thus penetrated and soaked deep and thoroughly into the hearts and bones of the people who inhabit a territory of the South run by the North. For fifteen long years the people have suffered and waited. Today their dreams have come true. The Southern forces have come to the rescue; everywhere are signs of mutual friendship between the soldiers from the South and the local people of all classes and walks of life. Their ideals and their aims are the same: Down with Militarism and Im- perialism, Uphold the Rights and Privileges of Citizenship. Not until they have succeeded with their march toward Peking and there wiped off the rotten root of imperialistic manipulations and set up a representative New China will they cease the present operations. I do not care whether the noble foreigners now living among us call these people of the South "Re«!s," "Bolsheviks," or "Ras- cals." They certainly do not rob the people, and the people are definitely with them. The Canton, or Southern, Government is not Communistic, Bolsheviki, Soviet, Red, Blue, or Yellow; it is Chinese pure and simple. Hani Frank Hsingchi Liu He Likes Us To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Why do you persist in making it i me to do without The Nati Just about the time I decide thai rch for truth and decency is a waste of time, and to transfer mj mis to Hot Dog or True Confessions, you come out witli some like Stephen Benet's King David or Harry Hervey's The Young Men Go Down. Now you print My Bis k Brother Mafeking. I have no language to express my enjoyment of it. If that isn't great writing, then I'm even a bigger idiot than 1 have sus- pected. Furthermore Harry Kemp's poem is magnificent. You should be careful. We are not used to fare of thi Shiner, Texas, October 6 Hartley H. Hepler Certain Books of Importance HERVEY ULLEM Israf el : ie Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe The most notable biography of our year. For the first time the complete story of the most lonely, mysterious, and romantic figure in American literature is given a memorable and convincing form. Much research has produced a most orig- inal book and one which shows the biographer as a powerful narrator of dramatic events as well as a critic and scholar. Illustrated. 2 Vols. No. ember 5. $10.00. flLPOUS HUXLEY Jesting Pilate: An Intellectual Holiday Rarer than a good travel book, this is a book of ;'icat personality, the adventures of the brilliant English writer round the world. The romantic color evoked from strange comers of the globe matches the author's zest for new sights, customs and ideas. $3.50. JOSEPH COLLENS )octor Looks at Love and Life The famous doclor-cntic speaks openly of the delicate problems of sex as they confront men and women, and the whole fabric of society, today. Modern problems, the course and fate of love, the relative values in American life, these are elements in a discussion whose viewpoint and con- clusions are as unusual and up-to-date as the problems themselves. $3.00. A Son of the Bowery: The Life Story of an East Side American Born of immigrant parents on New York's East Side, Charles Slelzle is known today from coast to coast. 1 he dramatic story of his rise is told ' Ins boyhood, his davs as a machinist, his instructive work for the Labor Movement, his development of new methods of social welfare. $3.50. HERBERT GORMftM A Victorian American — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ist modern life of Longfellow not only fIiows the famous poet in a new and intensely but it details richly a period in i replete with color. Mr. Gorman i \cellent use of new material and has able and vastly entertaining study. trated. $5.00. NKWATER Mr. Charles King of England The absurdities, vices and beauties of a fascinat- ing and disgraceful period form the background for an unusual study of the facile Charles II. Illustrated, octavo. $5.00. -^"'IggBWi^l' ET3- I I D I B When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Books and Plays Race By VIRGINIA MOORE A wild necessity to run Disturbs my body, day and night: I think the race is never won. Mine is an undiminished flight Up any hill. I sternly press To goals forever lost to sight. What zeal is this that grows no less? I understand the body's heat, But not the spiritual excess. Perhaps the spirit, beat on beat, Rarer than flesh, and greatly thinned, Is running races with my feet. Perhaps these two are closely-kinned : I and the disembodied wind. First Glance WILLIAM HADLEY, whose pleasant task it has been to edit selections from the correspondence of Horace Walpole and William Cowper for two new volumes of Every- man's Library (Dutton: 80 cents each), implies in his brace of prefaces that the distinction of being the best letter- writer in the eighteenth century, and therefore in all of English time, must belong either to Walpole or to Cowper. I do not question the honor thus paid to the eighteenth cen- tury; indeed, I would pay it greater honor by increasing its number of candidates. Pope, as Mr. Hadley makes clear, is out of the question. But there is Swift, among whose letters would have to be numbered the ones he wrote to Stella and Mrs. Dingley, and there is the more recently discovered Mr. Boswell. There are others too. It was a wonderful cen- tury. Yet there is reason for confining the argument to Mr. Hadley's pair. Not only are Walpole and Cowper perfect within their respective bounds, not only are they exhaustive of all the possibilities offered to men of their respective tempera- ments; they also, when taken together, come as near as two men could come to giving a perfect and exhaustive picture of the eighteenth century as it appeared to persons of genius. Walpole gives us the half we know better — the half inhabited busily and gaily by persons of the great world. In Walpole we get politics, gossip, "taste," dilettantism, and antiquarianism. Cowper, however, gives us something equally important and representative, for in him we get the solitary, the soul in retirement among little things, the mind beset with doubts and ecstasies and despairs. Walpole went skipping over Europe after this or that, and when he was in England administered a castle built to his taste and crammed with curiosities; Cowper crept early into the hole at Olney where most of his life he hid with the Unwins from the distractions of a world he could not discipline himself to endure. For Strawberry Hill there is the tiny study where Cowper went in the morning to versify and forget his troub- les; for the whirl of politics which so constantly interested the son of the first Prime Minister there is Mr. Grenville the candidate, who one afternoon visited Cowper- -of all per- sons— with a view to securing his "influence." For Wal- pole's exotic pets — goldfish with Chinese names and fancy bantams — there are Cowper's plain cats and hares and birds. For Walpole's ticket of admission to the halls of his castle there is Cowper's shrinking fear lest strangers find him out, there is his hope year in and year out that Lady Austen will become so angry with him at last that she will move away. I must confess that I cannot decide for myself between these two. Mr. Hadley makes more of Cowper's "artless- ness" and "simplicity" than I can; surely they are not vir- tues in themselves, and over against them at any rate could be set the equally simple passion in Walpole for satisfying his curiosity. Neither was artless, and both had nimbleness of mind in a degree hardly anywhere else to be met with in the world of letter-writers. Probably they are not to be compared at all, since they never meet and compete. "A Selection from the Letters of Horace Walpole, with Many Illustrations and Facsimiles from Old Prints and Con- temporary Sources," edited by W. S. Lewis (Harper, 2 vols.: $10), might have tipped the scales in favor of Walpole, since it is a beautiful work most competently produced — though it actually contains fewer letters, I believe, than the Every- man volume does. But it did not. I still cannut say which fellow is the more fascinating. Mark Van Doren Washington at Last? George Washington: The Image and the Man. By W. E. Wood- ward. Boni and Liveright. $5. George Washington, 1732-1762. By Rupert Hughes. William Morrow and Company. $4. The Family Life of George Washington. By Charles Moore. Houghton Mifflin Company. $5. IT was an ill service that Washington did the image-makers * when he kept a diary; otherwise W. E. Woodward could be lightly dismissed as a flippant slanderer. The most uncompro- mising realist is prone to cringe as Mr. Woodward in almost every chapter plucks the gaudy feathers with which worshiping or partisan biographers have bedecked and disguised the hero of the Revolution. But out of these brilliant pages — and they are brilliant — emerges the man — of the "Diaries." Mr. Woodward's Washington is a modern captain of indus- try in the making — unimaginative, eternally pessimistic, a little grasping, honest but hard in business dealings, dynamic, cun- ning in trade, a little snobbish, contemptuous of the common and courteous to the sacred herd. It is really a painting made from the homely tin-type of the "Diaries," and done with fidel- ity. Here, too, is the man of scrupulous integrity, fine courtesy in society, good intentions, and some vision. Here, also, we have the motif of his political career — hatred of democracy, indiffer- ence to the masses, a belief in government "by the well born and the wealthy." He was more interested in property than in human rights, which explains his alignment in the Hamilton- Jefferson controversy. Both Mr. Woodward and Mr. Hughes throw a white light on Washington's impatience with the Jeffer- sonians' plan for discrimination in favor of the original holders of securities in the funding fight, and on the story of his own profiting from the necessities of poverty-crippled soldiers sent out by the Ohio Company years before. Thus Mr. Woodward unfolds the wrappings and gets down to flesh. Inevitably he gives us a man who was essentially a

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432 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 an CM business man— a materialist. An unpleasant story, that of the eviction of the squatters who had settled in good faith on his Pennsylvania grant, when he got the benefit of their improve- ments; but that is tak.n from the "Diaries." However, Mr. Woodward does justice to Washington's business character, for he had the constructive even more than the speculative instinct, d executive genius. He farmed profitably, because scientifi- lly, and in his distillery made the best liquor in Virginia. Some may resent the reference to liquor, wine, gin, rum, brandy, but the steel engravings of a myth are less appealing than these pictures of a hearty human being sitting down to a heavy dinner washed down with beer and wine. Thus the wrappings fall. The "Diaries" were devastating to Parson Weems's perfect boy, and Mr. Woodward has irrep- arably damaged that picture of Washington on his knees at Valley Forge. He even summons good Dr. Abercrombie to smash the legend of his religious fervor. Thus, too, the perfect slave-owner of Lodge's imagining, who would neither buy noT sell slaves, turns out to be a myth. He did buy, and he did sell, and in the case of the ungovernable he sold them to the West Indies— the slave's literal hell. He did nothing to improve his slaves' minds or morals, and was apparently unconcrned with the promiscuous sexual relations on his plantation — except among his dogs. But he fed and clothed his slaves well, and forbade brutal treatment by the lash. These plucked feathers will suffice to she v wherein the book is iconoclastic. But it is more than that, for we have here the development of the economic basis of the Revolution. Sprinkled throughout are vivid little word pictures, like that of Patrick Henry deliv- ering his immortal speech. (But how does Mr. Woodward get the impression that Henry "believed in democracy to the bottom of his soul"?) Mr. Woodward has a knack for charac erizations in a sentence. Thus, "Jefferson's ideas have the subtle perma- nence of a cameo"; "Richard Henry Lee was the kind of man who, early in life, begins to look like a family portrait"; Sir William Howe "walked through the Revolution like a slow- paced cardinal walking through the dim corridors of the Vati- can"; Paine "wrote homely words" that "march across his pages like muscular freckle-faced men crossing a field." Quite a different book is Rupert Hughes's, which takes an almost virgin field and plows it thoroughly, cultivates it inten- sively, and brings forth much harvest. It is confined to the first thirty years. No one has delved so deeply and probed so patiently into this comparatively neglected period. Mr. Hughes has redeemed it. They were years of slow accumulation of acres, of soldiering and love-making, and here, too, many loved traditions of the school books meet with challenge, and some unpleasant stories are featured, albeit not without justification. The soldier rather suffers in the story of Fort Necessity, and while he of Braddock's defeat remains superhumanly courage- ous, he is not so superlatively wise; and the much-maligned Braddock, of whom an attractive portrait is given, emerges from these pages a rather brilliant, altogether lovable roue of fine soldierly qualities. A splendid, stirring story, this of Brad- dock's expedition, its gay camp with fashionable ladies compet- ing for the favor of the commander, the army stumbling and struggling onward over bogs, gullies, rocks, creeks, tortured by woodticks and a lack of liquor as they carve their way with axes through primeval forests. Mr. Hughes has gone deeply into the most unfortunate inci- dent in Washington's career — the killing of Jumonville and a company of Frenchmen claiming to be emissaries with a mes- sage. Few Americans realize that this was an international incident of the time, resulting in the , jblication of pamphlets, poems, official reports in France, baldly accusing Washington of "assassination." Mr. Hughes has examined the records, the pamphlets, the poems, the reply of Washington, and he presents them all for what they are worth. He evidently does not believe — who could? — that Washington knowingly ordered his men to fire on emissaries. He had reasons to assume them something else. It is possible of course that a mistake was made; the reader, having both sides fully stated, will judge for himself. More entertaining perhaps is Mr. Hughes's elaborate argu- ment to prove that Washington loved his friend's wife, Sally Fairfax. Mr. Woodward agrees. Mr. Charles Moore in "The Family Life of George Washington" scouts the idea, but touches the topic gingerly. Mr. Hughes, we think, makes good his case up to the point where he would have this coldly cautious man of convention and broad acres ready to elope — and there he over- leaps the mark. Mr. Moore's book is an intimate, charmingly gossipy, and thoroughly authentic chronicle of the family, including Martha's grandchildren. He shows conclusively that they shared in Martha's snobbery and her poor opinion of "the filthy democrats." All three books are worth while. Mr. Woodward has given us the most brilliant, cynical, and clever portrait; Mr. Hughes has taken the youthful Washington, a fading myth, and made him a red-blooded, lusty, gusty human being for the first time; and Mr. Moore has given us the most satisfactory family his- tory we have yet had. Claude G. Bowers Proof of the Pudding Far End. By May Sinclair. The Macmillan Company. $2.50. "TT^AIl END" is the commonplace story of the efforts of a * wife to hold the love of her novelist husband. Whatever subtleties it may be supposed to involve are deeply hid. The tab1, after wandering uncertainly in various directions, finally expires in tender sentiment upon the hearthstone of a cottage which, if not precisely rose-embowered, is at least beclustcred with equally appropriate flowers, and a conclusion more com- monplace or less satisfactory it would be difficult to find. If May Sinclair were an unknown writer one would not be in- clined to ponder over it for long; one might feel, perhaps, a certain surprise at the discovery of so banal a tale recounted in so crisp and competent a style, but one would hardly feel more. Miss Sinclair being, however, the person she is, one is bound to suppose that some subtlety, at least of technique, was intended, and one is bound to seek it out. Moreover she her- self seems to offer a clue, for in a chapter which does not ap- pear to have any function at all unless it be to supply a key she represents her novelist discussing his craft. He is deter- mined, he says, to discard the conventional novelistic device of the omniscient spectator and to represent instead events as they appear in the consciousness of a particular character, even though he must, in so doing, rest content with the fact that his reader can never be sure that he is getting the truth about persons or things as distinguished from the way in which they appear to a single fallible person. To this a critic friend replies that it would be even more remarkable to have a piece of fiction in which events and characters were seen, not through the personality of one character, but through that of all those involved; and though the novelist rejects this method as one too hard to hit, it is apparently the one which Miss Sinclair has endeavored to follow. Now one might reasonably object that a story as perceived by three different persons would be simply three stories and that it would carry one no further than "The Ring and the Book," but Miss Sinclair has endeavored to forestall that objection also by introducing a passage from one of her hero's other novels in which is represented the humorous argument of a philosopher, passionately devoted to the idealistic concep- tion of the universe, who endeavors to maintain that though each of the three slices of pudding eaten by three guests exists separately only in the mind of the eater there also exists o

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 433 pudding which consists of the ideas of all the perceivers put together. Perhaps, then, Miss Sinclair has endeavored to tell her story in such a way that its intellectual and moral back- ground shall nowhere transcend the limitations of the collective intelligence of her characters. They see their problem and evaluate the worth of the conclusion not as she but as they would see it, and they solve it not as she but as they would fancy it solved. If they fall into banal sentiment and arrive at a haven less secure than they suppose, then the fault is theirs and she, a mere outside person, has no obligation to offer any comment upon their deficiencies. Unfortunately, however, the result of so intricate a scheme — if this, indeed, be it — is, in the present instance at least, a novel which can only with difficulty be distinguished from the product of a second-rate mind, and it is not easy to see just what has been gained — although the losses are clear enough. The irony, if irony is, indeed, intended, is never very pointed, and whatever insight into the situation the author may have had is carefully hid. Miss Sinclair has traveled through a wide circle and returned to something which, even in technique, is barrenly simple and which fails to convey anything whatever. She has surrendered the opportunity which the more usual manner of writing novels affords, and she has gained nothing in vivid objective presentation. No matter what realm of being puddings may inhabit the proof of them is still in the eating, and "Far End" is not good pudding. Joseph Wood Krutch New Ways with an Old Perplexity Strangers. By Dorothy Van Doren. George H. Doran Company. $2. 'T^HE subjects most interesting to man, love and death and * birth, hunger and pain and truth and beauty and power, proceed directly from his own nature and the effect on his nature of the world in which he lives. After these primary interests come others produced by arbitrary regulations which he or society has imposed upon his nature. Among these adultery is perhaps the most universally interesting today, because we are emerging from a period in which it was pretty generally con- sidered a sin, at least when openly indulged, though prostitution always afforded an escape for the man from too stifling monogamy, into a period when prostitution seems more hateful than decorum seems desirable, and men question an institution that has never been maintained except in name. Because we are in such a transition period, adultery arrogates to itself an importance that for the moment almost seems to exceed that of the primary interests, since great masses of people think not at all of truth and beauty, and many to whom love is a stranger can still get excited for and against adultery. And of course to the extent that it is, as in this book, an individual matter of conflicting emotions, and not a social matter of broken command- ments, it is also a primary interest. Love is not a stranger to the husbands and wives in Mrs. Van Doren's frank treatment of this ancient and yet peculiarly modern difficulty. Her title is concerned with the inevitable separateness of the individual soul. And this may possibly give some clue to her convictions on the subject, though whatever these may be she keeps them to herself. It is indicative of the impersonality of her treatment that she permits only one of her characters to use the word adultery, since the word expresses a preconceived attitude about what may be a natural and de- sirable course of action. Not that Mrs. Van Doren says it is this. But she watches her characters' experiments impartially. Men change their minds from time to time as to what actions constitute sins, and the number of so-called crimes has vastly decreased with civilization. And so she does not call by a name that has been synonymous with the blackest sin and crime a course of action that may be about to enter a more respectable category. The crime after all may have been a social crime perpetrated against individual human nature. We are be- ginning to suspect today that the one unforgivable thing is to sin against life. And possibly society has sinned grievously against life when it has decreed that each man and woman shall love only once in a lifetime, unless his or her life partner chances to die. Individuals have always reacted differently to this social law. Some have heeded it and some have gone their way. National customs have grown up by which people were able decorously to evade it. So Mrs. Van Doren does not stack the cards against Ann's love affair with Stephen by giving it a dark name. But, on the other hand, Rachel and Paul, who in their young passion can't conceive of loving anyone else, seem to be her favorite pair of lovers. The engaging Ann is the disturbing factor in the book. For Ann quite frankly questions the desirability of monogamy, and if woman questions it as well as man, the whole house may fall about our ears. There have always been light women, of course. If there weren't, many a solemn young man tells his wife, monogamy wouldn't last a day. But Ann can't be dis- missed as a light woman. She is as self-respecting and genuine and independent a personality as any man. And when one spring of joy and zest in life grows flaccid, she tastes another. Of course it is true, as the wife of Ann's lover points out, that two people seldom begin and stop loving each other at the same time, and this is often considered an overwhelming argu- ment in favor of monogamy. It may be another proof rather that life isn't particularly simple than that a woman should try to kill her love for one man because another still loves her. I am not quite sure how it eventually seems to Ann. Mrs. Van Doren wisely knows that it will seem many different things to her as she is tossed from one emotion to another, and leaves the decision open. She doesn't try to ram any conclusion down Ann's throat, or ours. Instead she contents herself with tell- ing, with a quite unusual impartiality and respect for different sorts of persons, the story of one of those very real entangle- ments that confront all ardent and generous and intelligent people who have ceased to guide their conduct by any arbitrary set of rules. Alice Beal Parsons Primitive Mentality How Natives Think. By Lucien Levy-Bruhl. Authorized Translation by Lillian A. Clare. Alfred A. Knopf. $4. PROFESSOR LEVY-BRUHL, of Paris, at the moment the ■*■ guest of Johns Hopkins University, is a distinguished scholar in several fields. He has made a distinctive and important study of the early stages of human thinking. Unfortunately his works remained long untranslated. His "Primitive Men- tality," which appeared in English three years ago, is in reality the second part of the present work, which in the original bears the more exact title: "Mental Processes in Undeveloped So- cieties." He has advanced the problem which Tylor established in the evolutionary movement half a century ago. Tylor found the solution in the concept of animism, the attempt to project the universe and interpret natural forces on the pattern of human motives and ways of thinking, and furthermore in the doctrine of survival, the tendency to continue outgrown habits of thought especially when embodied in the cultural products of customs, myths, beliefs, rites, and folklore generally. The monumental work of Fraser has refined and extended this anthropological phase of psychology to a vast array of cultural phenomena, vital to the story of the human psyche and its varied development — the whole an impressive panorama of the human past. Now that man's anthropological past has come to be incorporated into the schoolboy's knowledge and the popular consciousness of the meaning of history, it is a source of gratifi- cation that the more scholarly reader has ready access to the approach and findings of Levy-Bruhl.

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434 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3199 Levy-Bruhl's correction of the Tylor view has all the signifi- cance of an original discovery. The psychology of Tylor's day was most inadequate. Brilliant as was his mind, he shared the limitations of the day and looked upon the primitive man as an undeveloped modern European, just as the child psychology of that and even of a later day regarded the child as an im- mature adult. What Levy-Bruhl makes clear is that the primi- tive mind is quite a different type of psychic instrument; it is in the pre-logical stage, and is differently oriented toward the world of things and spirits. It works in a different medium and milieu. It is not so much that it lacks what we possess in our mental heritage as that its animus is differently directed, differently inspired, differently interested. We work with con- cepts; the pre-logical stage of the concept Levy-Bruhl calls "collective representation" — not a good term but not easy to improve upon. Its essential characteristics are that it arises lerives its force from the collective social life, and that it has a deep emotional source and sway. Furthermore, its psychic n; ture is saturated in something which we call mystical or occult, but which really operates by the "law of participation." It is the concept "in the making." Though Levy-Bruhl calls it by the same name, he seems not to have been influenced by the Freudian "concept" but to have recognized independently the inherent traits that charac- terize the Freudian psychology; its strong emotional tone, derived from the social pressure and conferring the pleasure of belief — the fantasy trend which in early psychic stages dominates reality and replaces it. The illuminating power of the Levy-Bruhl concept of primitive mentality is far-reaching, though not easily indicated in brief compass. When we recall the story of the Indians who told Catlin that since he had put buffaloes in pictures in a book, they had none to eat; when we remember that after a primitive man dreams he has be n bitten by a snake he goes through the treatment suitable for a real bite; that what the wife does when her husband warrior or hunter is on the war-path is believed to influence his fate, we are touching upon various phases of the law of participation. The picture, the name, the dream, the wife, the husband, the parts of the body, the clothing, the instruments of war or chase, the totemic animal, the luck, all participate in the qualities and action of what to us is real only in the object; the rites that grow about these collective representations are true "com- munion" ceremonies. The virtue, the principle, the power by which the rite works, is real with the reality of the mystic and occult. What to us is superstition thus acquires a deeper meaning and a more authentic warrant; and the lore of names, numbers, shadows, dreams, ghosts, images, effigies, omens, amulets, charms, fetishes, lots, fortunes, auguries, takes its proper part in the story of how the human mind cut its teeth, from those of infancy to those of (alleged) wisdom. To call primitive people heathens who worship idols becomes a crudity worse than any confusion or error. Whatever we may think of his conclusions, the primitive man's thinking is worthy of respect. The Levy-Bruhl thesis is well supported by application; the details are interesting. In illustrating how natives think, he studies their language, their systems of counting, their notions of disease and treatment, their nature-lore, their kinship rela- tions, their magic, their priest-craft and their "mediums" with unusual gifts as seers and prophets, their elaborate notions of death and birth, their property and authority regulations; and he uses the same key to unlock all the mysterious storerooms of the primitive mind. In due course he sets forth that the logical claimant, the assertion of the life of reason in Santayana'a convenient phrase, makes terms with the older orientations; and the transition occurs to a higher type — as the new stone age replaces the old stone age. Yet this is done with none of the steady progress that later ensues when the logic which lays the foundations of science reorients the human mind. Nor does the analysis and its lessons for our own psychology end here; there are other habits of the undeveloped mind, some of them discoverable in the intelligence tests, such as strong sensory observation and memory, the particularizing tendency, the feebleness of abstractions and generalizations, the satisfac- tion of the imaginary and the security of the familiar. The study of Levy-Bruhl covers an important chapter in primitive psychology, rich in interest, significant in its bearings upon the persistent problem: why we behave like human beings, and why we do so so imperfectly. Joseph Jasteow Books in Brief Mr. and Mrs. Haddock in Paris, France. By Donald Ogden Stewart. Harper and Brothers. $2. There is no formula for being funny, but any number of formulas for creating comic effects. The trouble with these formulas is that they are formulas, and though by all the laws of logic they ought to be as good one time as another, they never are. Mr. Stewart employed a formula with marked suc- cess in "A Parody Outline of History" and "Aunt Polly's Story of Mankind," but recently the law of diminishing returns has begun its deadly work; the laughs in "Mr. and Mrs. Haddock in Paris, France" are padlocked. Slapstick and satire are poor bedfellows, and here the scattered ventures of the latter remind one of the trick canes made of rubber which comedians use for laughs in vaudeville. The book is quaintly illustrated by Herb Roth; particularly one notices the presence of double- decked buses in Paris and the absence of saucers on cafe tables. Both these innovations of the artist have merit and no doubt will be installed in Paris as soon as a copy of Mr. Stewart's book falls into the hands of the prefect of police. The Chronicle of Clemently. By Arthur Machen. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. This youthful libation to Chaucer and Boccaccio and Rabe- lais was first published when its author was twenty-three. It is fashioned in mannered prose and steeped in archaic elegance. Mr. Machen does not think so much of it now, but reading in the light of the bitter, lonely, semi-starved days in which it was created, one must rank it as a decided achievement. Our Doctors. By Maurice Duplay. Harper and Brothers. $2. This novel, translated from the French by Dr. Joseph Col- lins, divides its interest with French candor and impartiality between medicine and mating. Its amours carry clinical impli- cations and its scientific researches are conducted with passion. The lay reader will be apt to wish that its action did not hover quite so persistently around operating rooms, but it is un- doubtedly a vivid study of doctors with their masks off. A Brittle Heaven. By Babette Deutsch. Greenberg, Publisher. $2.50. As a study of the mental development of a girl in a con- temporary environment this story has so much discernment that its lack of illumination is quite inexplicable. It is faithfully and sympathetically written; it is filled with characters which one has no difficulty in believing; but the narrative dis- tinctly fails to come to a focus. "A Brittle Heaven" is too thick for a slice of life, and not meaty enough for a soul- searching sandwich. Sanctuary! Sanctuary! By Dallas Lore Sharp. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. The Hingham naturalist wanders afield — to the bird sanc- tuary on Three Arch Rocks off the coast of Oregon, to Santa Barbara, to the pass where the yellow-billed magpies still nest, and returns to his native Jersey swamps and his beloved Massa- chusetts hills, preaching conservation as he roams.

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 435 Drama The Mind of Werfel NO artist, I take it, writes history for history's sake. If he borrows his fable from record or legend it is only because he sees in the ready-made story sunn- relevance to the thinjr he is trying to say, and the first duty of interpretative criticism becomes, in such a ease, to see the events through the author's eyes. Thus if Franz Werfel has chosen for his latest tragedy the familiar story of the unfortunate Maximilian, its meaning is to be sought not in history but in Werfel. His characters, historic though they may be, are for him types and symbols. The play "Juarez and Maximilian" (Guild Theater) moves ponderously though not dully through thirteen scenes. Its technique is not remarkable, for it is, indeed, rather old-fashionedly episodic and there is nothing in either the selec- tion of incident or the interpretation of character which is superficially original; yet original it nevertheless is. Maximilian, essentially a romanticist, comes to Mexico as a tool of the lesser Napoleon, whose cynical littleness he is incapable of even suspecting. Inspired by the old faded dream of kindly des- potism and vain at least to the extent of vastly misjudging his own weakness, he goes down in utter ruin before the implacable Juarez, conceived here as a type of that iron, unemotional Christ or anti-Christ of whom Lenin is the most conspicuous contemporary embodiment arid whose virtues and vices are alike incomprehensible to those softer idealists who found their phi- losophy upon kindliness and scruples. For Maximilian there remains nothing except a death, heroic according to the old romantic tradition, and the conviction that, quixotic though he may be, "there are times when a decent man cannot be anything else." Juarez remains for him and for the author an inscrutable mystery to be admired and to be feared. The mind of Werfel, if one may judge from his works, is mastered by a weary pessimism. From his age he inherited a disgust with the futilities of the old order, but knowledge of modern revolution has left him fearful of that too, and if through his plays there runs no thread of definite partisanship, no clear note of assertion, but only a perpetual balancing of principle against principle which ends with a despairing ques- tion, it is because this mirrors accurately his own perplexed and hesitant soul. The world as he sees it is not a struggle between good and evil, between two sides one of which may be espoused with clear faith, but between two principles inscru- tably complex; even, perhaps, between two evils — evils which triumph, now in the futile injustice of the old order, now in the bloody anarchy of social upheaval. Temperamentally he is the romantic idealist, much less near to Juarez than to Maxi- milian, but, like the latter, he has been compelled to realize that it is in the Juarezes, relentless and unscrupulous, rather than in him or his like, that there resides the power capable of triumphing over the ugliness of the past — even though it be destined to do no more than supplant it with a new ugliness. Thus "Juarez and Maximilian" is essentially only "Goat Song" rewritten, with the Monster of the one become the Juarez of the other. In neither does this embodiment of the real subject of the play appear upon the stage. The idealism and the weakness of Maximilian, the intrigues of Church and Empire — these are familiar phenomena to be analyzed and dis- played; but the irresistible force, ambiguously compounded of passionate purpose alloyed with the mere lust of revengeful destruction which is embodied in Juarez and the Monster, is as yet too inscrutable to be apprehended as anything more definite than a power moving mysteriously behind the scenes. It pulls all the strings, determines all the action, but no one sees its face clearly enough to read its inner meaning. It is the only efficient social force; destiny is in its hands — power to destroy, power perhaps to rebuild, but only destruc- tion is sure. And so, as the curtain falls, three who have loved Maximilian turn from a glimpse of Juarez with fear and ques- tion in their eyes. What is it they have seen go by? The re- deemer of mankind or only the old lust in a new form? a play "Juarez and Maximilian" can hardly be destined to any wide popularity. It is too complicated, too involved, and, above all, too little explicit to entertain merely as a colorful icle, and it demands of its audience a willingness to ponder its implications greater than most audiences will accord. Easy it certainly is not, but it has a monumental impressiveness and the Theater Guild exhibits a genuine courage in undertaking so difficult a task. It has mounted the piece lavishly and it is acted well, both by Alfred Lunt, upon whom by far the greatest burden falls, and by the large number of those playing minor roles. Many will question the wisdom of the choice, but to me the play was both interesting and moving. "They All Want Something" (Wallack's Theater) is a not very distinguished farce offered as a vehicle for William Tilden; "The Jeweled Tree" (Forty-eighth Street Theater) is a ponderous and unimaginative spectacle purporting to deal with events in Egypt just after the death of our latest lamented Emperor Tutankhamen. "Black Boy" (Comedy Theater), by Jim Tully and Frank Dazey, presents Paul Robeson in the role of a Negro heavyweight champion. The language is often forceful, and Mr, Robeson both sings and acts superbly, but the play is without value. Joseph Wood Krutch n THEATER □ The Neighborhood Playhouse, 4S6 Grand Street' * Y- Telephone Drydock 7SIS First play of the new Repertory Season A Satirical Comedy by Alfred Savoir Every evening (except Monday) at 8:30. Matinees Wednes- day & Saturday at 2:30 SUBSCRIBE NOW TO OUR 13TH SEASON Address Subscription Secretary, 1,66 Grand St., for information THE LION TAMER Longacre A N Theatre, 48th St., West of Broadway. Evenings 8:30 Matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2:30 THEODORE DREISER'S American tragedy 'A PLAY WHICH IS BOUND TO WRENCH A MILLION HEARTS.' — Journal. DRAMATIZED BY PATRICK KEARNEY. Dostoievsky's "Crime and Punishment" Vividly Portrayed by a Flawless Cast in an Excellent Adaptation BASIL SYDNEY achieve a superb triumph in & MARY ELLIS "THE HUMBLE" By Laurence Irving rroonuri^l, VILLAGE THEATRE, 7th Avenue and Fourth Street OieenwlCn Matinee Thursday— Best Seats $2 □ LECTURE S— C O U R S E S □ THE WORKERS SCHOOL 106-108 EAST 14th STREET Courses in Labor Journalism, Modern Literature, Rus- sian Literature, Proletarian Writers' Workshop, Marxism-Leninism, Imperialism, Negro Problem, and other subjects. Instructors — Scott Nearing, Arthur Calhoun. Michael Gold, Robert Dunn, Moissaye Olgin, Alexander Trachtenberg and others. Bertram D. Wolfe, Director. Classes begin November 1. Write for complete catalog When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Japan Returns to Feudalism By HARRY EMERSON WILDES STEADILY Japan reverts to the intellectual seclusion of her feudal days. Sixty years of rapid surging forward give way to retrogression, particularly in fields where West- ern culture has been hitherto most influential. Free thought, free religion, and freedom of scientific research are now to be eradicated. The students in the colleges are bound hand and foot by bureaucratic bonds. A year ago, in April, 1925, the so-called Peace Preser- vation Bill clamped down a rigid censorship upon all those who might wish to change the constitution. The Founding Fathers of our own land are fallible indeed in contrast to the putative author of the Japanese constitution, the Emperor Meiji, who was himself a god. Suggestions to amend the document which Prince Ito penned for him partake there- fore of treason and of sacrilege. Anarchists and Communists were, of course, the enemies ostensibly avowed when the Peace Preservation Bill was passed, but, under its operation, liberals, democrats, and unionists have been cowed into quiet. A Farmer-Labor Party was suppressed within three hours after birth, in December, 1925. because it had debated resolutions of a faintly pinkish tone. That the resolutions were badly beaten by the delegates and that the proponents were ex- cluded from the party was not accepted as a warranty of Farmer-Labor righteousness, and that Home Minister Wakatsuki's interpretation was approved is indicated by his elevation to the Premiership within two months after his decision to suppress the party. To the rulers of a society based, as is Japan's, upon a scandalously corrupt political system, and upon an unfair economic grouping, where restive tenant-farmers, an under- paid urban proletariat, and an unemployed intelligentsia are suffering depression, too close a scrutiny of the foundations is disquieting. The danger is intensified because of a grow- ing consciousness that the cost of maintaining such a social system is greater than its worth. Japan's gains since the war with Russia have by no means been impressive. In medicine and in some fields of science Japan has remained abreast of the world, but in literature, music, and sculpture her efforts of late years have been barren. In her art, her architecture, and her drama the mingling of Oriental and Occidental traditions has stifled her old excellence without an equivalent assistance to old forms. By her diplomacy Japan has been plunged into an orgy of militarism without a real necessity. Her incursions into Asia, like Plantagenet England's into France, have enormously increased the mili- tary budget without yielding any great advantages which might not have been more cheaply won in peaceful ways. Although herself poor and lacking in such essential raw materials as iron, oil, cotton, wool, and rubber — even lacking food itself — she has followed the mercantile ideas of wealthy nations rich in natural resources. The almost in- evitable result has been a falling off of her prosperity and the rise of unemployment. Small wonder therefore that Japan's native inferiority complex has been nourished, and that among the masses "dangerous thoughts" are rife. Perhaps their influence is neither as widespread nor as potent as might be indicated , by the fears expressed in the talk of bankers, politicians, and newspapermen, but that beneath the lid the pot boils briskly cannot be denied. But leaders are missing for a democratic movement. Japanese liberals are aging men, and few are rising to replace them. Yukio Ozaki, the radi- cal of forty years ago, is still the only leading figure now. In fact the older men are deserting the cause. Ozaki's life- time friend, his "Twin God of the Constitution," has suc- cumbed, to quote the Osaka Mainichi, to the "lure of gold." Another leader has been in prison charged with receiving bribes from white-slave interests. Hirelings and gunmen terrorize the minor liberals and are officially ignored. Press laws and "peace-preservation bills" stifle free expression. At the close of the Great War hopes were being enter- tained that the colleges in Japan might take the lead in democratic thought. Within the past three years the New Man Societies led by Professor Yoshino of Tokio Imperial and Dr. Isoo Abe of Waseda were flourishing. Today these groups are dead. The Student Federation of the Social Sciences is now dispersed after a long martyrdom by police raids and imprisonment. Nor may new groups spring up to fill the places of these pioneers. Such subjects as might provide munitions to challenge the reaction continued to enjoy much popularity with students. The bulletin boards of all the universities were filled with notices of new societies to study sociology and economics. Many of these, no doubt, were coverts to conceal socialists and other "dan- gerous thinkers," but all of them were viewed with grave suspicion. In consequence the study of sociology is now denied, not only to the students, but also to the private reader. An official order from Minister of Education Okada, issued in April, 1926, addressed to all colleges and schools, reads: 1. Any society or association in which dangerous thoughts are either to be read or studied is absolutely prohibited irrespective of whatever form or name it takes. 2. Private studies are also prohibited if the studies concern dangerous thoughts. 3. Students are barred from reading books and periodicals specially named by the authorities. 4. No matter whether they be scientific or not speeches delivered by students outside the classrooms are prohibited even if the subject matter is suggested by school authorities and professors. 5. A joint program of speeches in which students of several different schools take part is prohibited. The time of issuing this gag order was well-judged. Dr. Okada had weathered storms resulting from his intro- duction of military training, and from his prohibition of dramatic performances where the school uniform was not to be worn. He had no desire to cause a repetition of the "Hamlet-in-brass-buttons" controversy. He chose a time therefore in which the fewest possible students would be moved to protest. Commencements in Japan usually occur in the latter part of March. A holiday of two or three weeks then ensues until the opening of the new semester. During this interval, while many of the students have re- turned to their homes, the Diet adjourns its sessions. Okada, of course, had no desire to face interpellations in the House. His first order, applying only to the technical schools, appeared soon after the Diet's adjournment. Ex- tensions then were announced to cover all educational in- stitutions under government control. Private universities and schools were not forbidden to teach the social sciences,

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Oct. 27, 1926] The Nation 437 but were notified that failure to comply with the rules of the official schools would involve the loss of all their privileges. Protests flamed from both principals and student bodies. The former were soon silenced, according to the Hochi, by Okada's threat to dismiss any principal who persisted in objection. Students of Tokio Imperial, Waseda, and thirty colleges of the Kobe-Osaka-Kyoto region who held mass meetings to condemn the plan were met by threats to enforce the Peace Preservation Bill. Prime Min- ister Wakatsuki, Minister of Justice Egi, Procurator Gen- eral Koyama, and Dr. Okada took pains to impress upon the annual Gubernatorial Conference, early in May, that more strictness should be exercised over student life and thought. The agitations thereupon ceased with remarkable celerity. Espionage and delation systems reaching into eval of Commerce, urged the Ministry to investigate professors. "We think students are involuntarily capti- vated by radicalism because of the influence of their lec- turers. Not a few professors advocate radical principles. Let the fountainhead be purified and the stream will become pure." The idea proved immediately popular. Other papers hastened to elaborate the thesis, and Kokumin — whose editor receives high honor from the Emperor — em- barked upon a series of editorials designed to show that foreign teachers in Japan are particularly inefficient and untrustworthy. An outcome of this agitation is the pro- posal, which will be considered by the Diet in December, of establishing a thought-control bureau in the Department of Justice, an idea which ought to win instant approbation from certain of our own officials. Foreign missionaries were also specified as sources of contamination. Christianity, which after sixty years of effort has converted less than one-half of one per cent of the empire's population, is now the special target for abuse. Its tenets are believed "subversive of public peace and order and of public morals" and the duties which Christianity entails upon its members are held "contrary to the obliga- tions of Japanese subjects." Men like Motosada Zumoto, spokesman for Japan at the 1925 Williamstown Conference, Count Aisuke Kabayama, president of the Japan Steel Com- pany and former head of the semi-official news agency, "Kanzo" Uchimura a leading publicist, and Toyohiko Kagawa, the foremost Christian social worker have all, within recent months, given testimony to show that Chris- tianity falls under such criticisms. Okada's department, working under this instigation, is drafting a bill for sub- mission to the next Diet whereby Christianity and all other religions as may be similar in tendency can be suppressed if, in the opinion of the authorities, they endanger peace, order, and good morals. Shinto, the official worship, is ex- plicity excluded from the operations of the proposed legis- lation, according to the explanations given by the framers .,"■■:". r- ; Viking ^l^J, "Books M. R. WERNER Author of "Brigham Young, says in The Sun of by R. F. Dibble "A fascinating account of a man's life . .• . which Mr. Dibble tells vividly and entertain- ingly." The Boston Transcript calls it "a live, interesting, human biography ... a contribution of value to religious history." $3.00 The SECOND BOOK of NEGRO SPIRITUALS John Hayncs Holmes writes: "I never believed that anything could repeat the joy and satisfac- tion that I found in your first collection (The Book of American Negro Spirituals), but this second collection has done the trick." With a new introduction and 61 more songs. $3.50 GAUTIER AND THE ROMANTICS by John Garber Palache The author of "Mile, de Maupin," devotee of beauty and literary innovator, is here vividly set forth with the celebrities and eccentrics of his circle: Balzac, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Turgenev, George Sand, the Goncourts, etc. $3.00 TRANSITION by Edwin Muir Illuminating and wise essays on the most baf- fling and interesting figures in contemporary lit- erature: Joyce, Lawrence, Strachey, Huxley, and many more. $2.00 SATIRICAL POEMS by Siegfried Sassoon A long awaited volume of poems from the pen of one of the most popular of modern poets. $1.50 30 Irving Place THE VIKING PRESS New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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438 The Nation [Vol. 123. No. 3199 of the measure. Representatives of virtually all religions, Christians, Buddhists, and the rest, unite in opposition to the legislation, and though several months have been devoted to the study of means whereby a religion-control bill may be safely drawn, the clauses are not yet perfected. Discussion of the measure has, however, served to con- centrate attention on the evils brought by foreigners. Within the present year the press has blossomed with in- nuendoes against the licentiousness and vice alleged to exist in the foreign communities. A tale of naked orgies at which foreigners are present for "assuring themselves en- trance into heaven" was recorded in the Osaka Mainichi, one of the most influential papers of the empire, although the story was printed in one edition only. Diplomatic at- taches have been accused of gambling and of protecting evil-doers. Six girls of the so-called "modern set" were rounded up and made to tell their story of the "fast set of undesirable foreigners" which had corrupted them. One f the more sensational newspapers retold a charge made ten years ago that in America there are no virgins. West- ern influence is blamed for the "cafe civilization" and for the moral laxity now said to be engulfing all the Japanese. An anti-foreign bitterness is rising. Count Soyejima, who came to the University of Chicago to tell the "truth about Japan," returns to Tokio to tell of America's aggres- sion and of her decadence. Mr. Zumoto, who like Count Soyejima is a semi-omcial publicist, reported that concerted efforts at anti-Japanism are backed by the United States Navy and by Secretary Wilbur himself. When the Japan Advertiser, the American newspaper, softened Mr. Zumoto's speech by dropping out the more anti-American portions and by capping the story with a headline, Attitude, in U. S. Toward Japan Is Most Friendly, Mr. Zumoto felt sure enough of his position to make strenuous protest at the omission. Simultaneously the Pan-Asiatic movement grows. Almost unheard of in 1916, today the leading journals of Japan all favor it. A Pan-Asiatic Society held a congress at Nagasaki in the summer to set a united front against the West. The ignorant masses are being taught that the West is inhabited by heartless monsters who seek to crush the East. The press, which might have served as leader and interpreter of international understanding, has fallen victim to insularity, distorted vision, and prejudice. Its present tactics tend to jeopardize the friendship of the nations. Contributors to This Issue Oswald Garrison Villard spent the last four months in England, Germany, and France. Edgar Mels covered the original Daugherty investigation for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Albert Parry is with the Russky Golos of New York City. Marion Bachrach conducts a nursery school. Virginia Moore is the author of "Not Poppy." Claude G. Bowers is the author of "Party Battles of the Jackson Period" and "Jefferson and Hamilton." Alice Beal Parsons is author of "The Woman's Dilemma." Joseph Jastrow's latest volume is "The Psychology of Conviction." Harry Emerson Wildes was formerly professor of eco- nomics at Keio University, Tokio. 1468 NEW =926 OXFORD BOOK! About Shakespeare and His Plays. By G. F. Br ad by. All that is known of the man Shakespeare, and the main problems raised by his plays, are outlined in the clearest way in this small, compact volume. Price $1.20. Letters from William Blake to Thomas Butts, 1800-1803. (Limited Edition.) Reproductions of ten letters written by Blake, "with a charm and freedom he seldom allowed himself," to Butts. The volume includes a receipted bill in Blake's autograph. Price $8.50. Plan of a Novel. By June Austen. (Limited Edition.) The "Plan of a Novel" is a gem of satire, suggested by the absurd proposal of the Prince Regent's librarian that Mi« Austen should devote her genius to depicting a "literary clergyman" (whose life and character were closely to resemble his own). This, with other delight- ful documents in the volume, are printed from the originals. Price $7.00. Diary of a Country Parson, The. The Rev- erend James I food ford e. V ol. II. Edited by John Beresford. Parson Woodfordc takes his place beside Pepys and Evelyn, as revealed in this journal with undoubted charm. In this second volume the extracts are almost continuous and show us the daily life of the Wood- fonles through the years 1782 to 1787. The first volume (published in 1924) is from 1758 to 1781. Price $4.25. New Chapters in Greek Art. By Percy Gardner. In these studies on Greek sculpture, Mr. Gardner has not limited himself to a merely technical discussion but has considered the artistic and historical bearing of the works. The book is fully illustrated with figures in the text, and with several well-known plates. Price $7.00. Ethics of Buddhism, The. By S. Taehibana. An attempt to explain the practical moralitv of Buddhism. Price $5.00. Prophetic Writings of William Blake, The. Edited with a Genera! Introduction, Glossarial Index ol Symbols, Commentary and Appendices, by I). J. Sloss and J. P. #. llallis. Oxford English Texts. This edition gives an exact text of those of William Prophetic Writings which, from their generally non-lyrical form, could not be included in the 1905 edition of the poems. The broad conclusions concerning Blake's doctrines and opinions on metaphysics, ethics, and ait. as revealed in these writings, are brought out in the introduction. Two volumes, cloth, price $14.00. India paper edition, two volumes in one, price $21.00. Two Chapters on Persuasion. The original manuscript of these chapters is all that remains in Jane Austen's handwriting of any of her novels. They have been reprinted here (not in fac- simile) from the fragments in the British Museum. Printed from Jane Austen's Autograph. Price $2.00. i ■■! edition on handmade paper, price $7.00. BOOKSELLERS OR FROM THE PUBLISHERS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS American Branch New York City When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1866 Vol. CXXIII NKW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1926 No. 3200 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 43!' THE NATION'S Poetry Prize ' u EDITORIALS: The Groat Free-Trade Manifesto **« Eugene Victor Debs *« Mr Asquith Retires ■ Critics and Criticized A POLITICAL CRISIS IN EDUCATION. By Chapin Collins 445 GERMANY REVISITED. By Oswald Garrison ViUard 417 WILLIAM GREEN'S CONVENTION. By Benjamin Slolberg 449 DISASTER LOVES WORKERS. By Hollace Ransdell 460 AFTERNOON OF A QUEEN. By Tansy McNab 452 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 452 CORRESPONDENCE 453 BOOKS: m ,. ... The Seventh Veil. By George Sterling 455 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 455 The Indian's World. By Robert H. Lowio 45o The Quality of Reverence. By Carl Van Doren 456 Squirming Romantics. By Mary Ross 456 One of the de Kovens. By Daniel Gregory Mason 467 A Genius. By Laura Benet 457 A Village Cut-Up. By Charles W. Ferguson 45H Books in Brief j5® Selections. Collections, and Reprints 45a Drama: Things in the Saddle. By Joseph Wood Krutch 459 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: A Plea for Free Trade 461 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID HOKUM. Advertising Manager Sir . H'TION Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States am! Mexico : to Canada, S5.50 : and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vcsey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1, England. JUDGE WEBSTER THAYER is a disgrace to the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts. He has not merely re- fused a new trial to Sacco and Vanzetti ; he has done so in violent, unjudicial language which strips his prejudiced mind of any pretense of unbiased judgment. William G. Thompson, who argued the case for the defense, he calls a victim of a "logo-psychic neurosis"; he refutes arguments never advanced by the defense, and repudiates the sugges- tion that federal officials might be willing to "railroad" a radical to the electric chair on false charges; the confession of Madeiros, which exonerated Sacco and Van- zetti, he tosses aside as that of a confessed crook, although the word of other crooks was accepted against the two Italians at their trial. This is not the verdict of law or of justice. It sounds rather like the obstinacy of an hysterical Yankee; like a man's fear to admit that he may have been wrong. Judge Thayer was not called upon to retry Sacco and Vanzetti, but to state whether the new evidence — chiefly the confessions of Madeiros and of two federal secret-service men — warranted a new trial. The published excerpts from his 20,000-word opinion give no evidence of judicial con- sideration of the facts. There is still one loophole; the Su- preme Court of Massachusetts when the bill of exceptions comes before it may still redeem the reputation of the courts of the State. NORWAY HAS VOTED WET— very Wet, according to American standards. By a majority of 120,000 in a vote of less than a million her citizens have declared tie n opposition to the present law, which bars only liquor containing 21 per cent or more of alcohol. Norway estab- lished prohibition, on a 12 per cent basis, in 1917; approved it by referendum, on a 14 per cent basis, in 1919; then raised the limit to 21 per cent, as a result of pressure by the wine-exporting, fish-importing countries (France, Spain, and Portugal). But even with this limit — a liberal beer-and-wine limit — Norway has run into the moonshine and bootlegging problems which are so familiar in this country. Evidently light wines and beer are no solution to the prohibition problem. Raising the permissible per- centage of alcohol seems neither to calm the opposition nor to end wholesale defiance of the law. Possibly the Quebec system of limited, government-controlled sales will give a better report of itself. Ontario, which is now legally _ Dry, down to a 2.4 per cent limit, has been watching her neigh- bor, Quebec. Two years ago she rejected the Quebec system by a majority of 35,000. In December she will vote again — and prophets predict a reversal of the verdict. A THOUSAND MEN AND WOMEN have defied Charles L. Guy, Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, in the past few weeks in New York City. They were protesting against his sweeping anti-pick- eting injunction, and they violated it by marching, dn orderly twos and threes, past the shops which they were enjoined from picketing. The only disorder was caused by the police who arrested them wholesale; but they were not tried for contempt of court. They were not really tried at all; they were charged with disorderly conduct and con- demned en masse. Three hundred of them have served from one to ten days in jail for refusing to pay the fines of from two dollars to fifty dollars which other hundreds have paid. There is no law against peaceful picketing; Justice Guy, at the behest of the Industrial Council of Cloak, Suit, and Skirt Manufacturers, made his own law in the form of an injunction. Another judge has gone so far as to declare picketing illegal where there is no strike — in the case of a paper-box factory which a union was trying to organize. Judge-made law — that modern form of tyranny — supplants democratic government in non-union Pennsylvania and in West Virginia; but in New York City the judges have hitherto been relatively restrained. It is well that the American Civil Liberties Union is preparing to fight these invasions of the territory of political self-government, be- ginning with a protest meeting at the Community Church on the evening of November 1. IS THE BRITISH EMPIRE breaking up? Or merely suffering growing pains? Certainly the conference of Dominion premiers now in session in London opened in no such firm imperial atmosphere as reigned at the end of the war. Canada had just held an election in which she repudi- ated the party that felt closest to the British Crown; Ire- land was calml" establishing her own diplomatic repre- sentatives throughout the world; South Africa's Prime

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440 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 Minister had just repeated his claim of sovereignty and independence within the empire— an ambiguous formula. The assumption that the six self-governing nations of the empire could consult together constantly, formulate a com- mon foreign policy, and accept joint responsibility for it has broken down, as even that organ of empire, the Round Table, admits. It worked at the Peace Conference in 1919 and at Washington in 1921; but it was weakened by the aggressive British policy in Turkey, from which the Dominions recoiled, and by Lord Curzon's insistence upon his right to negotiate alone at Lausanne. The Locarno treaties marked a new turn. Article IX read: The present treaty shall impose no obligation upon any of the British Dominions, or upon India, unless the Government of such Dominion, or of India, signifies its acceptance thereof. NO DOMINION has yet signified such acceptance — not even Australia or 'New Zealand, often more imperial- minded than Downing Street itself. That marks the burial of the theory of a joint imperial foreign policy. Closer communications, more consultation, may be worked out, and doubtless noble-sounding resolutions will be drafted, but the Dominions are drifting away from rather than closer to the empire. Even the trade figures show the trend. Im- perial preferences, special tariffs, agitation and propaganda have not availed — ir the past ten years England's share of the trade of every one of the Dominions has declined, while despite the tariff handicaps the United States has increased its percentage. What does all this mean? Certainly not that the empire is collapsing; but, probably, that geography and economics outweigh historical sentiment, and that the days when a tiny island could dominate the world are done. MORE THAN ONCE Signor Mussolini has found that the Pope did not agree with the high-handed meth- ods of government favored by the Fascists, but until now no visible opposition has been offered by King Victor Emma- nuel. From the day four years ago when His Majesty, on the steps of the royal palace, presented the leader of the Fascists with the keys to the city of Rome, so to speak, the two minds have seemingly thought as one; so much so, indeed, that many outsiders have asked just who was the real king of Italy. Victor Emmanuel now declares that he is; that the new decree reestablishing capital punishment for attempts on the life of members of the royal family or of the Prime Minister is distasteful to him; and that he has no intention of signing such a measure. He has the best sort of precedent for his decision; his father, Umberto, suffered two unsuccessful attempts at assassination before the third which carried him off in 1900, yet he stead! refused to countenance the death penalty. His son, on as- cending the throne, refused also, although Parliament at that time wished to enact such a decree; and he has finued in his opposition to it in spite of one attempt on his own life. At the opening of Parliament in November the issue between king and minister will be fought out. Mean- time, II Duce must take his chances, not only with his life but with a good part of his prestige in jeopardy. SMITH HITS MILLS"; "Mills Hits Smith": "Smith Denies Mills Charges"; "Mil.s Declares Smith Pre- varicates"— thus ad nauseam have run the headlines in the New York papers during the campaign just ending. It has been a battle of personalities; the retorts courteous and discourteous have been overworked to a degree. It has been a campaign of fluids— rum, milk, and water. Repre- sentative Mills has insulted the intelligence of the State in asking the electorate to believe that Governor Smith has deliberately connived at the selling of bad milk. On the other hand, his opponents have had no difficulty in showing Mr. Mills's affiliations with big business and particularly with the public-service companies. Between Judge Wagner and Senator Wadsworth the debate has ranged from argu- ments as to which is the wetter to the question who would go further in his opposition to prohibition. So that person- alities should not, be lacking in this fight, too, the Demo- crats have dug up a remark of Theodore Roosevelt to the effect that "It is rarely that a public man champions the right of big business to do wrong as openly as Mr. Wads- worth." This has rather dazed the Wadsworthites. Yet it need not have worried them, for the ex-President was calling nearly every one of his old associates names and likening them to burglars and second-story men in the Progressive campaign. Curiously enough, despite all this mud-sling- ing the populace has found its radio and its sport pages far more thrilling, and we venture to predict that when the votes are counted "Al" Smith will be more firmly seated at Albany than ever and the total of the poll will show that the campaign has raged most hotly in the columns of the press. BAD COOKING has probably done more damage in the world than even crooked politics. It seems to have been at the bottom of the flurry in Arizona over the attempt to colonize there a group of Porto Rican laborers at the invitation of the Cotton Growers' Association of the State. Porto Rico is much overpopulated and emigration is offi- cially encouraged whenever there are thought to be ade- quate guaranties of fair treatment and reasonable hope of success for the emigrants in the new field. The proposals of the Arizona cotton planters had been approved by the Porto Rican Government, and the first group of some 500 emigrants was accompanied by an official commissioner. But, alas, the first meal aboard ship, although consisting of the national dish, rice and beans, was cooked "American style"! Some of it was thrown into the sea and trouble began right there. Porto Rican cooks were hastily commandeered for the rest of the voyage, but the seeds of discord had been sown. There were continued objections thereafter, and when they arrived at their destination near Phoenix many of the Porto Ricans refused to go to work. Various local labor bodies took up the fight, declaring that the cotton growers were paying the Porto Ricans less than the rate paid other workers last year. It is a difficult dispute to unravel at long range, but the report of the official commissioner, which emphasizes the disastrous effect of rice and beans "American style," reveals an acumen unusual in state papers. THE RIGHT OF NINE-YEAR-OLD GIRLS to wear knickers or overalls in place of dresses is still being debated. Thus in Kentucky a young lady in overalls was permitted to remain at school, after her mother had sent her with a letter comparing her attire with the short skirts and roiled stockings of certain teachers, while in Jefferson- ville, Indiana, Virginia Allen in knickers is still banned from the benefits of education and her case is to be brought to trial in another county. Just what charges are to be

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation 441 Drought against Virginia The Nation does not know. She may be corrupting the morals of her fellow-pupils, or pre- senting a spectacle that so fills them with envy— at least the girls— as to make it impossible for them to give atten- tion to their studies. The chairman of the school board may be in the female-clothing business; the boys of the school may be demanding the time-honored right of men only to trousers. But whatever the charge, The Nation hopes that Virginia will come out of the trial with colors flying. And in order to buoy her up a bit in a difficult situation, let it be whispered that there are schools in New York City, and perhaps in other sections of the United States, where any child, male or female, who appears with- out a pair of overalls to be worn over his or her other clothing is frowned upon, ostracized, and sometimes even sent home in disgrace. > A SCIENTIST HELD IN HIS HAND last week a glass tube; it was discharging a stream of electrons at a rate roughly equal to the electrons thrown off by a ton of radium. To date, less than a pound of radium has been found and utilized in the world; at current market rates, a ton of radium would be worth one hundred billion dollars. A moderately valuable tube that Dr. W. D. Coolidge has created at his Schenectady laboratory ! He has named it the cathode tube, and with it he can control streams of countless billions of electrons, traveling at the rate of 150,000 miles a second. The tube is capable of generating 350,000 volts of electricity. So far the discovery lies chiefly in the realm of pure science, and as such it is announced to be one of the truly great achievements of the century. The practical util- ization of this inconceivable bombardment of angry elec- trons has not yet been made public, if indeed it is known, but its applications in metallurgy, medicine, and other fields are likely to be revolutionary. EX-SENATOR RICHARD F. PETTIGREW, whose death occurred recently, was a man of honor and cour- age wedded to an old-fashioned America which was opposed to militarism, war, imperialism, and the control of our government by and for big business. So he was a thorn in the flesh while serving as Senator from South Dakota in Washington from 1880 to 1901. Being often far in advance of his times and being given to speaking most unpalatable truths, he was variously dubbed a Populist, a demagogue, and a wild-eyed visionary. Bolshevist he would have been called had the word been known then. The frankness of the man is well illustrated by his saying to Theodore Roose- velt at Oyster Bay that the Colonel should not run for President on a third ticket : "All you can accomplish is to elect Woodrow Wilson, and that will be national disaster." To which Roosevelt replied: "Oh, well, we might as well suffer four years under Wilson as four more years under Taft." For expressing his opinion about the World War, as he had nobly spoken out about the Spanish and Philip- pine Wars, he was arrested and nearly sent to jail. But nothing could daunt this patriot or prevent his saying what he thought, on the stump and in his books. The League of Nations was to him a "league to perpetuate war" and so he would have none of it. Against American imperialism in Hawaii, Cuba, and the Caribbean he preached insistently. In this field the country needs dozens like him. Finally he came to the extreme view that all capital is robbery and that there was no hope of setting America straight until the workers assumed the direction of economic policy and took "the full product that they create." TWO FUNERAL SERVICES marked the passing of Thomas Mott Osborne. There was the usual gathering of relatives and friends mourning the death of one whom they loved as a person or admired as a man of position and distinguished service. There was also an assemblage of twelve hundred convicted criminals in Auburn prison say- ing farewell with a visible sense of personal loss to their beloved friend "Tom Brown" — the man who had made known to the nation and to the world at large the horrors of the American prison system. The second service was more touching and more deeply significant than the first. As Tom Brown he had gone behind the bars and had eaten and slept and worked as a common convict. From the depth of this and other experiences with prison life he spoke and wrote his indictment of the brutality and ignorant repres- sion that marked the management of almost every prison in the country. As warden of Sing Sing prison, in the face of political attack of the most calculated indecency, he introduced a system of self-government and a method of humane treatment which was watched with sympathy and interest by the leading penologists of the world. His fail- ings as an administrator never obscured the human success of his work. He believed warmly in the capacity of every- one to achieve, under the influence of trust and fair treat- ment, a measure of self-respect and control; and his genius lay in his ability to win from warped and embittered social outcasts a genuine response. He will be remembered for his amazing success in penetrating to the heart of the convict and the conscience of the public. The Nation's Poetry Prize rjlHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for J. the best poem submitted by an American poet in a contest conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. The rules for 1926 are as follows: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. 3. No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- cumstances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent from this office. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. 6. The winning poem will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation, to appear February 9, 1927. 7. Besides the winning poem, The Nation reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted in the contest. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. Poems should in no case be sent to them personally.

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442 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 320( The Great Free -Trade Manifesto OUR readers who recall that The Nation has been ad- vocating free trade ever since its foundation in 1865 as the most constructive and most pacific measure this coun- try could possibly adopt will understand our elation over the bankers' manifesto in favor of free trade, published throughout the world on October "19. We have reprinted it elsewhere in this issue for purposes of record because we believe it to be a shining milestone of human progress. Here are many of the foremost bankers in the world who have come together to admit the truth of what liberals have been saying again and again since the wicked peace, that the greatest need of the world is the leveling of all tariff barriers. So much a matter of common sense has it been that we could not see how any one could question it. Were the new European states created merely to stem the flow of goods? Were the hatreds of after-the-war to be measured by the height of the tariff walls? Well, at least the leading financiers have come to see that vastly more important for the restoration of Europe and for its relations to the United States is the sweeping away of these Chinese walls of protection. They have come to it not a? idealists or theorists but as practical, hard- headed business men. It has taken war's aftermath to make them appreciate what they should have learned long ago from the history of the United States and from the amazing rise of Germany after the Zollverein of 1832-1835, when it abolished all the tariff and customs walls between the several German states. It was this that cr. ated modern Germany and led directly to the proclamation of the empire at Versailles in 1871. If it is right and wise for the small states of Europe to put up barriers against one another today Germany should hasten to restore the tariffs between her several parts. No one would dream of advocating it. Now these financiers are alarmed because "at no period have impediments to trading been more perilously multi- plied without a true appreciation of the economic conse- quences involved." They point out that the breakup of the old political units alone dealt a heavy blow to international trade. Old markets disappeared and new racial animosities divided communities long since united in trade. Licenses, tariffs, prohibitions of all kinds were imposed, with the result that prosperity rapidly declined. The change of flags in itself would not have meant so much. Thus, the transfer of Silesian mines from Germany to Poland would have made little difference if there had not been erected immediately a tariff wall to make it more difficult for Germans to buy Polish coal. The bankers are right when they say that "too many states, in pursuit of false ideas of national inter- est, have imperiled their own welfare and lost sight of the common interests of the world, by basing their commercial relations on the economic folly which treats all trading as a form of war." On the contrary, trade ought to be one of the greatest bonds to tie nations together, to mingle their interests so that it should be impossible for war to arise. Always be- lievers in free trade on economic grounds, we have of late years been more than ever impressed by its necessity to pacify the nations that were lately in the war and prevent any further trade rivalries of the purely nationalistic kind which too often insure war. Richard Cobden was, of course. a leader in suggesting the relation of free trade to peace, "It has often struck me," he wrote, "that it would be well to engraft our free-trade agitation upon the peace move- ment." Again, writing on September 14, 1859, he said! that he saw in free trade the only hope "for any permanent improvements in the political relations of France and Eng- land. I utterly despair of finding peace and harmony in the efforts of governments and diplomatists. The people of the two nations must be brought into mutual dependence by thej supply of each other's wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism of language and race. It is God's own method of producing an entente cordiale, and no other plan is worth a farthing." If these words were just and true then, they are still more applicable to the war- wrecked nations of Europe today. Now, if we in this country were really desirous of help- i ing Europe there would be universal acclaim of the sound 1 position taken by the bankers. Instead, the protectionist 1 dailies, Mr. Mellon, and the President have fallen over I one another in their eagerness to have the American people I understand that that is all very well for Europe, but has I nothing to do with the United States. We must and shall, I they say, uphold that hoary old fraud, that breeder of social- I ism, that widener of class differences, that mother of trusts I — our protective system. And they take this position at I the very moment when our differences with Europe over the I war debts are so much to the front, when everybody knows j that since our debtors can pay us only in goods we can help them to pay — if we insist upon those debts — only by lower- I ing or abolishing our tariffs. It is a fair measure of the I parochial quality of Mr. Coolidge's mind that he takes this | attitude and arranges for Mr. Mellon to reassure at the earliest possible moment the protected manufacturers of America. It does not surprise us, however. For fifty years the Republican Party lias battened on the graft of the pro- tective tariff. It has filled its coffers with campaign con- tributions sometimes wrung from the protected, sometimes freely offered in order that the donors might dictate the schedules of the next tariff bill. But if America lags we may rest assured that the cam- paign now started by the bankers will go on in increasing measure. It is one of those issues that cannot be settled until it is settled aright, and the continuing disorganization of Europe through tariffs makes it absolutely certain that the fight will go on with increasing vigor. Without free trade Europe must languish. The recent free-trade con- gress in Denmark and the first Pan-European conference held under the leadership of Count Coudenhove-Kalergi in Vienna at the beginning of October are signs of the times, for Pan-Europe and free trade are nearly synonymous. As for the American bankers, headed by Mr. J. P. Morgan, who have signed this momentous document, we congratulate them upon their courage and vision. They will be heartily abused for their share in it, we are well aware. But, as we have frequently pointed out, the battle is on between the American financiers who have invested great sums abroad and the protected manufacturers. The harder they fight the nearer the day when justice shall be done and the American people be led to adopt the only sound international economic policy.

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation 443 Eugene Victor Debs "y^ ENE DEBS was the only Jesus Christ I ever knew." VJT So Sam Moore, an embittered Negro convict faced with lifelong imprisonment, explained to the warden of Atlanta Penitentiary the extraordinary effect upon him of 'Gene Debs's friendship. 'Gene Debs was a man who evoked that extravagant, almost unbelievable, type of af- fection in thousands upon thousands of his fellow-men. He evoked it because he gave it. At his funeral services in Terre Haute Victor Berger said that Debs went beyond the Biblical command to love thy neighbor as thyself, for he loved his neighbor better than himself, and the vast crowd with tear-stained faces solemnly nodded assent. To this love for human beings Debs added a love for humanity. The two are not always combined. The con- cern for humanity, the vision, the dauntless courage, the uncompromising spirit of the prophet and pioneer may be consistent with a ruthless disregard for the immediate in- terests of individual human beings. It was not so with Debs. His courage was born of love. His passion for mankind, his hope for the workers grew out of the love of comrades, not only as they might become but as they were with all their faults and weaknesses. In this combination of dauntless prophet, far-seeing idealist, and simple lover of men lay the man's greatness. Debs embraced the cause of the workers from choice and not necessity. The outward circumstances of his early life and his own gifts were of a sort that would have led him naturally to political and financial success. Indeed, while he was still a very young man, he made a successful beginning in local politics. But his sympathies, long before he was a Socialist, were with the workers. Our generation has almost forgotten that Debs began as an unusually suc- cessful labor organizer. He was the founder of the pres- ent Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen. When he became convinced that this form of craft organization was not ade- quate to the needs of the railway workers he resigned his $4,000-a-year position to become president of the American Railway Union at $900 a year. The world still remembers that union and its part in the Pullman strike. The strike and the union were both broken by Grover Cleveland's use of United States troops against the protest of Governor Altgeld of Illinois. This strike, too, was marked by the beginning of government by injunction, and Debs was sent to jail for six months on a charge of contempt — the fore- runner of a series of similar acts of judicial tyranny. In prison Debs first learned of Socialism and became a Socialist, although not until after the first Bryan cam- paign did he irrevocably tie his fortunes to that movement. Following his release from prison Debs undertook to raise and pay off $40,000 of debts accumulated by the American Railway Union. This obligation he fulfilled at great cost to himself at a time when not even the creditors of the union held him responsible. From 1897 on, Debs's life and fortunes were inextrica- bly mingled with those of the Socialist movement. Five times he was its candidate for President. He was not pri- marily a builder of policies, nor in his later years an organizer. He was a flaming spirit, a living incarnation of an ideal. That ideal was an ideal of uncompromising struggle, but of struggle by non-violent methods. The vic- tory he wanted was a victory of peace. It was impossible that Debs could believe the European war a war for democ- racy, or that any war could end war. So he made himself the spokesman of the Socialist ideal of peace through an un- derstanding between the- workers of the world. For his de- votion to liberty and peace he was sentenced to ten years of penal servitude. Today it seems almost unthinkable that on the basis of his famous Canton speech any man could have been convicted. In no sense were his words pro-German. They did not ask American troops to lay down their arms. They were a pica for the end of war, for the recognition of Russia, for the preservation of liberty at home. Yet that speech, during a "war for democracy," sent a man past sixty years of age, suffering from the heart disease which finally resulted in his death, to jail with common felons. Worse still, after the armistice Debs was kept in jail by the personal vindictiveness of a President who had himself acknowledged the economic causes of the war as plainly as the man whom he held prisoner. It was left to President Harding, in response to public demand, to restore Debs to freedom. Neither he nor President Coolidge gave him back his citizenship. Of Debs's permanent place in the history of the labor movement and of social progress it is too early to speak. Philosophically, in spite of the Communist attempt to claim him, he was an extreme democrat, a convinced believer in freedom. However much he might admire the achieve- ments of Russia, he never could identify himself with any sort of dictatorship. Our generation with its little faith in the common man may find his philosophy old-fashioned. Temporarily, at least, it has lost much of its appeal. Yet Debs himself was the sort of man who gives one new confidence in men and their possibilities. That he was what he was, that he loved as he loved, is reason for hope. He belongs to the republic of the immortals whose memory is a living inspiration to mankind. Mr. Asquith Retires LORD OXFORD AND ASQUITH he is now, but as plain Mr. Asquith history will record him. For a generation he has bulked large in the annals of the British Liberal Party and of his country. Yet his retirement from the leadership of the Liberals finds them at the lowest ebb of their existence; by one of his last and most mistaken acts the remnant of the Liberal forces was again divided in half. Moreover, his unexpected retirement at this time practically turns over the leadership of Liberalism to Lloyd George, the very man whom he savagely attacked after the coal strike because Lloyd George sympathized in some de- gree with the striking miners and with that notable evi- dence of labor solidarity which found its expression in the general strike. A typical old-fashioned Liberal leader, cul- tured, trained by long years of experience and public ser- vice, Asquith retires too late to conceal the fact that his day is done. As the Baltimore Sun well puts it, "he retires because he must accept the verdict of his time that he no longer is of use, in any large sense or field." A pathetic withdrawal? Perhaps, if one regards only his pre-war career, but well merited if one considers his taking England into the World War. For he was, with Sir Edward Grey, party to that monstrous deceit of his own party, of the Cabinet, and of the country, by which Great Britain was secretly committed to enter into a war if

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444 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 France and Belgium were attacked. Repeatedly in response to public and private inquiries he and Sir Edward Grey quibbled. "This country is not under any obligation not public and known to Parliament which compels it to take part in any war" he told Parliament on March 24, 1913, in reply to a question by Joseph King. "If war arises be- tween European Powers there are no unpublished agree- ments which will restrict or hamper the freedom of the Government or of the Parliament to decide whether or not Great Britain should participate in a war." Naval and military conversations had already made that statement a deliberate lie, and when the war came the British people were calmly plunged into it without time for con- sideration, without time for expressing their opinion; and the false plea that it was for Belgium's sake was set up further to delude the British public and the world. Then and there the doom of the Liberal Party was sealed; for Liberalism to strike hands with the war god is to invite the destruction which came. The Liberal Party stood shoulder to shoulder against the Boer War and came triumphantly into power under Campbell-Bannerman. It fell under As- quith at the very moment it combined with the Conserva- tives to carry on a war which cost 1,500,000 Englishmen their lives and earned no satisfactory peace, no rewards worth while, not even if one considers the stretches of ter- ritory brought under the British flag. But it was not even given to Asquith to carry the war through to success. A sordid intrigue between Lloyd George and the millionaire press-owners who sought to rule the country and direct the war resulted in the usurper's taking Asquith's place. One would have thought the victim of this conspiracy would then and there have broken with Lloyd George instead of in 1926. But a desire to hold on to office, to be in the thick of things — or to serve, if one pleases — kept Asquith in office. The end of the war found him utterly helpless; the bankruptcy of Liberalism was his own. He had nothing to contribute, no new ideas to ad- vance. He agreed by silence to Lloyd George's Hang-the- Kaiser campaign. He had nothing to say against the bad peace; his tongue could frame no words to spell a policy toward the beaten foe comparable to Campbell-Banner- man's wise and magnanimous policy toward the defeated Boers, which constitutes one of the brightest and noblest episodes in British history. Facing stupendous economic and financial problems, he had no advice to give, no solu- tion to offer. He was spent, wasted, and finished, and with him his party. There are Englishmen in plenty to say that England is naturally Liberal and that Liberalism is certain again to come into its own. It may be so, but the war is not so easily absolved. Certainly a new type of leader must be found. The land radicalism of Lloyd George will not sweep the country, if only because Lloyd George is himself so wholly without character or stability. Moreover, there is a coldness in the laissez-faire, individualist doctrines of the elder Liberal school quite unsuited to the present needs. As- quith illustrated well in his legalistic attitude toward the general strike how inadequate Liberalism is today, for he could see in it nothing but a threat to the state. The quality of sympathy strained anJ. sifted by legal-minded politicians loses its meaning. The masses who clamor for bread will not turn to a man who sees in their appeal for a chance to live decently only a move against the govern- ment— a government which spent a million and a half lives to carry out a secret agreement and to throw other millions into the torture of the battlefield. Mr. Asquith is not the only "statesman" outworn, done for, morally and spiritually. But it is because of such as these that England is in the travail which is hers today. Critics and Criticized THE death of Henry T. Finck, for all of his active life the musical critic of the Evening Post and for thirty- five years a most valued reviewer and writer for The Na- tion, suggests anew the question whether a critic of the arts should or should not enter into friendships with those whom he must criticize. Mr. Finck's colleague, the veteran J. Ranken Towse, who for an even longer period has been writing of the drama for the Evening Post, has invariably refused to meet actor or actress. Being once lured into a room and introduced to one of the profession, his dismay was in no wise concealed; for he could no longer, after forty years, boast that he had never met a Thespian. Few critics pass a similarly self-denying ordinance. Mr. Finck was not one of them. A man of most shining honesty, of guileless innocence in many matters, he found in the companionship of artists an unending stimulus in his writing, the source of much information and of endless personal anecdotes with which he enriched his newspaper and magazine writing. If he progressed as a critic it was often, he felt, because he had come to know through his contacts with the musical world how difficult is the lot of the musician, particularly if the musician be a member of such an organization as the Metropolitan Opera Com- pany. Yet it would be idle to deny that he was, at times, influenced by his warm and sympathetic nature. He could never write with complete detachment of Paderewski or of certain singers like Geraldine Farrar or of that superb artist, Jean de Reszke, with whom he came into personal contact. That he was sublimely unconscious of any bias was apparent. And when he felt that certain conductors or performers were to be unfavorably criticized he often went for them with a passion which made people believe, erroneously, that there was involved some personal spite. Quite the contrary. His ardent nature similarly ab- horred Brahms and worshiped Wagner. When the latter's works were new and it was the fashion in New York to deride and abuse anyone who dared to think that the precious stuff of this crazy German composer was music, Mr. Finck's championship of him was so passionate that many were the stories that he had taken money to write as he did. He took sides when he knew the composer or artist; he did so if he never met them in the flesh. Honest and learned, he was profoundly jealous, as every critic ought to be, of his right to absolute freedom of utter- ance, and promptly resigned once when through a comical error he thought that for the first time in thirty-five years his copy had been edited after leaving his desk. He was beyond every influence save that of his emotions. As temperaments vary, so will opinions as to whether a critic should hold himself aloof from those he must pass upon. Undoubtedly, Mr. Towse's renunciation is the safer rule. But the question still arises whether judgments may not be rightly modified if through personal contacts one comes to know and appreciate the struggles and per- sonalities of those whom one discusses.

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation 445 A Political Crisis in Education Bv CHAPIN COLLINS THERE are high doings in the State of Washington. On one side is the Governor of the State. He is Roland H. Hartley, successful logger, who gracefully and pictur- esquely refers to his opponents as "goggle-eyed jackasses, skunks, sons of guns, and blatherskites," and has told his friends he doesn't believe in state education beyond the eighth grade. On the other side, as its chief figure, is Henry Suzzallo, recently ousted president of the University of Washington, one-time head of the Association of American University Presidents, former professor of education at Columbia, editor of the Riverside Educational Monographs, member of the Institute of International Education and the British Royal Society of Literature, and an elector in the Hall of Fame. The sudden but not unexpected dismissal of Dr. Suz- zallo as president of the University of Washington, after an administration of eleven years, is the climax of a long educational controversy in the Northwestern commonwealth. It was done on October 4 by order of a board of regents, the majority members of which were appointed by the Gov- ernor, it has been charged, for the specific purpose of "get- ting" Suzzallo. On the other hand, the Governor denies any part in the action of his regents, who declare they found the university head "meddling in politics." The dismissal has been followed by as spectacular a flare of newspaper resentment as the State of Washington has ever seen, has stirred loud demand for recall or im- peachment, and was accompanied by a sensational student demonstration, 4,000 of them gathering before Dr. Suz- zallo's home on the campus the evening of the dismissal, bearing torchlights and chanting "Strike, strike, strike!" This threat brought from Dr. Suzzallo his only public com- ment on his dismissal. "I have given my life to the University of Washington," he said. "I want you to do the same. Do not strike. At- tend your classes tomorrow. Will you do this for me?" The regents' action has made education the paramount political issue in Washington, an issue that submerges con- sideration of national questions. Despite all but unanimous newspaper condemnation of the Governor, who was swept into office by a huge majority two years ago, he still is con- ceded political strength, particularly in eastern Washington and certain rural sections where the university has been regarded with suspicion and Suzzallo's salary — $18,000 a year — as a hold-up. It is pertinent to observe, however, that he has refused $25,000 from another university. But the situation in Washington has national signifi- cance so far as education is concerned, regardless of the merits of the immediate controversy. It precipitates the question: Who is to control our State education? Are legislatures to rule? Are our universities to be dominated, in finance and educational policy, by an uncertain legislative majority? In finance and educational policy, for the first means the second. Or is the Governor to have authority, as he seems to have in Washington? Or are boards of regents or the faculty to have power, and if they ought to have it, how are they to gain it? Unless Governor Hartley is sustained by the voters who elect a new legislature this fall — and this seems un- likely the Washington Legislature will enact laws to take unto itself the rule of the university, and will deprive the Governor of the power he now wields. This will block the incumbent, but does it mark reform? Do we want legisla- tive majorities dictating educational policy? The Washington situation may he duplicated in many States of the Union. The institutions of higher learning there, as elsewhere, are governed by boards of regents, ap- pointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate. Mem- bers of the board may be removed, the law says, for cause, without defining specifically what the cause may be. The Governor appoints, the Senate confirms, the courts interpret — truly a perfect example of checks and balances. But in the State of Washington an executive, with great measure of success, has overridden legally enacted laws, has re- moved and appointed regents without apparent cause, and has effectively demonstrated that the American scene is as subject to dictatorship as are other nations not safeguarded by sacred and inspired constitutions. The State University is Washington's most obvious achievement. It occupies a magnificent campus of some 400 acres in the heart of Seattle. Its ultimate endowment, now restricted by leasehold of valuable metropolitan property, will place it among the richest institutions of the nation. Famed for husky crews and championship football teams, its academic standing has steadily improved. In a sense the university is a personal achievement, that of Dr. Suzzallo. A noted educator before he came to the university eleven years ago from Columbia, he has led the march from "cow college" to real university. Much of the advance has necessarily been on the material side to meet an astounding increase in the number of those demand- ing attendance ; it has been a work against odds, a constant battle for sufficient appropriations and a work that has been hampered by unavoidable compromise. Dr. Suzzallo, Ameri- can-born son of Dalmatian parents, has something of the Mussolini in him, an instinct for leadership, perhaps a liking for control. During the war Dr.. Suzzallo's leadership was recog- nized in his appointment to the post of chairman of the State Council of Defense, charged with keeping industrial peace. To prevent warfare in the vital lumber industry, the council, under Dr. Suzzallo, urged the eight-hour day in logging camps. Chief of the vehement opposition was one Roland H. Hartley, successful logger. When this same Hart- ley was elected governor two years ago on a "business in government" platform, trouble between the university head and the new State executive was momentarily expected. Hartley's first legislature had no sooner come together than it adjourned, on his request. He wanted, he explained, to make an "economic survey," in order to formulate a sci- entific program of tax reduction. Just how to reduce gov- ernmental expenditures in a developing State, intent upon good roads and many of them, devoted to reclamation, proud of its low percentage of illiteracy — all expensive wants — and engaged, moreover, in constructing a new capitol group

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446 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 costing- nearly $10,000,000, was a problem. Perhaps that is why Hartley decided upon education, the biggest item in the taxpayers' bill. He came before the legislature with an attack upon educational "frills and foibles," and declared: Higher education, particularly the university, was run- ning hog-wild on expenditures. Its development made the educational system topheavy, with undue emphasis upon higher rather than elementary education. The administration of the State's five institutions of higher learning — university, State college, and three normal schools — was inefficient, authority being scattered among the various boards of regents. Therefore, all boards of regents should be abolished and all institutions lumped under one central board ap- pointed by the Governor. This proposal was a bombshell. "Frills and foibles" had been heard at every previous legislative session, but demand for a central board, appointed by the Governor, stirred such determined opposition that the Governor him- self was surprised. There were those who recalled Hartley's disbelief in State education beyond the eighth grade, the proposal was assailed as ruinous to the natural development of each institution according to its needs, and university alumni pronounced the Governor actuated by hatred for the university and its ^resident, Dr. Suzzallo. The docile legislature, which had meekly gone home at the Governor's bidding, bucked. It ignored the Gov- ernor's advice and made its appropriations for higher edu- cation. The Governor vetoed the bill. Hartley's strength in the legislature was known to be powerful, and it was openly charged that he used the appointment of four men to newly created judgeships to swing the vote. At any rate, he was strong enough to have his veto sustained by a narrow mar- gin in one house, although it was overriden in the other. But the majority of the House, refusing to accept defeat, mustered its forces again, and on reconsideration put the appropriations through over the veto after turbulent sessions. Victory won, the legislators went home. Hartley was not through. Before long every board of regents in the State received notice from the Governor directing it not to spend the increased appropriations made by the legislature but to confine itself to the previous lower amount, on the ground that the lawmakers had acted "irregu- larly." As the largest institution, the university was hard- est hit. Fire had destroyed its mines building, a new library building awaited completion, and nearly 7,000 stu- dents were clamoring for admission, the largest number in history. In the face of these pressing needs, it was rec- ognized the university board could hardly do otherwise than follow the will of the legislature, and disregard the Governor. But just two days before the board was to meet Hartley removed two regents, "for cause" unexplained. This gave him a majority of the board, four to three, and in due course the regents voted, four to three, not to expend the money the legislature had provided. Of course, the ousted regents protested and carried their dismissal to the courts, but the State Supreme Court held that "cause" was a matter within the discretion of the Governor. This achieved, Hartley for good measure, re- moved another regent, also for unexplained cause, and named one of his own choice to the place. These actions were accompanied by speeches from the Governor in which he charged an attempt was being made by certain interests to rob the State of valuable timber prop- erties, and he declared the educational issue was being raised as a smoke-screen. He studiously avoided reference to Dr. Suzzallo, who remained silent himself, but when the Spokesman-Review of Spokane, recognized as the Governor's strongest newspaper friend, published an interview in which Hartley was quoted as vigorously assailing the university head, it was generally regarded as authentic. In this statement, now known as the "dago interview," Governor Hartley was quoted as saying: "Dr. Suzzallo does not know me. I was born in America and not in Italy, and if they want to put the head of this State government at the University of Washington, all right. But until then it will remain at Olympia. One man will run it and that will be me." While the opposition press gleefully pointed out that Dr. Suzzallo was born in California and Hartley himself in Canada, the Governor repudiated the interview, declaring it false and stating: "I didn't know I was being interviewed." The revamped board of regents, after following Hart- ley's will regarding appropriations, led an uneventful career until this October. It reaffirmed its contract with Dr. Suz- zallo and favorably disposed of several of his recommenda- tions. It had one brush with the alumni association — charging the latter with political meddling — but its attempt to investigate alumni files was frustrated by the sudden removal of the alumni office from the campus. Then, without warning and behind closed doors, the regents, five to two, demanded Dr. Suzzallo's resignation on October 4, this action following a hotel conference between the Governor and the majority members of the board. Since that date the Supreme Court by unanimous decision has ruled that the legislature acted legally in passing the appropriation bill over the Governor's veto, and has directed the State Tax Commission, which was appointed by Hart- ley, to base its levies on the 1925 law. This decision is the first event in the long controversy at all favorable to the Governor's opponents, and suggests that in the long run the policies of the executive will be defeated. Certain it is that the Senate, barring an upset at the November election, will refuse to confirm Hartley's regents. But meanwhile an able university head has been ousted after eleven years of effective service, the president of one normal school has resigned in disgust, the university fac- ulty is demoralized, and an effort has been set on foot to recall the Governor. Perhaps worst of all, the Legislature, if the 1925 majority is returned to office, will take over the educational reins itself. It is difficult to understand how a State university, depending for its funds upon the will of politically chosen legislators and executives, can remain aloof from politics. Therein lies the essential failure of State-controlled educa- tion, as the chronicle of happenings in the State of Wash- ington reveals. It might have been almost any other State. Are State institutions free elsewhere, or must they enter the political arena, trade and barter, accept the necessary mess of pottage in return for their birthright, academic inde- pendence? Will it ever be possible for such a plum to be divorced from politics, utterly severed from executive whim or legis- lative passion? Will it ever come to pass that these two duly constituted authorities, with the approbation of the people, will place education in the hands of educators?

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation 447 German\r Revisited By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD Baden-Baden, Septemb* "rjiHE one bright spot in Europe," I heard Germany L called in London amid a general chorus of pessimism and gloom — the one bright spot economically and financially. And so I found it after visiting some ten cities and spend- ing a number of weeks within its confines. Not that Ger- many presents to the visitor any startling picture of hap- piness and prosperity. Far from it. If the cities are out- wardly repaired and no longer sadly down at the heel, there is still enormous suffering behind the newly stuccoed fronts of the great apartment houses. Indeed, if you should talk with the average German he would tell you of hardships, disappointments, losses, and almost intolerable suffering, in considerable part due to the necessary process of sanitation and of reorganization. To get the measure of progress, therefore, one must compare the Germany of today with that which 1 saw in 1928; one must not look at individual trees but at the health of the forest as a whole. If one does that, then the conclusion is irresistible that Germany has gained enormously in three years and that, if nothing untoward happens, this conquered country will in a few years surpass in prosperity and economic health her chief rivals of the World War — if indeed she has not already done so. Primarily, the greatest change is in the mental atti- tude of the people themselves. Three years ago they were still smarting under their overwhelming defeat and the stigma put upon them by the Allied nations of being mad dogs deliberately bent upon wrecking the world that they might dominate it for their own selfish purposes. Today they have put nearly all of that behind them — save only the extreme Nationalists and the survivors of the old mili- tary caste. They are spiritually disarmed. They have said Schluss to the war episode and they can now talk about it with amazing detachment and objectiveness. They can see far more clearly the errors they, or rather their rulers, made. The lapse of years, of course, makes it easier for them to review the past without bitterness, with clearer perceptions of all the factors involved, with a real under- standing of the way they and all the other nations were betrayed by their rulers. This is remarkable to an Ameri- can who knows how long it took to win over the defeated Confederacy to an acceptance of the results of its appeal to arms. Three years ago there was still a lot of whining and complaining in Germany. Today, even those who say to you frankly that they do not see how Germany can meet the crushing burdens of the 1927 and 1928 Dawes pay- ments discuss the situation without complaint. It has be- come a purely financial problem, and many of them see that the compulsion to work and to economize and to live simply which the Dawes plan exercises is really a boon; that it is compelling a discipline of enormous value in holding a beaten and stricken people together. One hears, I repeat, of innumerable cases of dreadful suffering, especially among what is left of the middle class. Appeals for aid in genuine cases of utter despair and absolute poverty pile up. For here is a country in which old age has become something terrible, since all savings have been wiped out, every before- the-war life-insurance policy is valueless, all endowment funds for hospitals, homes for the aged, schools, universi- ties, anil the rest have been wiped out; every provision for age has vanished. Thousands upon thousands of people who felt their futures safe have nothing whatever to look forward to. The more favorably situated can just make both ends meet, but they cannot spend an extra three marks for a concert ticket; as for the journeys they so loved, they are now prisoners the year around in the places where they happen to be. On top of all this the so-called "rationaliza- tion" of industry, the wiping out of myriads of unnecessary businesses, together with the great combinations that are being formed is constantly throwing multitudes into bank- ruptcy or depriving them of their places. It is easy to understand the reparation official in Berlin who declared that he could not continue to hold his position if he allowed his mind to dwell upon the cases of individual hardship which came before him. There is still alarming unemployment, now gradually decreasing, as Parker Gilbert, that extraordinary American official in charge of reparations, has prophesied that it would, but still so ominous as to make Germany ask herself, like England, if there are not several millions too many of her citizens in the world. This unemployment does not, of course, include only those who appear at the registry offices. There are multitudes of others, not of the manual-labor class, who can find no work to do, or are breaking their hearts in positions wholly unsuited to them. Among those who have jobs the pay is often preposterous. I know of a chief engineer in a going Berlin engineering concern who gets less than $100 a month, while ordinary servants can be had for from $6 a month up. This particular chief engineer is only one of many who daily watch every barome- ter of trade with trembling hearts because they know that if their work fails them they cannot hope to find other jobs. Everywhere businesses stagnate or fail for lack of capital. Finally, there is the grave lack of housing, so serious that to cities like Heidelberg no one is allowed to move unless by an exchange of apartments under which some Heidel- berger moves to the city from which the new person comes. The municipalities rigidly reserve the right to quarter strangers upon any householder or apartment-dweller who in their opinion has too much space. In Baden-Baden the owner of one large estate has had nine families quartered upon her property. All of this would be enough to render hopeless almost any people. Yet the improvement in morale and courage in Germany is everywhere noticeable. There is more cheerful- ness and vastly more resignation ; there is much more evi- dence of wealth and prosperity. There are, of course, many who have wealth — those who coined money during the war or were able to hold on to large estates or had money abroad, chiefly bankers and manufacturers. The dailies that were so near disaster in 1920-1923 now have the look of success and progress. Their circulations are increasing; their ad- vertising is excellent. They are far more hopeful in their tone, especially those devoted to the republic. The entrance of Germany into the League of Nations,

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448 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 the steady cleaning up of the economic situation after the inflation folly, the extraordinarily rapid reconquest of the seas by German shipping, the increased activity of the ship- yards, the prosperity of the railroads, which carried 33.6 per cent more passengers in 1925 than in 1913, the host of new inventions, the great combinations in trades forced by the Dawes plan, and now the international iron and steel cartel — all of these give the press opportunities in plenty to cheer up their readers. They do not, of course, dwell upon the seriousness of the evils that will follow in the train of these enormous combinations of capital and of the coming in of huge sums of foreign capital through which great mines and large industrial companies are passing directly over to American or other ownership — America has already invested $900,000,000 in Germany since the war. The super- state of German industrialism grows by leaps and bounds and promises work for more and more. In connection with unemployment it must not be forgotten that great numbers of rentiers and retired persons are now working who never worked before; that the war brought masses of women into industrial life and 600,000 men who formerly were absorbed by the army and navy must now be provided for in private enterprises. Work, work; it is the gospel of work which is saving Germany, a3 well as civic discipline and the determination to rebuild the fatherland and restore it to the pinnacle it once occupied. Still it remains a marvel, this sudden liqui- dation of the war mentally, this acceptance of the inevi- table. Let no one think that it has been achieved without cost. The price Germany has had to pay for her Kaiser and his criminal mismanagement of her foreign aff.iirs is appa- rent on every hand. The aspect of the people one sees bears eloquent testimony to this. There used to be handsome men, especially in uniform, and handsome women in Germany. Now one sees them not at all. The crowds appear coars- ened; never a beautiful people, they seem positively ugly, and as if to show their desire to be nothing else innumerable men shave their heads so that they are as bald as eggs. The women wear costumes far out of style; if they ever displayed taste in dress it has disappeared. The aesthetic side of life has for the present gone by the board. Sport has taken a tremendous hold. There is a nation- wide movement to substitute gymnastics for the old military drill and a determination to follow the Greek example, but for the present the cult of beauty is dead. Dire national need and suffering for twelve long years have made it im- possible, have destroyed refinements, the things that charm and grace, by taking away the means and leisure necessary to them. Music still flourishes and art too; the theater fights its way on. But for the present — and for years to come — it is the struggle for material existence which con- trols with individuals and with the various administrative units. The latter are building canals and railroads and are electrifying the country at a tremendous rate; the impelling motive is quite as much to give work to men who would otherwise be receiving unemployment pay as to increase the economic and industrial power of the country. Incidentally the republic is strengthened thereby. The German Republic? It has gained greatly in three years. In 1923 one could meet many people who still felt a good deal of sympathy for the Kaiser. He had blundered, yes, but he had meant well. Today one still finds monarch- ists, notably in Bavaria, where some people continue to believe that, despite the federal constitution, Rupprecht will be proclaimed king. But nowhere does one hear any longer regret for the Kaiser or the slightest suggestion that he or one of his sons might some day rule again over Ger- many. I have heard Rupprecht praised as a good sort, and the Grand Duke of Baden is still popular, but repeatedly working people have said to me that two millions of Ger- mans but not a single member of the imperial family fell in battle. The stigma of coward attaches to the Kaiser more than ever. Even those who think him in some respects misjudged, or say he was mentally unbalanced, declare he should have died at the head of his troops. I doubt if Emil Ludwig's brilliant study of the Kaiser, as utterly destructive of him and his pretences as any anti-German foreigner could possibly ask, could have had three years ago the suc- cess it has just achieved. In the more severely critical discussions of the old regime one finds everywhere the clear- est proof of the ground lost by the monarchists and won by the republic. To this Ludendorff has contributed not a little by showing himself a weakling in his beer-cellar revolt in Munich and a man utterly destitute of political sagacity, one might almost say of common sense. He has destroyed his own great reputation while Hindenburg has kept his and, barring one very bad error, has set an admirable example of a national executive who can keep his mouth shut. Ludendorff's divorce and remarriage, and the revela- tion that in the critical days after the war he was busy shipping some of his fortune out of the country in direct violation of law, have all helped to deprive him of popular respect. With him the old order suffers. Time, of course, aids the republic and so does the order within its boundaries. There is no longer any torture like the Ruhr invasion to upset the people; the French are behaving better, and there is the promise that all the occu- pied territories will soon be free, that Eupen and Malmedy will be repurchased and the Saar freed from the menace of a change of nationality. The adoption of the Locarno treaties; the admission of Germany to the League and its Council; the amazing prospect of a real Franco-German peace — even if it is only a prospect — and the alliance be- tween German, French, Belgian, and Luxemburg steel and iron magnates have all heightened the prestige of the repub- lic. Every month that passes strengthens it. Every year new voters take their places who have known nothing else since their period of maturity. In Germany, too, nothing succeeds like success. If Stresemann — whose great devel- opment as a statesman must be admitted even by those who dislike his personality and his manners — achieves the con- cord with France, with the aid of Hindenburg's quiet and steadying influence, it is hard to see what grounds the Nationalists and monarchists and extreme conservatives will have for their opposition, especially if economic condi- tions continue slowly to improve. The great industrialists themselves are holding out olive branches to organized labor. One of their chief spokes- men has publicly urged the entrance into the government of labor — a remarkable change of heart which bodes great things for the future of German industry, as does also the extraordinary discovery of a means of obtaining all of Ger- many's oil and lubricants from coal and coal derivatives which would, some bankers believe, in five years render Ger- many free from dependence upon America, Rumania, or Russia for oil and gasoline now costing her hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. One no longer hears grumb- lings that things weren't so terrible under the monarchy.

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation 449 The Communists are steadily losing ground and influence. The bitterness of party strife is, perhaps, less intense. Fortunately the long list of political assassinations seems at an end. If the Reichstag still suffers from a surplus of parties and the politicians are mostly selfish and lacking in vision, if the ministry is still without a strong, harmoni- ous, and homogeneous majority — why, the republic lives and has for all time demonstrated its right to In its Locarno treaties and the possibility of that real brother- hood of France and Germany which nature intended. There are dark sides, of course, besides the dreadful individual suffering and the hundreds of thousands of ex- istences utterly warped or ruined by the war. The purely political situation is none too good. There are many re- forms needed. There is endless reconstruction still to be done. The sense of gross injustice to Germany in the matter of the war guilt has not wholly disappeared and will not until the sole-guilt charge is disposed of, until many others besides Briand testify to German gallantry in war, and that war spells atrocities on all sides. The working classes are bearing a frightful burden and must not be further de- pressed if they are to retain decent living conditions. If bad times should come, there will again be grave t rouble. There is no millennium in sight in Germany. Her fun- damental governmental problems are still to be solved. She is erect in"; under foreign duress an industrial Juggernaut which may prove to be more threatening to popular go. ment than is the case anywhere else. My point is simply that for the hour Germany is facing to the front, is bear- ing almost intolerable burdens stoically, and is progressing steadily. She is paying a terrific price for the past but she is accepting that as something as inevitable and as scarcely more worth discussing than the rising of the sun. If she can continue in this spirit, if her admirable self-control and readiness to work should last, if the public order continues and the narrow partisanship of politicians sinks into a genuine desire to place country above party, if there are no baleful outside influences like the collapse of the franc, and if nature is normally favorable, there seems no reason why in fifteen years her economic and financial soundness should not be beyond question. The Germans are winning by the arts of peace what they lost in war. They seem to bo demonstrating anew how sweet as well as bitter may be the uses of adversity. William Green's Convention By BENJAMIN STOLBERG DETROIT was William Green's convention. It showed his weakness, in which lies his strength as an in- cumbent of his office. He can continue to lead the American Federation of Labor as long as he follows the hard men on its Executive Council — Tobin, Duffy, Rickert, Fischer, Woll; as long as the heads of the Big Three Internationals — the miners, the carpenters, and the electrical workers — think he is safe. At Detroit they all tested his strength. They found him weak. They are for him. Green does not look the professional labor leader. At close range one can note the honorable tell-tale complexion of the miner, slate-blue spots shot indelibly deep under the skin. Otherwise the president of the A. F. of L. looks like a conservative, somewhat old-fashioned, prosperous business man. His features are close together in a broad Welsh face : the eyes are small, nondescript, kindly enough an upturned but not pert little nose; a cherubic little mouth, which tremulously and a bit indignantly puckers when Green is worried. For eleven days he sat in the chair and listened to the reports of the various committee chairmen — Tobin, Woll, Duffy, Rickert. They reeled off the resolutions mechani- cally, but they read their own recommendations with gusto. Virtually all these recommendations were adopted. Now and then a delegate would get up, in congressional fashion, to elaborate his philosophical agreement with the machine — for the record. Now and then someone would courageously move for the substitution of an "if" for a "when." Now and then someone would protest a little, but rarely with his vote. As each question came before the house, Green would rise, incant the suffrage formula, and then duly hammer the vote into the record. There was a multitude of petty resolutions, not worth the time: the convention costs around $100,000. The more liberal ones are traditional. The most important resolu- tions were those on Passaic; on the shorter work week; on the organization of the automobile industry and the open shop in general ; on the company union ; and on the Russian and Mexican questions. The convention voted in favor of increasing the pen- sions of Civil War veterans' widows. The Citizens' Military Training Camps were indorsed, as good calesthenics. A nobly vague gesture against race discrimination tactfully ignored the bars which the overwhelming majority of the crafts put up against the Negro. The injunction was de- plored. The direct primary was indorsed. Fascism was disadvantageously contrasted with nonpartisan political action. A fair trial for Sacco and Vanzetti was demanded. One or two jurisdictional disputes were skirted. Occasionally there was a set speech by some harmless lobbyist. Spencer Miller, Jr., of the Workers' Education Bureau, which enjoys more the official than the financial indorsement of the A. F. of L., delivered his annual remarks on what he called "the old, old story of workers' educa- tion." The only new feature he might have reported was the bureau's acceptance of $25,000 from the Carnegie Cor- poration. He didn't. Passaic was a ticklish problem. At the invitation of Thomas F. McMahon of the United Textile Workers Rabbi Stephen S. Wise came on from New York to testify that the Communist background of the strike has been rendered absolutely kosher. In deep roiling basso, with lifted face and arms, the rabbi defied the Detroit Chamber of Com- merce, Moscow, and the mill barons. He thundered for three-quarters of an hour in the style of Cecil de Mille's notion of the Prophet Isaiah. He did an excellent job. The convention voted support for the strike. And Rabbi Wise made it possible for Max Hayes of the Typographical Union to force a collection on the floor which yielded almost $1,300. Several international unions pledged definite sums

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450 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 Green originally had hoped to put through the forty- hour week. The Executive Council, fearfully, changed it to a progressively shortened work week. But the administra- tion did come out for an unlimited per capita tax to fight company unions. The administration is afraid of the com- pany union. Its fancy features render the unintelligent worker too conservative even for the old trade union, and it teaches the radical worker the absurdity of craft separatism. In its fight against the open shop the machine was more careful. The truth is that the A. F. of L. is spiritually too exhausted for straight organization work. It is for this reason that it, unconsciously, is attacking the automobile industry. The steel industry, ripe for organization work, it is avoiding like the plague. Ford and the General Motors do not employ craftsmen but human automata which are practically unorganizable under the A. F. of L. structure. mo facilitate the organization of these industries the Execu- tive Council has temporarily suspended jurisdictional divi- sions. Only after the organization of these automatic in- dustries, the shop-craft officials are to determine whether the man who tightens a series of nuts is a machinist or a sheet-metal worker. So much for the business of the convention. And now for the fireworks. These were innocently started by Lee Terrill, industrial secretary of the Detroit Young Men's Christian Association, who invited Green to speak. Where- upon Charles B. Van Dusen, a big five-and-ten-cent man, the president of the Detroit Y. M. C. A., withdrew the invi- tation. His reasons were lucid: Detroit is open shop and proud of it; all labor leaders are revolutionists; Mr. Terrill is a "mere employee" and, incidentally, the Y. M. C. A. is trying to raise $5,000,000. Such clarity of vision no doubt get Mr. Van Dusen to the top of the five-and-ten-cent profession. But any Y. M. C. A. issue is also a church issue. And the liberal clergy does not see things quite as clearly. Dr. Lynn H. Hough, for instance, in an impassioned address shook his finger into the face of the secretary of the Detroit Chamber of Commerce and exclaimed in truly magnificent rage: "Lou.s XIV said, I am the state; but he never dared to say, I am the church!" Little did simple Louis dream of the power of a five-and-ten-cent magnate. The Y. M. C. A. fiasco led indirectly to the Sherwood Eddy affair. Sherwood Eddy is an important International Y. M. C. A. official. He is also strongly in favor of Russian recognition; and so is Albert F. Coyle, editor of the Broth- erhood of Locomotive Engineers' Journal. Mr. Coyle is anxious for an official labor commission to visit Russia. Accordingly Mr. Coyle, through friends of friends of friends of Green, maneuvered Mr. Eddy to the platform. Green did not want Mr. Eddy to speak. Gompers never would have allowed Mr. Eddy to speak. From his own point of view, Green was weak in granting his permission. Tom Tippett of the Illinois Miners reported at the press table before Mr. Eddy's speech that he happened to over- hear the arrangement. It tallies exactly with Mr. Eddy's version. Mr. Eddy was to speak on his European trip, with emphasis on his experiences in Russia; he was to avoid the "controversial" issue of recognition. Mr. Eddy spoke prac- tically on nothing but Russia, and with such crusading fervor that his own stand on recognition could not be mis- taken. He also advocated the sending of an American fact- finding labor commission. Several hours later Green decided to remember that Mr. Eddy was not to mention Russia at all. When the reso- lution for Russian recognition came up, the Eddy affair de- veloped into the preface for the debate. Max Hayes, "Tim" Healy, Andrew Furuseth, and John P. Frey had their say — pro and con. John L. Lewis got up. Powerful, picturesque, 220 pounds of capable ruthlessness, he calmly and impres- sively began to portray a picture. He boldly admitted, by implication, that he had some one steal a private letter which Mr. Coyle had sent to Powers Hapgood of the United Mine Workers. And who is Coyle? asked Mr. Lewis. He answei'ed : Coyle is the man who maneuvered Eddy into this convention; he is the man who wants a labor commis- sion to visit Russia; he is the editor of the official organ of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, "a scab-herding and strike-breaking organization" which operates non-union mines; and he is a Communist conspirator. In this private letter Mr. Coyle pledged his support to John Brophy's campaign against Mr. Lewis for the presi- dency of the United Mine Workers; he expressed the hope that $30,000 might be raised from "a few wealthy friends" to start the Natioyial Miner, which was to be Brophy's campaign organ and to advocate a progressive program among the miners. Mr. Coyle was to name the editor of this organ, and indeed proceeded to name for assistant editor a man who had "gone steadily to the left until now he is one of Jay's best friends." "Jay" is Jay Lovestone, of the Workers' Party. Mr. Lewis sat down. When he had completed his pic- ture of Messrs. Eddy and Coyle acting as the sinister agents of Moscow, and pointed to William Z. Foster in the gallery, the correspondents of the big dailies did an unusual thing. They laughed long, loud, and heartily. But this is what Mr. Lewis's picture did for the A. F. of L. machine, and espe- cially for Mr. Lewis : There will be no official labor commis- sion to Russia; the Russian bogy, of which rather little was expected, proved more effective than ever in driving the con- vention to the Right; Russian recognition was of course de- feated ; the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was shown up in a very bad light ; John Brophy will have to dig coal ; and all opposition to Mr. Lewis within his own union has been effect ivelv scattered for some time. Disaster Loves Workers By HOLLACE RANSDELL A PRETTY, cream-colored building stands on the smooth lawn beside the Hackensack, New Jersey, courthouse. It is the Bergen County jail. A walk parting the lawn demurely in the middle leads up to the door of this chaste, innocent-looking structure. A sweet-faced young boy ap- proaches to open the door as I walk up the steps. He looks like a cherub coming to throw open the gates of some paradise. I enter and am instructed to sign my name in a large book. A man with a kind expression leads me to another room. He speaks to me gently and points out a door labeled "Visitors' Booth." I go in, the door closes behind me, and I find myself inclosed in a tiny, triangular hole. One side of this triangle is made of two layers of heavy-meshed wire netting, with some half a foot between the layers. The netting is reinforced with strips of iron. I can barely see through it.

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation •151 A man approaches on the other side of the netting. I recognize him with difficulty as the man I have come to see. He is Paul Kovac, who has been held prisoner by the police of the Passaic textile-strike district for three weeks. He comes and presses close against the netting. 1 do the same. I can see his face only dimly, marked into sections by the iron-barred netting. I stare at it one part at a time. I see the tortured lines around the mouth; then the unhappy eyes. He is pale, unshaven. Kovac talks to me slowly, painfully — almost in a whis- per. His voice is full of patient misery. His ribs have been kicked in by the heavy shoes of a policeman. Every breath he takes hurts him. He says little. He whispers several times anxiously: "When do I get out?" He tells slowly, disjointedly, when questioned, how he was beaten, knocked down, and kicked by the great boots of police officials; how he was forced to drink great quan- tities of whiskey; how he lost consciousness and had no idea what happened then. "I can't hear very well," he says apologetically, as he asks me to repeat what I said. "Something is wrong with one of my ears since they beat me." He is much upset when asked about some paper he signed. "I don't know what I signed," he says. "I was sick from the whiskey, the beating. I don't know what I signed." A bunch of keys clank behind him. He turns away — our time is up. The sweet-faced child unlocks the outside door for me. I step outside and stand staring at the neat lawn, the peaceful white walls. I think of the broken ribs, the suffering face of Paul Kovac. Then of the kindly jail- keeper, the angelic boy, the pretty jail. And I stand and wonder at the strange ways of human beings. Who is this man, Paul Kovac, and what did he do that he should be treated in this manner? Did he murder his wife, shoot his mother, or choke his father to death? The story is tragic and typical in the district where he lives. With his wife and three small children, Kovac lived simply but comfortably enough in a two-family house at 55 Shaw Street, Garfield. He was a plumber by trade and he also knew something of carpentry. His hands were skilful ones. He could do many useful things with them. But use- ful hands do not mean money. Wages were low, work often scarce, and prices high. So in spite of her three small children Mrs. Kovac had to take a job in the textile mills to help meet expenses. When the strike came in January, after a slash in wages in October, Mrs. Kovac went out with the rest. She walked on the picket line, stood the cursing and other mis- treatment of the police, and attended the strike meetings. The police came to know her and often gave her much un- desired attention. At home things were not going so badly — for a textile worker. Her husband had a job in a carpenter shop and her relatives and friends helped look after the children when Mrs. Kovac was on the picket line. Things might have been worse — as indeed they soon were. Disaster is fond of workers' homes. It visits often. One afternoon, September 22, 1926, Wanda Jackowski, a young high-school girl who lives upstairs over the Kovacs' home, saw a crowd of eight or nine police drive up and stop in front of the house. It was a little before five o'clock, so Mrs. Kovac was not home. She was on the picket line at the Forstmann and Huffmann Mills. The police probably knew this and arranged the time of their visit accordingly. Paul Kovai I home from work yet. Wanda saw the police pry open the kitchen window of the Kovacs' home and crawl inside. What they did there Mrs. Kovac soon found out when she got home. The whole house had been turned upside down; closets were rummaged and drawers upset. Neighbors on both sides of the house and across the street, having seen or been told of the arrival of the police, came out on their porches and sidewalks. Some of the more curious went to look througli the Kovacs' win- dow to see what was going on there. The neighbors were still watching when Paul Kovac himself got home from work. He was met by several of the police, who handcuffed him and drove off with him immediately. Strange that such a desperate criminal should be coming home so con- fidently that he didn't show any signs of knowing the police were awaiting his arrival. The next day the Passaic papers came out with scream- ing eight-column headlines. "Maker of Bombs Confesses — Kovac's home is found equipped to turn out explosives," read the Daily Herald. That Wednesday evening he was arrested was the last that was seen of Kovac for nearly a week. He and eleven others were held incomunicado by the police of Clifton and Garfield for four or five days. The lawyers for the union were refused permission to see any of them. It was six days before Mrs. Kovac was allowed finally to see her husband. When she did she recognized him with difficulty and horror. His eyes were black and blue and swollen nearly shut. His face was puffed up like a football. Some of his teeth were loosened or broken and three of his ribs were kicked in. He was not able to talk — he just looked at his wife helplessly. The police had given information to reporters of the local press of a deadly infernal bomb-making machine which they had seized in Kovac's house. Just what was the evi- dence they found when they made the warrantless raid on the Kovacs' home? A dozen neighbors who watched the whole proceedings tell what it was that the police dis- covered. A whiskey still in the basement and some plumb- ing pipes in the shed back of the house! One has to have imagination to ba a police official. The whiskey still became a deadly machine for manufacturing bombs and the pipes grew into the material of which the bombs were made. An important piece of evidence which the police neglected to mention was noted by half a dozen of the neighbors. While the police were still in the Kovacs' home, Eddie Coopers, employment manager at the Forst- mann and Huffmann Mills, drove up to the curb in his car, stepped into the hall, and talked to the two police standing there. Nobody was near enough to hear what he said. What was the agent of the Forstmann and Huffmann Mills doing in the house of a striker at such a time? Paul Kovac, to be sure, was not a striker, but, then, it was all in the family. Besides one can't torture a woman by third- degree beatings into signing the necessary papers — not even a working woman. A bit inconvenient of course, but where there is a husband to substitute, not so bad. Paul Kovac is alone in his cell in the Bergen County jail at Hackensack, but he is not alone in his misery. Ten other men have been held for about a month on similar charges. Only one of the original twelve arrested has been released on bail. The bomb charges against him were dropped. There are four men confined with Kovac in the

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452 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 Bergen County jail— Thomas Regan, Joseph Toth, Nicholas Schillaci, and Adolph Wisnefski— held under the collective bail of $80,000. In the Passaic County jail at Paterson are six more— Tony Pochno, Paul Ozneck, Alex Costomacha, Joseph Bellemi, Charles Current, and William Sikora— held under $375,000. What were these terrible bombings the eleven prisoners are accused of? How many people were killed or maimed and how much property was damaged or destroyed? To war- rant such savage treatment and such high bail — $455,000 altogether — terrible things must have been done. What were they? Not a hair of anyone's head was injured. As for property damage, there was none worth mentioning. About the only thing these strange bombs did was make a noise. There was a series of mysterious explosions spread over a number of weeks. The last ones occurred about 10:30 on the night of September 17 and in the early morn- ing of September 21. Nine of the men in jail at Hackensack and Paterson are married and have children. The two others are nothing but boys. Tom Regan is twenty-one, Joseph Toth is only eighteen. They all have excellent records in the community. Some of them are prominent strike leaders. There may be some doubt in the minds of the union strikers about one or two of these men. It is quite likely that a stool pigeon may be among them or that one or more spies working within the union has involved the strikers under arrest in something unknown to them. A brief survey of attempted frame-ups in the past will show that these are the usual tactics of the companies' agents. The textile mills in the Passaic district are notorious for their company spies and hired detectives. To mention only one frame-up a short time ago. there was the attempt of a hired detective agency to mix Albert Weisbord, former strike leader, in a scandal with a woman he had never heard of. The New York World exposed this trick and it ended in ridiculous failure. The present one, planned more skilfully and on a bigger scale, has so far been successful. The local union of the United Textile Workers of America, now in control of the strike, has only common sense and justice on its side. What do such things amount to when opposed by the power and wealth of the mill-owners? Afternoon of a Queen By TANSY McNAB I HAVE come to America because I love you as the miner loves the nugget. I love thy rocks and rills. I love your Shipping Board and Jimmy Walker and the directors of the Packard Company and the publicity man of the Pennsylvania Railroad. . . . Charmed, Mrs. Astorbilt. De- lighted, Mrs. Van Sturtevant. Entranced, Mrs. Cohen. . . . One genuine 24-karat princess! Step up, gentlemen. Go- ing, going. ... I attribute my complexion wholly to the constant use of Hokum's Cold Cream. $10,000. ... At three p. m. Her Majesty will sob silently, in native costume, in front of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier before 8.367 photographers. ... I want to see all the beloved spol your marvelous country. I want to see the homes of Buffalo Bill, John Alexander Dowie, of DevVolf Hopper's former wives. . . . My perfect teeth are the result of using Node- cay Dentifrice five times daily. $8,000. . . . Her Majesty will positively appear at the Sesqui Stadium Thursday afternoon and evening, under the auspices of Tex Rickard. Ringside seats $30. ... A princess with great blue eyes, whose life stands before her, an adventure not yet lived. Going, going. ... I believe in the old-fashioned domestic virtues of your Washington and Franklin. Home comes first Her Majesty has agreed to spend one day in Hollywood, appearing in three shots of Cecil B. Silly's ab- sorbing drama of royal life, "Hotsy-Totsy." $25,000. . . . I find a refuge in a simple home life from the ugliness of crass materialism. ... By exclusive arrangement Her Majesty's 3,806 frocks and underthings will be photo- graphed at 6 p. m. by William Randolph Hearst. . . . Dur- ing the dark days of the war, when we were sustained only by the substantial promises of financial support (get that) of your Great Moral Leader, I walked many a weary mile to get a Camel. $6,000. ... A genuine, A No. 1 princess. My own cheild. Going, going. ... At 6:30 p. m. Her Majesty will pose with Peaches Browning exclusively for the Daily Mirrow. ... I consider no meal complete with- out an afterchew of Riggily's Gum. $9,000. . . . Uncle Shylock, indeed! I would say Uncle Bountiful. In the Driftway A CORRESPONDENT calls attention to a recent dis- patch from Portland, Oregon, as follows: In a search for peace and quiet, and in an attempt to free themselves from "the eternal grind of America's civi- lization," Paul Handloss, his wife and their four children, and Leroy Rappe, seventeen years old, are dropping down the Columbia River to the sea today in their forty-foot sailboat, Pearl H, bound for Tahiti in the South Seas. They left Portland yesterday with two months' provisions on board. In a haven of the Southern Pacific Handloss says he will continue his studies of art and literature, begun in Ger- many. "There we can settle down," he said. "There we can think. I can study once more my art and literature, and once more I can be a free man." THEREUPON the correspondent asks: "Is there no other escape from high-pressure business, from standardization, the motley mob, the noise, the smoke, the dirt, and the foul odors; the confusion, the congestion?" The significant phrase in this question is "no other escape." It implies that Paul Handloss has found one way out. But has he? The essence of the discussion, the Drifter surmises, is right there. Current literature and conversa- tion is full of this demand for "escape," and it is remark- able how many persons naively think the solution lies in running off to sea, especially to the South Pacific. William McFee says that he receives numerous letters from persons who assume that the main qualification for success at sea is dislike of or unsuitability for life ashore. He scouts the idea that there is any "escape" at sea and wisely observes that a passion for adventure is no indication whatever of aptitude for the career of a sailor. A sailor's life, more than almost any other, imposes discipline and demands dependa- bility. The anti-social type is not likely to be happy aboard ship, nor is unsuccess ashore a favorable preparation for mastering the complicated and exacting technique necessary to following any branch of work afloat.

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation 453 OF course it may be argued that Handloss is not seeking a career aboard ship but merely using a boat to get him to the South Seas, where he expects to lie down under a palm tree and live happily forever after. Even so the sea is a hard taskmaster and will exact more resource, energy, and courage of Handloss before he reaches that beckoning palm tree than is asked of the ordinary man ashore. And what of the palm tree? The Drifter surmises that there is more mythology about that palm tree than in all the advertising pages of our popular periodicals — which is saying much. Unless Handloss has more than two months' provisions, or a supply o( money that will procure them, he is not going to haw a mint of time for pursuing his studios of art and lit- erature. And what good would it serve if he should? If Handloss is correctly quoted in saying "Once more I can be a free man," the Drifter defies him to specify when, for how long, and under what circumstances he was ever a free man before — unless he was serving a term in jail. ***** THE Drifter would not disparage a reasonable desire for adventure. But a thirst for adventure is not the same as the much-discussed desire for "escape." A thirst for ad- venture implies an avid pursuit of life; a desire for "escape" is a retreat from it. The Drifter doesn't believe that any problem is solved by running away from it. That sounds like Sunday-school doctrine, but one must give even the devil his due. Somewhere within the Tower of Babel there must be a chance to work out a measurably sane and satisfac- tory life without embracing all the current follies and futili- ties— or there is no possibility anywhere. The Drifter Correspondence Disguised as Itself? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In your Fall Book Number Mr. Hobson speaks of nationalism masquerading as patriotism. How much of a mas- querade? What is the genuine difference between nationalism and patriotism? It looks to me like the difference between liberty and license: as much of it as you like is liberty, as much as you don't like is license; similarly, whatever of the present phenomenon Mr. Hobson likes is patriotism, whatever of it he doesn't like is nationalism — isn't that it? Ballard Vale, Mass., October 15 Steven T. Byington Should Actors Be Themselves? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Although I have a profound admiration for your Mr. Krutch, one of the best two dramatic critics in New York, I must quarrel with him for his defense of Gordon Craig's ideal actor: the puppet. Mr. Krutch desires the poor actor to be a cerebral puppet, a "marvelously articulated puppet," with a "conscious control of the voice and the body." He evidently dis- approves of that vain egoistical creature, the player who dares to display his own quivering personality to a gaping crowd. Great actors and actresses have always, thank God, ex- ploited their personalities. Both Reinhardt and Stanislavsky have built up superb acting companies by letting the individual players express their personalities. One of the best examples of how the Craig-Krutch theory and the Reinhardt practice work out was revealed last week when the Theater Guild produced Werfel's "Juarez and Maximilian." I have seen the Reinhardt production three times, and the Guild production twice. In the Reinhardt production each player was himself as we had known him in other plays; at the same time he managed to lie the character represented. So wonderfully was personality fused with the tragic spirit of the play that one could not imagine a more perfect performance. In the so-conscious control of Kifty- nd Street we find the thrill of exploited personality and genius lacking. New York, October 16 P. BEAUMONT WADSWORTH Courtin' Night in Arkansas To iiik Editor of The Nation: Sir: In the backwoods of Arkansas, bottoms or hills, Saturday night is courting night. Absolutely no ifs, ands, or buts about it, a young man goes courting Saturday night — rides or walks. Very, very few have even Fords. And in the bottoms the mud is deep, black, and sticky. To bog down means something during high water. Dead Man's Slough came by its name naturally. A schoolmate of mine, grown up, was drowned trying to ford Poteau. He wasn't going courtin', but he might have been, had it been Saturday night. Evening is after dinner (noon), night after sundown (supper). Grass is seldom killed by frost. 'Long in the fall, about cotton-picking time, it turns a pea-green, then brown. About all one can see, especially in the bottoms, is grass and cotton and cockleburrs. My Arkansas stuff has been well liked lately. I hope youens like thisun: "It's pea-green grass an' white-bole cotton An' thick black mud in Poteau bottom." He's singin' when — he loped in view An' kept right on till "Howdy do." Back water's up — horse-high an' past — In Dead Man's Slough, an' risin' fast. "An' Bender creek?" he asked, with a smile: "Out of its banks — good half a mile." "Gee whiz!" he said; "it's sure a fright; Gotta see my girl ; it's Sat'rd'y night. "Croppy, ol' hoss, if you bog down We'll not get through; perhaps we'll drown; "I know a girl that'll miss a kiss — Gimme a chew of Granger twis'." He hitched his belt an' took a chew An' rode off singin' as all fools do: "Mistletoe bough in a high elm tree Fingerin' stars that wink at me." Kansas City, Mo., October 16 Hilliard Wight What About Florida? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Who is Stella Crossley, anyway? Not that anything she says is untrue; but she has neglected to speak the wnole truth. Of course the damage was "minimized" — by State and city officials, by the press, by the Red Cross itself. That was because first reports were so inordinately exaggerated. Accord- ing to the first stories, Miami was wiped out of existence. Most of its buildings stood through the storm with little serious damage. The news left but one building standing in Holly- wood; all of the large buildings are still there, more or less damaged. The same is true of Fort Lauderdale. Tampa did suffer "comparatively" little, as did West Palm Beach. The roof blew off our garage and one cf our windows blew away, but there was no loss of life in the whole city, and most of the damage was of the same minor sort. I call that comparatively little, and I am not in the real-estate business or dependent upon the tourist trade. There were some 400 people killed, there was

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454 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 some $100,000,000 of property damage, and there are still thousands homeless. That should be enough to appeal to the sympathies of the American people and to procure funds for the Red Cross relief. The hurricane was bad enough, but why make it worse? There was no danger of minimizing the damage in the eyes of those who were here and saw the horror of it, but there was danger that the refugees would be headlined into the belief that they were sorry objects of commiseration who could not help themselves. One must admit that there was not enough attention paid to the Negroes; unfortunately, there never is. No doubt many of them were killed or drowned in the Everglades region whose bodies were never found or counted, but were left mercifully buried in the mud. Everybody went to work, white and black, and there was little necessity for forcing anyone. At West Palm Beach the American Legion and the Red Cross had been working night and day, collecting food and clothing, transport- ing it south, taking care of refugees, nursing, bandaging, match- ing up babies and parents. The Seaboard station was badly littered and dirtied from the canteen service which had been •maintained there constantly since the arrival of the first train- load from Miami. They wanted someone to clean it up, and they telephoned the police station. Within half an hour a gang of Negroes was at work, and the station was cleaned. They sang, they didn't get paid, they didn't complain. The police lieutenant said: "Whenever you want any nigger labor for relief work, just let me know and I'll confiscate it." Harris Berlack West Palm Beach, Florida, October 17 When Patience Is Iconoclasm To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: As Glenn Frank states, President Eliot was not only a builder but also an iconoclast. He was not afraid to all atten- tion to defects in our own country — the country which many have urged us to regard as always right. In the spring of 1912, upon his return from China, he addressed the Harvard Economic Seminar. At the close of his talk he was asked: "Do you not think that China has proved that she cannot maintain a republic, since after seven years she has not been able to establish an adequate currency?" "Well," came the reply, "I think we should regard China with considerable patience. You remember that it took the United States thirteen years to establish a currency and that during the sixties it was far from sound." New York, October 1 Lloyd M. Crosgrave Something in a Name To the Editor of the Nation : Sir: Apropos of the Sesquicentennial of our young republic, semi-sesquicentennial of the New York Times, and your edi- torial mention of the propaganda capacity of news columns: Should we not also remember the new "Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica"? In its map of 1926 Oslo is Oslo, Czecho-Slovakia is Czecho-Slovakia, but Leningrad is "Petrograd (Leningrad)," with the lie quite bold and the unwilling parenthetical admi quite faint. New York, October s j. b. C. Woods Henry Timrod To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: I am preparing a study of Henry Timrod and shall be deep in the debt of any readers of yours who will point me to or send me copies of Timrod's letters and manuscripts, and of letters in which he is mentioned by members of his literary group — Simms, Hayne, Legare, etc. New Orleans, La., October 16 Lester Hargrf.tt US A Study in Democracy By H. E. BUCHHOLZ "Here is an investigation into American politics that will repay careful reading." — The Syracuse Herald. "Mr. Buchholz, it appears, still retains a certain amount of faith in the democratic theory, but democracy as it is practically encoun- tered in this world only depresses him. More than three-fourths of his book, in fact, is given over to a bitter recital of its failures. He then proceeds to present his remedy. There is. it quickly appears, nothing very revolutionary aDout it. He does not propose to overthrow the Constitution or even to change the laws. . . . All he proposes is that it be brought under better control than in the past — that the civilized minority of men . . . assume a censorship over its processes, and, above all, over its chosen agents. So far, of course, there is nothing new. Every reformer since Jefferson's time had bawled for the same thing ; it is the cornerstone of every democratic Utopia. But Mr. Buchholz, after all, has something new to add to it, and that something has the merit, at least, of being simple and practicable." — H. L. Mencken in The Nation. "Mr. Buchholz, although apparently a pessimist, in reality is nothing of the kind. . . . Rather he is clear-sighted and energetic in his attempts to make others see clearly, too. His book is arresting as well as in- teresting. . . . Any one disturbed by present-day conditions — and a good many of us are — will find both agitations and solace in the present volume. Its sane point of view . . . should make all straight-thinking men pause and consider. It is worthy of high recommendation." — The Indianapolis News. "For the most part, it is an intelligently-conceived, timely and desirable piece of work, decidedly readable and easy to get along with. . . . Any man that can find such exquisite, expert and legitimate fault — who finds fault so faultlessly, as it were— doesn't need to b« constructive. . . ." — Irving McDonald in the Springfield Union. $2.30 postpaid DETERMINISM IN EDUCATION By W. C. Bagley "I hail Bagley's hook as the most important offering of the year. But you who are afraid that I boil over too easily, you who want to follow a master reasoner careful of his route, step by step, read Bagley on Determinism even through its last appendix." — Educational Review. "It was Bagley, however, who . . . fired the shot that was heard, if not 'round the world, at least from the British Isles to the Hawaiian Islands. . . . Bagley's address . . . brought forth a storm of criticism from those who recognized them- selves as being among the group he termed "determinists.' " — H C. Hines in his book "Measuring Intelligence." $2.30 postpaid OF WHAT USE ARE COMMON PEOPLE? By H. E. Buchholz "Mr. Buchholz has contributed a work which may well furnish a better basis for an introduction to democratic education than many a book on the principles of education, for he out- lines with greater clearness and reality many of the educational problems with which we are confronted today." — I. L. Kandel in Scliool and Society. "Mr. Buchholz has written an interesting and extremely origi- nal volume. There is nothing hackneyed and obvious about it; it does nut lean on other books. The man visible behind it is a hearty hater of shams and a vigorous disdainer of the everyday rubber-stamps of thought."— H. L. Mencken in The un, Baltimore. $2.10 postpaid Warwick &: York Publishers Baltimore Wlien uritiny to adverx se mention The Nation

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Books The Seventh Veil By GEORGE STERLING Life, in a burst of music mad with bliss, Ran dancing from the shadows where she slept, And like the sunlight on wild water leapt — Careless of Time and his betraying kiss. And one by one her gleaming veils unwound, Until she whirled untrammeled in her grace, With light alone on bosom and on face And thighs uplifting to the viols' sound. Till at the last, mysteriously pale, She loosed her forehead of the seventh veil And all the nimbus of her hair sprang free; Whereat the music faltered, and in awe, Full on that enigmatic brow we saw, Moon-white, the eternal brand of leprosy. First Glance BETWEEN two men who in our day have pursued the image of perfection through the making of fine books there is a great and interesting difference. Between William Dana Orcutt and the late Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, indeed, there is to my mind no resemblance at all — though both have loved the same thing without limit, though both have achieved distinction in their craft, and though while Cobden-Sanderson lived they knew and respected each other. The difference between them is measured by the difference between two books now published from their pens. Mr. Orcutt's "In Quest of the Perfect Book" (Little, Brown: $5), an account of the enthusiasms which have sent him over the earth, and particularly over Italy, after speci- mens of the thing he loves, is engaging and infectious. His descriptions of great printers — Gutenberg, Jenson, Aldus, Etienne, Plantin, the Elzevirs, Baskerville, the Didots, Wil- liam Morris, and Cobden-Sanderson himself — are exciting, and the numerous reproductions he gives of pages from their masterpieces must put any reader in his debt. But the story stops there. We are not moved to ask why he is interested in these things, the reason being apparent — he is a profes- sional. He talks breezily about his passion ; he has the com- placency of an expert. Should he ever find the perfect book, we may be sure, he would be satisfied that he had come to the end of the world. For Cobden-Sanderson there was no end of the world. Though he dreamed of perfection he never dreamed of find- ing it, and had he dreamed of finding it he would not have dreamed of finding it in a book. The binding and printing of beautiful books — and few books in the world are more beautiful than those he issued first from his private work- shop and later from the Doves Bindery and the Doves Press — made only an incident in his career, which was devoted neither to the designing of pages nor to the tooling of leather but to reflection upon the meaning of the universe. Now in his published "Journals" (Macmillan, 2 vols.: $25) the story, a deeply impressive one, comes out. It begins in his thirty-ninth year, when, tiring of the law because it told him nothing about the meaning of things, he settled into the silence of his chambers in the Temple and pondered, read, or WTOte in a ceaseless efforl after peace of the spirit. His hunger was for an occupation both of his hands and of his mind which should be significant equally in London and in the cosmos, in time and in eternity. The world for him was out of joint, as it was for his master Ruskin. It had grown unaccountably cruel and ugly. Men conducted their little affairs below in strange ignorance of the stars and of the extent of space. What should he do? He married Anne Cobden, his unmailed letters to whom fill some of the most interesting pages in these two volumes; he lectured and wrote for Socialism; he accepted Mrs. William Morris's suggestion that he take up book-binding; he became famous in a very few years. At no time, however, were these enough. There were his aspirations toward the cosmos, there was his never satisfied desire for orientation in the largest thinkable scene. Thus the "Journals," wherein for the health of his private mind he entered the details of his soul's longings and adventures side by side with records of his contracts, his meetings with great persons, and his progress in a certain manual art. It is perhaps a unique story. At any rate it is the story of one who did something supremely well because he wanted to do something else better. Mark Van Doren The Indian's World L'Art et la philoNophie des Indiens de l.'Amerique Nord. Par Hartley Burr Alexander. Paris: Ernest Leroux. T^ HOUGH Professor Alexander is primarily a student of * philosophy, he has repeatedly given evidence of his inti- mate knowledge of the literature dealing with the American aborigines and of his profound sympathy with their world-view. The lectures here presented in permanent form were delivered at the Sorbonne in the spring of 1925 and constitute an effort to bring home to a French audience the true inwardness of Indian art and philosophy. It is a very successful essay at popularization, exhibiting once more the author's familiarity with the technical literature — including the often neglected but important sources due to early missionaries and travelers. The artistic styles of the several culture provinces are ocularly demonstrated by a set of twenty-six plates, regarding some of which the lay reader probably would like fuller elucidation than is vouchsafed in the text. The pictures made by Pueblo Indians of some of their sacred dances are especially noteworthy for the skilful suggestion of movement. As regards anthropological theory, Professor Alexander follows the golden middle path when dealing with the favorite moot-problem of the last two. decades, to wit, diffusion. While he again and again comments on the parallels between Indian and Greek mythology, and though he agrees with the best authorities in affirming some historical connection between the Old and New World folk-tales, he is far from tracing all parallels to a common historical origin. He also does well to explain that the spirit of two myths may be quite different even when there is close resembl.mce in their episodes taken singly. There are, indeed, many enlightening remarks scattered through the little volume. Thus it may come as a surprise to many that the Indian's daily life was saturated with a ceremonial atmosphere, that even the routine tasks of warfare and the chase had a ritualistic as well as a utilitarian aspect for our aborigines. And again, few would suspect that the Redskin (Peau-Rouge) — a term for convenience' sake restricted by the author to the Eastern Woodland and Central Indians — had de-

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456 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 veloped a code of chivalry comparable with that of medieval knighthood. The main purpose of Professor Alexander's treatise, how- ever, is to demonstrate that the American Indian's basic thought is of a synthetic, essentially aesthetic character; and to vindi- cate such a world-view as against the intolerantly analytical intellectualism of our modern civilization. Here, naturally, ap- praisal of the Indian philosophy will be inevitably bound up with one's individual set of fundamental values. The reviewer, for one, is quite willing to acknowledge the Indian Weltan- schauung as one of the relatively legitimate reactions to the totality of the universe. My quarrel is not with the metaphysi- cal defense of such a position but with a conclusion capable of confirmation or refutation — I refer to Professor Alexander's insistence that such a world-view is distinctively Indian. To be sure, he does not fail to anticipate the objection that it is peculiar to primitive mentality as such. But, so far as I am able to see, his rebuttal merely revolves about a reaffirmation of his appraisal of an aesthetic (as opposed to an analytic) philosophy. In other words, the author answers that we have no right to impose upon such a system the norms of our Caucasian logic. But it seems to me that he ignores a quite different aspect of the problem. Is it true that Indian psychology provides us with a pattern of human nature wholly distinct from any other in the world? Can we fairly say that, while its elements are of the universal human type, the configuration of these constituents in the Indian soul is a thing wholly sttt generis? I should not like to be misunderstood as asserting that the propos. Lions here laid down by Professor Alexander are erroneous; only that he has not furnished us the proof. Had he steeped himself with equal ardor in the cosmogonic lore of the Polynesians or the speculations of Bantu sages, he might discover that each of these aboriginal cultures had a tang of its own, yet that Polynesian, Bantu, and American Indian philosophy are fundamentally alike when contrasted with Occidental logic-chopping. It is of course possible that, even from this angle, each would reveal uniqueness of outlook; but without a more intensive scrutiny it seems rash to make such an assumption. Certainly, Professor Alexander's central thesis would not be weakened if the mode of thought he is interpreting for us were found to have a wider following than his exposition suggests. Robert H. Lowre The Quality of Reverence Mohammed. By R. F. Dibble. The Viking Press. $3. /^vNE way to write about an Arab born in the sixth century ^-^ is to wrestle philologically with the skimpy and confusing records which have survived and to try to harmonize them into some kind of credible story. One way to write about a prophet is to assume that he could not have founded a great cult without being divine and then to approach his memory with the reverence due a divine prophet. Neither of these ways is the way of Mr. Dibble. He is no Arabic scholar, and he has been content to use the standard sources of informa- tion without going behind them. His book is as free of notes, bibliographies, and acknowledgments of indebtedness as if it were a novel. And far from losing himself in the mysteries of religion, he writes as secularly now as when formerly he wrote about John L. Sullivan. A passage from Gibbon, printed at the head of the first chapter, sounds the keynote of the work. Mr. Dibble might even better have quoted that greater sentence of Gibbon's concerning tolerance in Rome: "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all con- sidered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate . s equally useful." Mr. Dibble takes his stand with the philosophers. His history is a kind of heroic comedy. It begins, with a rough, powerful account of pre-Mohammedan Arabia. It ex- hibits the youthful Mohammed as a neurotic not unlike the Mormon Joseph Smith. It goes on to show how the prophet gathered his disaffected followers, lived through a period of shabby brigandage, emerged in splendor, outlived his detractors and antagonists, and died in glory. Every step of the holy progress delights the biographer. Whenever he can reduce it to simple, rational terms, he unhesitatingly does so. When- ever he cannot, he no less unhesitatingly admits that "an in- scrutable image looms in the mind — the grotesque, grand, pre- posterous, and prodigious figure of Mohammed." It is comedy, but it is heroic. Is there a truer way in which to write about the origin of a religion? Probably not. A too purely comic attitude in the historian, or a too heroic attitude, leaves something out that ought to be included. No religion could ever have been founded without the help of superstition; neither could one have been founded without the help of heroism too. Something great as well as something mad was needed. Of both elements Mr. Dibble is aware. Even when he is most sardonically pointing out the motives which drew the scattered Arab tribes under a single banner, he is appreciating the vigor with which Mohammed urged his cause and the energy with which the followers carried it to victory. Arabia Deserta suddenly bore its astounding flower. Bedouins and city dwellers heard of it, flouted the idea, yielded gradually to the spell of the new doctrine, saw chances of profit in its code of the sword, became attached to it with a devotion which scorned, in many cases, the calculation of profit, and by the time of Mohammed's death had accepted a fresh pattern for their civilization. This gorgeous story Mr. Dibble tells robustly and shrewdly. Understanding that reverence is a quality but not always a virtue, he treads now and then not only on Mohammedan toes but on the toes of all religionists. Of the wonders attend- ing the birth of the prophet he says: "All these poetic fancies have been appropriately denounced by Christian scribes, who have claimed that nature would never have dignified the birth of a pagan like Mohammed with such marvelous prodigies as indubitably attended the advent and crucifixion of Christ." It is in passages like this that Mr. Dibble, amusing as he often is, commits the cardinal sin against irony of emphasizing it too heavily. The words "poetic," "appropriately," "marvelous," and "indubitably" in his sentence are only so much slag. Without them, the sentence might have satisfied Gibbon himself; with them, the sentence would have made Gibbon blush a little and look politely away. The consequence of these superfluous ad- jectives and adverbs is that Mr. Dibble's style is occasionally as gritty as if the Arabian sand had somehow affected it. But sand never did make a bearing run to better purpose. Carl Van Doeen Squirming Romantics The Romantic Comedians. By Ellen Glasgow. Doubleday, Page and Company. $2.50. Tl/fANNERS, and their ethical equivalent, morals, are a ■*• ■*■ pathetic witness of mankind's hope of certainty. "We will have an eternal verity," says the moralist. "Or at least rules of the game, by which all decent people abide," says the mannerist. So simple it would be if we could freeze a smooth crust over thought and action, across which to skate in pre- meditated ease. But woe to the skaters — for life, flowing on below the specious solidity, works a treacherous hole here and there; or the spring freshets come and all once more is con- fusion. From slapstick up the intellectual game of comedy is to catch the slothfully trusting spirit when it has been lulled to trust in some formula and show that life itself is nimbler, surer, tougher than our presumptuous expectations. It is such a game that Miss Glasgow plays in "The Roman- tic Comedians." Judge Gamaliel Bland Honeywell stands in

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation 457 the pale Easter sunlight at the grave of his Cordelia and feels a suspicious fluttering in his heart; behind him lie the sixty- five temperate, ordered years of living which have preserved his figure and his digestion; before him the wayward spring and Annabel with small heart-shaped face, pale gold freckles, and geranium mouth. And all about lies the simple sophistica- tion of Queensborough, Virginia. It would be so suitable, Queensborough feels, if Judge Honeywell should console his n idowed state, after a decent interval, with Miss Amanda Light- foot, the passion of his youth, from whom he was parted by an absurd lovers' quarrel thirty-seven years ago. Miss Light- foot, miraculously preserved in the regal splendor of a reign- ing belle, feels so herself in so far as a lady can fend at such a point. She has always worn blue and lavender, because they were Gamaliel's favorite colors before that silly misunderstand- ing cast him, on the rebound, into the arms of the virtuous Cordelia. But now, as Annabel discovers, Gamaliel's favorite colors are red and green. Suitability happens to be that last thing that will stir Judge Honeywell's heart this rebellious spring. He even cannot suppress the suspicion that when all is said, he hadn't wanted a perfect wife; he desires, contrary to both custom and reason, the things which are not good for him — the excitement of novelty, the ringing challenge of youth. Judge Honeywell had put a fatal trust in suitability, and Amanda in faithfulness, and Annabel in passion. For Annabel of the direct younger generation is no less romantic than her faded elders, and Miss Glasgow spares none of the absurdities of her tragic renunciation of love after the defection of a youthful suitor; her resigned marriage to Judge Honeywell; and her impassioned and histrionic flight with the inevitable eligible young man, who comes by to rescue her from the posi- tion of an old man's folly. The joke is on them all — an essen- tially civilized, humane joke, which takes account of the fact that these are no automatons jerked hither and yonder by chance; no puppets of crude sex, but people forced to hold up their heads in the current of experience which rushes them along. It is almost impossible to resist quoting from the smooth and sparkling pages in which Miss Glasgow turns her kind, amused gaze on one after another of the squirming romantics. Both dialogue and analysis are full of sentences that seem too good to be true, and yet are so truly a part of the fabric r{ the book — no mere wisecracks — that they can hardly be torn from their setting. The remarks of Judge Honeywell's loose and liberal sister Edmonia, for example. It is this Edmonia, who followed her own realistic ways with head as well as heart, who alone seems able to get beyond the rose and purple mists of romanticism which have betrayed the rest. "You could have forgiven my committing a sin," she says to Gamaliel, "if you hadn't feared that I had committed a pleasure as well. ... It wasn't my fault, it was my being able to get up again, that you couldn't forgive. . . . You know I always had what mother used to call a pleasure-loving mind, and I never approved of the sour kind of duty you pretend to enjoy. On the contrary, I've always believed that happiness, any kind of happiness that does not make someone else miser- able, is meritorious." "The Romantic Comedians" is a wise and a witty book. Mary Ross One of the de Kovens A Musician and His Wife. By Mrs. Reginald de Koven. Harper and Brothers. $5. rT,HIS work is of course chiefly autobiographical. In it we * see Mrs. de Koven in the midst of the Four Hundred, "whose limited scope," she does not mipd admitting, "really did include what was best in New York in those days." We see her in Newport dining with two elderly gentlemen who alternately left the table to kneel at her feet, "giving me an example," as she justly obsen her times and other ways . . . surely more flattering than the present emancipated youth of our day has any opportunity of enjoyii We overhear a scrap of conversation at a luncheon in her house in London where the company was "very brilliant" — an exampl car Wilde's wit, pronounced by Henry James to be "absolutely unique." Wilde called her a " 'I was born in Chicago,' I was moved to reply. There was horror in his expression as he answered, 'Never, no, never; your parents have deceived you.' " Mrs. de Koven is mistress of a style that ranges from the saucy to the philosophic. Her description of a gay party at Stanford White's is too long to quote, but lovers of Mr. Dooley will be interested in her theory that Peter Dunne's power was "really psychic," that he was "endowed with a larger share of that mysterious section of our being which is called the sub- conscious mind than is possessed by ordinary men. Thus gifted, through the open door of this inner being the reservoir of knowl- edge existing about us pours into their minds a never-ceasing increment of intuition." And how appealing is her plea for the spiritualistic beliefs to which she was led by Sir Oliver Lodge. "The horizon of one who believes he has seen authentic glimpses of a continuing life is wider and happier than that of the skeptic. All earthly griefs and disappointments are reduced to a relative significance and all fear of death is removed. The value of such conclusion, the help in such perceptions, need no argument." This, one supposes, must have been the state of mind of Mrs. Whitney on that memorable day when, as Mrs. de Koven confides to us, "Her incurable malady had reappeared and I realized that she was doomed when I was shown to her boudoir to take my luncheon with her." Such a situation might have embarrassed a person of less aplomb, but Mrs. de Koven pro- ceeds: "She reviewed her past life, telling of her blessings and speaking of her brother, who, unknown to her, had one day pinned a check for two million dollars on her pincushion. 'Was there ever such a brother?' she asked me." Mrs. de Koven leaveB her answer unrecorded, but we may surmise from the context that it was in the negative. Daniel Gregory Mason A Genius My Son John. By E. B. Dewing. Minton, Balch and Company. $2. rPHE life of a genius is a tough nut for any novelist to crack. * Up to a certain point E. B. Dewing succeeds with origi- nality and ability. The picture of John's childhood under his amazingly vital parents is well done. The essay on "Napoleon" is a delightful stroke; but John's genius as he advances to man's estate is unconvincing. We are told about it, and John's environment should certainly evoke it; yet it is not there. A veil hangs forever over that strange shrine, his mind. The nearest approach to actual genius is in the "Letter from John Lord to his mother accompanying the first three parts of the 'Rising Tide.' " Here is felt in some degree the quality of the hero's soul. From the time of his wasteful marriage to the still more wasteful Bernice Harden, however, the life of the book retreats and John becomes a lay figure. The episode of Eva Freyne is too highly colored to startle. The butler's letters to his wife will not hold water. And John's ending, first in the pork-packing business and then from the height of an aero- plane, is unsatisfactory. The book is cleverly written. Why, then, does it fail? The author has not herself been sufficiently stirred to move us deeply. We neither love nor hate John Lord. There is a complacent varnish over him. It is not that some genius would not make such gestures; it is that we are not interested in this genius. We expected of E. B. Dewing, who has a clever and versatile mind, a more believable book. Laura Benet

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458 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 A Village Cut-Up Up From Methodism. By Herbert Asbury. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. HERE is another cry of protest, vigorously uttered, and resonant enough to reverberate throughout the farthest corners of the democracy. It comes from one in lineal descent to the bishop who brought official Methodism to these shores, and it is raised against the absurdities and repressions of what be imported. The contemporary Mr. Asbury, never very kindly disposed toward the saints of Farmington, Missouri, has at last given articulateness to a long-accumulated disgust; the result is a book cogently written, Menckenesque in tone, and calculated to even for all time to come his score with the emotion-mongers of the Middle West. "I wrote it," explains Mr. Asbury, "because I thought it was high time someone told the truth about the oppressive religious taboos which made life in the small towns so depressing." Mr. Asbury is the author of "Hatrack," the st ry for which a recent issue of the American Mercury was proceeded against. "Hatrack," however, comes in only incidentally as a portion of one episode. In the main the book is the epic of an apostate pilgrim's progress through the stultifying valley of Farmington Methodism and the final triumph of his sinfulness in the end. That they might preserve the family heritage, the church folk sought to groom young Herbert for the ministry. They did finally convert him — strtistically, that is — but secretly he re- mained a gaudy and incorrigible sinner. When the music sub- sided that night of the conversion, he left the tabernacle dis- gusted, bought a bottle of squirrel whiskey from a Negro cart- driver, and consumed it behind the Odd Fellows' Hall. After that he became a spiritual loss in the eyes of all Farmington: I existed solely to play and raise hell generally, and for some curious reason the activity which gave the most pleasure was throwing rocks at the church or in some man- ner disturbing the service. He learned to smoke cigarettes, play pinochle, "cock an appraising eye at the girls" — in fact, he became a regular cut-up ! So much for at least one twice-born man. The attacks which the writer makes upon Methodist faith and practice are no doubt justifiable. In a large measure the Methodists brought this book upon themselves. Religionists, with their assumption of cosmic importance, have been an arrogant lot and that is largely why they have come in for such a cudgeling here of late. Their quarrel should not be with the contents of the book. If they have any, it is one which literary people have too, and it has to do solely with method. The book is often petulant and colicky, written in a denunciatory manner when one of light and frolicsome satire would have been con- siderably more effective. It leaves the impression that Mr. Asbury has a martyr complex. Many times he falls into that error common to Methodists and atheists, the chief failing of the brethren in Farmington: that of taking religion too seriously. The literary value of the workmanship is marred by the ill humor of many passages and the animus which frequently leers through the pages. It is to be hoped that before Mr. Asbury gives us his much-needed biography of the sainted Bishop he will learn to write more impersonally and with at least periodic restraint. Charles W. Ferguson Books in Brief Our Mobile Earth. By Reginald Aldworth Daly. Charles Scribner's Sons. $5. Richly illustrated and clearly written, this is an authorita- tive introduction to the earth's crust and its disturbers — earth- quakes and volcanoes. Demosthenes: De Corona and De Falsa Legatione. Translated by C. A. Vince and J. H. Vince. Plato: Laws, Vol. I. Translated by R. G. Bury. Pausanias: Description of Greece, Vol. II. Translated by W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. XI. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Epictetus: Discourses, Vol. I. Translated by W. A. Oldfather. Loeb Classical Library. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50 each. Five new volumes in a series which can never grow too long. Sappho: The Poems and Fragments. Translated by C. R. Haines. $5. Quevedo: The Choice Humorous and Sa- tirical Works. Translated by Sir Roger L'Estrange, John Stevens, and others. Revised and edited by Charles Duff. $5. The Fifteen Joys of Marriage. Ascribed to Antoine de la Sale. Translated by Richard Aldington. $3. Broadway Translations. E. P. Dutton and Company. Three new volumes in a series which now at last seems long. Murder for Profit. By William Bolitho. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. Murder in Fact and Fiction. By Canon J. A. R. Brookes. Brentano's. $3.50. Of these new treatments of an endless subject the first is by a genius at reporting; the second is by a hopelessly confused and feeble moralist. Types of Poetry. By Jacob Zeitlin and Clarissa Rinaker. The Macmillan Company. $5. Although the arrangement of the poems collected in this large volume is unnecessarily formal, the material presented is so copious and so well chosen that students will find it valu- able in an unusual degree. W. N. P. Barbcllion. By Richmond H. Hellyar. George H. Doran Company. $2.50. The need for a study of the man whose "Journal" made such a sensation seven years ago is hardly satisfied by Mr. Hellyar's book, which though sympathetic and intelligent, is distressingly slight. The Psalms. Translated by J. M. Powis Smith. University of Chicago Press. $5. A new version of "The Psalms" benefiting by modern scholarship was to be desired. Mr. Srmth has put into his translation everything he found lacking in the King James Bible. That that was not much, or important, does not detract from the merit of his performance, which is dignified and clear. Life and Work of the People of England. A Pictorial Record from Contemporary Sources. By Dorothy Hartley and Margaret M. Elliot. The Fifteenth Century. The Six- teenth Century. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50 each. Two volumes in a projected series of six, covering the ground between the Norman Conquest and 1800. The illustra- tions are numerous and interesting; the text, while elementary, is a satisfactory accompaniment. .4 Milton Handbook. By James Holly Hanford. F. S. Crofts and Company. $1.50. Introduces the Milton student to most of the information, old as well as new, necessary to a modern understanding of the poet. The Odes of Horace. Done into English verse by Hugh Mac- naghten. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3. The translator of Catullus turns to a harder task. Beyond the Milky Way. By George Ellery Hale. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50. The honorary director of the Mount Wilson Observatory continues his discussions of the newest findings in astronomy for the benefit of laymen.

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Nov. 3, 192(51 The Nation 459 Psychoanalysis for Normal People. By Geraldine Coster. Oxford University Press. Eighty-five cents. A brief manual intended primarily for nurses — written by a thoroughgoing eclectic who endeavors more or less to harmonize the theories of all the leading psychoanalysists. It is emi- nently readable but notably safe, being extremely careful to go further than most of the authorities upon which it is based would go in the direction of reconciling the implications of its science with conventional morality. Selections, Collections, and Reprints The Letters of William James. Edited by his son, Henry James. Two volumes in one. Little, Brown and pany. $3. Avowals. By George Moore. Boni and Liveright. $2.50. .1 > ntimental Journey Through France and Italy, with Selec- tions from the Journals, Sermons, and Correspondence of Laurence Sterne. Edited with an introduction by Wilbur L. Cross. Boni and Liveright. $3.50. A Night in the Luxembourg. By Remy de Gourmont. Preface and Appendix by Arthur Ransome. Modem Library Publishers. 95 cents. The Road. By Jack London. With an Introduction by Glen Mul- lin. The Rogues' Bookshelf. Greenberg, Publisher. $2. cted Poems. By A. E. The Macmillan Company. $3.75. Selected Poems of Edith Thomas. Edited with a Memoir by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Harper and Brothers. $2. Poetry of the Nineties. With an Introductory Essay by C. E. Andrews and M. 0. Percival. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2. Collected Parodies. By Louis Untermeyer. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.75. This Singing World. For Younger Children. Modern Poems selected by Louis Untermeyer. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.50. Grenstone Poems. A Sequence. By Witter Bynner. With an Introductory Note by Edgar Lee Masters. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. Voltaire's The Age of Louis XIV. Translated by Martin P. Pollack. Everyman's Library. E. P. Dutton and Com- pany. 80 cents. An Autobiography of Abraham Lincoln. Consisting of the Personal Portions of his Letters, Speeches and Conversa- tions. Compiled and annotated by Nathaniel Wright Stevenson. Bobbs-Merrill Company. $5. Selected Poems. With a Preface on the Nature of Poetry. By Arthur Davison Ficke. George H. Doran Company. $2. Old Kensington Palace and Other Papers. By Austin Dobson. Rosalba's Journal and Other Papers. By Austin Dobson. World's Classics. Oxford University Press. 80 cents each. Drama Things in the Saddle "/^lOD LOVES US," the satiric tragedy by J. P. McEvoy V_X with which the newly rejuvenated Actors' Theater opens its season at the Maxine Elliott, is a triumph of staging. The curtain rises upon a permanent set which consists of two plat- forms, situated one above the other and flanked on each side by lattice-work towers of steel, suggesting the skeleton of a skyscraper. Lights frame whatever portion of the structure is needed at any moment, and upon the two platforms the main Fiction: A Distinguished List A Novel at a New Angle H. G. WELLS I The World of William Clissold Irwin Edman in the N. Y. Herald Tribune: 'It has the louch and sweep of magnificence. The whole range ol contemporary hopes and rears, ideas and emotions, intents and enterprises, becomes epic in the life and memories of one intense but intelligent man." 2 Vols. Boxed. $5.00 DU BOSE HEYWARD Angel "Porgy" has been called one of the great books of America. From the Negro of South Carolina, Mr. Heyward turns his remarkable talent to a tense story of the mountain folk of North Caro- lina. Angel, a woman of the hills, strong, power- ful, primitive, is an unforgettable figure. $2.00 (Autographed, Carolina Edition $3.50) ARNOLD BENNETT Lord Raingo Since "The Old Wives' Tale " and "Clayhanger" Mr. Bennett has written nothing which suggests the scope and vision of this life and death of Lord Raingo, born a commoner, dying a lord. It is a theme perfectly suited to the play of his characteristic genius, and he has taken full advan- tage of all its possibilities. $2.00 W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The Casuarima Tree The mastery of W. Somerset Maugham in paint- ing great emotional climaxes against exotic back- grounds is at its height in these intense tales of the white men who live in Borneo and the Penin- sula. As in ' Rain," he has selected with un- canny insight the moments in the lives of his characters that sum up not only the drama of their lives but of all human existence. $2.00 FLOYD DELL s In this rich and glowing story of an amazing character, Floyd Dell proves himself a master craftsman. The story of a Mr. Windle, himself the timidest of men, thrown suddenly into a group of rebellious young people, is a finely diverting tale of vicarious but beautiful adventure. $2.00 HUGH WALPOLE A great romance of man, woman and love, a novel of the Cathedral City of Polchester, the scene of Walpole's hitherto most popular book, "The Cathedral." It is at once his most finished and his most striking story, a drama of sweeping power and of finely contrasted temperaments. $2.00 CYRIL HUME The Golden Dancer A new novel brilliantly indicative of this young author's real genius. In it he has imprisoned the elusive spirit of romance. As astonishing as his other novels, it is more beautiful, as he broadens his manner to tell a fine, tender story of youth in quest of a dream. $2.00 George H. Doran Company isrwv H*m&££*im "Era1- Mi a u When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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460 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 action takes place, while at appropriate moments the clerks, telephone operators, and the like who constitute the background stream up and down the stairs within the hollow towers. The theme of the play is not in itself original. Its chief character is one of Mr. Babbitt's humble cousins and the story of his sorry life, in the midst of all the babble about service and loyalty incident to the successful conduct of a business devoted to greeting cards and wall mottoes, is distinctly remi- niscent of various plays and novels of the last few years. But, thanks in part to the structure of the play itself and in part to the mechanics of its presentation, it takes on a new force if not a new meaning. The hero is not so much a fool as a victim — the victim of a Culture which has the force of a vast organization and the weight of incalculable materia! resources behind it. This Culture, and not any individual person or will, is the master of the drama of which he is a part, and only by some material thing like the skyscraper which he inhabits can it be adequately bodied forth. Imprisoned in its iron walls he can do nothing except keep step with the innumerable feet which thread its endless labyrinths. Its form incloses his body, i' 3 activities absorb his mind. Pressed on from above and below he has not the time, even if he has the capacity, to criti- cize the ends to which he has devoted his life, and he wanders, pathetic and abused, from futility to futility. At home a querulous wife and a rebellious son remind him how important it is to keep step; at the office there is a boss who is sure that while service is service, business is also business — and besidi s, has not the local minister assured him that all is well, that Saul of Tarsus himself was only a great writer of circular letters? Comedy plays over the surface, tragedy of a particularly hopeless kind lies just beneath. Here is a life too small in itself to be significant, but become imposing and terrible as the symbol cf a civilization that has lost its way. The steel girders of the building reach up to the skies; the products go o. t to the ends of our continent; but where all else is gigantic man is dwarfed. He is trapped by nature as all men are, turned from the ends he may propose to himself by the demands of the wife and family he has somehow acquired, but in addition he has made of his civilization not an ally but an enemy. Business has become as inexorable as fate, as oppressive and as exacting as the sternest religion, something for which he exists, not some- thing which exists for him. It catches him in its machine, chains him to its wheel, and carries him, body and mind, round and round in the same never-ending circle. Day after day his feet climb the same stairs, day after day his thoughts circle the same petty idea; and when he drops at last he is worn without having been used — merely something sacrificed that mottoes might circulate. Nor are those above and below him more fortunate when measured on any significant scale. Master of the works and lowest subordinate are alike unself-determined, alike victims of an idea, all part of a vast sacrifice upon the altar of com- merce in the course of which even the high priest immolates himself. Things are in the saddle and ride mankind, and if it has been always thus, yet never before have things so small ridden so hard. Man has been often — always, perhaps — a vic- tim, yielding himself up to the processes of nature as well as to his own delusion, but never have those delusions been so little grand. Church and state have each in their turn been made greater than he, but it has remained for today to discover in "the firm" an institution before which it might worthily lie prostrate. Of all the religions that have oppressed mankind, none has exacted more than the religion of commerce and none, surely, was ever so sorry. The enthusiasm which has greeted the dramatization of "An American Tragedy" (Longacre Thea+3r) is due in part, I think, to a sort of patriotic piety. The last two scenes — the courtroom and the prison — are extraordinarily vivid and power- ful, but those which lead up to them are too brief and sketchy to achieve much effect. The adapter, Patrick Kearney, seems to have approached his task with a reverence for his source which forbids him to do more than transfer to the stage the material at hand as directly as possible, in spite of the suffi- ciently obvious fact that so vast a chronicle could not be made into a play without complete remolding. Where Dreiser made a single locale the center of much action (as he did the court and the prison) the play is successful; where he employed simple narrative the play, in attempting to be faithful to his method, fails. Curiously enough Laurence Irving's old dramatization of Dostoevski's "Crime and Punishment" opened almost simul- taneously at the Greenwich Village Theater under the title of "The Humble," and illustrated how an effective play can be made of a novel if fidelity to the original is not demanded. As played by Mary Ellis and Basil Sydney, "The Humble" is a tense if, occasionally, somewhat old-fashioned drama, even though it is not at all the equivalent of Dostoevski's masterpiece. Evidently something went wrong with the plans of the Messrs. Shubert for the presentation of the French lyric trage- dienne, Damia; and they have at last interjected her into their revue, "A Night in Paris" (Jolson Theater). Damia has a rich voice and an impressive personality, but both her tragic pieces and her folk-songs prove somewhat bewildering to an audience which has settled into the mood of the revue. In the proper setting she might well equal the triumph of Raquel Meller. Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATER □ The Neighborhood Playhouse, 466-G Telephone Drydock 7$lt First piny of the new Repertory Season A Satirical Comedy by Alfred Savoir Every evening (except Monday) at 8:30. Matinee Saturday at 2:30. SUBSCRIBE NOW TO OUR 13TH SEASON Address Subscription Secretary, U66 Grand St., for information THE LION TAMER f r%n <T Pt rrt* Theatre- 48<-h St., West of Broadway. Evenings 8:30 *-i»Jii ga^ic Matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2:30 A a THEODORE DREISER'S n American tragedy "A PLAY WHICH IS BOUND TO WRENCH A MILLION HEARTS." — Journal. DRAMATIZED BY PATRICK KEARNEY. THEATRE GUILD PRODUCTION WERFEL'S STIRRING DRAMA JUAREZ » MAXIMILIAN with the Theatre Guild Acting Co. OIJI1 O Theatre, West 52d Street. Evenings, 8:30 \j-kjm.LuLS Matinees, Thursday & Saturday, 2:30 Student Workers' Contest Closes November 1 st When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section A Plea for Free Trade THE manifesto printed below, called A Plea for the Removal of Restrictions upon European Trade, was published in London on October L9. We desire, as business men, to draw attention to certain grave and disquieting conditions which, in our judgment, are retarding the return to prosperity. It is difficult to view without dismay the extent to which tariff barriers, special licences, and prohibitions since the war have been allowed to interfere with international trade and to prevent it from flowing in its natural channels.' At no period in recent history has freedom from such restrictions been more needed to enable traders to adapt themselves to now and difficult conditions. And at no period have impediments to trading been more perilously multiplied without a true appreciation of the economic consequences involved. The break-up of great political units in Europe dealt a heavy blow to international trade. Across large areas in which the inhabitants had been allowed to exchange their products freely, a number of new frontiers were erected and jealously guarded by customs barriers. Old markets disappeared. Racial animosities were permitted to divide communities whose interests were inseparably connected. The situation is not unlike that which would be created if a confederation of states were to dis- solve the ties which bind them, and to proceed to penalize and hamper, instead of encouraging, each other's trade. Few will doubt that under such conditions the prosperity of such a coun- try would rapidly decline. To mark and defend these new frontiers in Europe, licences, tariffs, and prohibitions were imposed, with results which ex- perience shows already to have been unfortunate for all con- cerned. One state lost its supplies of cheap food, another its supplies of cheap manufactures. Industries suffered for want of coal, factories for want of raw materials. Behind the cus- toms barriers new local industries were started, with no real eco- nomic foundation, which could only be kept alive in the face of competition by raising the barriers higher still. Railway rates, dictated by political considerations, have made transit and freights difficult and costly. Prices have risen, artificial dear- ness has been created. Production as a whole has been dimin- ished. Credit has contracted and currencies have depreciated. Too many states, in pursuit of false ideals of national interest, have imperiled their own welfare and lost sight of the common interests of the world, by basing their commercial relations on the economic folly which treats all trading as a form of war. There can be no recovery in Europe till politicians in all territories, old and new, realize that trade is not war but a process of exchange, that in time of peace our neighbors are our customers, and that their prosperity is a condition of our own well-being. If we check their dealings, their power to pay their debts diminishes, and their power to purchase our goods is reduced. Restricted imports involve restricted exports, and no nation can afford to lose its export trade. Dependent as we all are upon imports and exports, and upon the processes of inter- national exchange, we cannot view without grave concern a policy which means the impoverishment of Europe. Happily there are signs that opinion in all countries is awaking at last to the dangers ahead. The League of Nations and the International Chamber of Commerce have been laboring to reduce to a minimum all formalities, prohibitions, and restric- tions, to remove inequalities of treatment in other matters than tariffs, to facilitate the transport of passengers and goods. In some countries powerful voices are pleading for the suspension of tariffs altogether. Others have suggested the conclusion for long periods of commercial agreements embodying in every case tlu> most-favored-nation clause. Some ive rocopni/.ed in treaties the necessity of freeing trade from the restric- tions which depress it. Ami experience is slowly teaching others that the breaking-down of the economic harriers between them may prove the surest remedy for the stagnation which exists. On the valuable political results which might flow from such a policy, from the substitution of good-will for ill-will, of coopera- tion for exclusiveness we will not dwell. But we wish to place on record our conviction that the establishment of economic free- dom is the best hope of restoring the commerce and the credit of the world. Signatories, with the description and business stand- ing of each : Austria: Oscar Berl, merchant; Dr. Otto Bohler, steel; Dr. Siegmund Brosche, chemical manufacturer; Dr. Paul Hammerschlag, Oesterreichische Credit- Anstalt fur Han- del und Gewerbe; Alfred Ileinsheimer, managing direc- tor, Vienna Bank-Verein; Maxime Krassny-Krassien, chairman, Niederosterreichische Escompte-Gesellschaft; Dr. Arthur Krupp, Berndorfer Metallwaren-Fabrik; Julius Meinl, manufacturer; Ludwig Neurath, Oester- reichische Credit-Anstalt fur Handel und Gewerbe; Dr. Redlich, ex-minister; Dr. Richard Reisch, president, Aus- trian National Bank; Baron Louis Rothschild, S. M. von Rothschild, Vienna; and four others. Belgium: J. Carlier, Council of Industry and Commerce; Hector Carlier, vice-president, Banque d'Anvers; M. Despret, president, Banque de Bruxelles; Charles Fabri, managing director, Banque d'Outremer; E. Franqui, vice-governor, Societe Generale de Belgique; F. Hau- tain, governor, Banque National de Belgique; J. Van Hoegaerden, director general, S. A. d'Ougree Marihaye; J. Jadot, governor, Societe Generale de Belgique; O. Lep- reux, vice-governor, Banque National de Belgique; F. M. Philippson, banker; and four others. Czecho-Slovakia: Dr. Josef Barton, president, Textile Manufacturers' Association; Dr. 0. Feilchenfeld, manag- ing director, Bohmische Eskompt Bank; Dr. Hanus Kar- lik, president, Central Association of Czechoslovak Sugar Industry; Dr. Bohuslav Marik, chairman, Ceskomoravska- Koblen A. G. ; Ian Novotny, general director, Pramyslova Bank; Dr. Vilem Pospisil, governor, Czechoslovak Na- tional Bank; and four others. Denmark: A. 0. Andersen, chairman, Steamship Owners' Association; C. C. Clausen, manager, Privatbanken of Copenhagen; Emil Hertz, manager, Danske Landmans- bank; Ernst Meyer, chairman of the Merchants' Guild; Etatsraad Fr. Norgaard, general manager, Copenhagen Handelsbank; and two others. France: R. P. Duchemin, president, Confederation Gen- erale de la Production Franchise; president, Union des Industries Chimiques; Horace Finaly, directeur generale de la Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas; E. Fougere, president de l'Association Nationale d'Expansion Econo- mique; president de la Federation de la Soie; R. Lae- derich, regent de la Banque de France; president du Syndicat Generale de l'lndustrie Cotonniere; M. Lewan- dowski, administrateur-directeur du Comptoir National d'Escompte de Paris; R. Masson, directeur generale du Credit Lyonnais; H. de Peyerimhoff, president du Comite Central des Houilleres de France; and two others. These signatories, fearing that passages in this manifesto can be variously interpreted, wish to make clear the points upon which they are agreed. They believe that the state of instability and economic dis- order with which European nations at present are contending

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462 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 has its origin in the consequences of the war, and, in particular, in the monetary crises which resulted from it. They believe that, in order to avoid making worse a disturbing situation, first of all the countries where money is not yet stabilized should move toward a sound currency as rapidly as possible. These countries could do this all the more easily if the economic relations between peoples could be reestablished on a basis favoring normal commercial exchange. They think, in this respect, that the high rates or the ex- cessive rigidity of certain tariff systems, the direct or indirect extremes of protectionism, of discrimination, or of preference, and the obstacles put in the way of international transactions by unfair transport regulations should be condemned. They declare themselves, as a consequence, in favor of all measures which would tend to suppress such artificial barriers, which are opposed to the complete return to the economic rela- tions between nations that existed before the war. They are not able to forget that it is impossible for any modern state to live and prosper without maintaining commer- cial agreements with other states, and that as a result of the intimate interdependence of peoples, it is only by a mutual ex- change of credit services and of merchandise that world eco- nomic equilibrium can finally be brought about. Germany: Geh. Kommerzienrat Dr. Bosch, chairman, Chemical Trust; Geheimrat Felix Deutsch, chairman, General Electric, Berlin; Dr. Carl Melchior, M. M. War- burg & Co., Hamburg; Franz von Mendelssohn, banker, Berlin; Dr. Schacht, president, German Reichsbank; Karl Friedrich von Siemens, chairman, Siemens Bros., Berlin; Franz Urbig, Disconto Gesellschaft, Berlin; General- direktor Vogler, Steel Trust, Dortmund ; F. H. Witthoefft, senior partner, Arnold Otto Meyer, India merchants. Great Britain: Sir Arthur Balfour, Arthur Balfour & Co., Ltd.; Henry Bell, director Lloyds Bank, Ltd.; Sir Hugh Bell, Bart., ironmaster; Lord Bradbury, director Williams Deacons Bank, Ltd.; William Carnegie, general manager, National Bank of Scotland, Ltd.; W. H. Coats, chairman, J. & P. Coats, Ltd.; Sir John Cowan, chairman, Redpath, Brown & Co., Ltd.; Laurence Currie, Glyn, Mills & Co.; F. C. Goodenough, chairman, Barclays Bank, Ltd.; Norman L. Hird, general manager and director, Union Bank of Scotland, Ltd.; Robert M. Holland-Martin, C. B., chairman, Bank of Liverpool and Martin's, Ltd.; T.ord Inchcape, chairman, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., Ltd.; Lord Invernairn, chairman, W. Beardmore & Co., Ltd., Glasgow; Walter Leaf, D. Litt., chairman, Westminster Bank, Ltd.; Kenneth Lee, LL.D., chairman, Tootal, Broadhurst, Lee & Co., Ltd.; Sir Fred- erick Lewis, chairman, Furness, Withy & Co., Ltd.; Lord Maclay of Glasgow, shipowner; Andrew McCosh, chair- man, William Baird & Co., Ltd.; Right Hon. Reginald McKenna, chairman, Midland Bank, Ltd.; Sir Adam Nimmo, chairman of the Scottish Coal Owners' Associa- tion; Right Hon. Montagu Collet Norman, governor, Bank of England; Right Hon. Viscount Novar, K. T., P. C, D. S. 0., director, Union Bank of Scotland, Ltd.; A. A. Paton, chairman, Liverpool Cotton Association; .1. W. Beaumont Pease, chairman, Lloyds Bank, Ltd.; Eustace R. Pulbrook, chairman of Lloyds; Lord Revelstoke, Bar- ing Bros. & Co., Ltd.; Alexander Robb, general manager, Commercial Bank of Scotland, Ltd.; Lionel N. De Roth- schild, N. M. Rothschild & Sons: Sir Felix Schuster, Bart., director, National Provincial Bank, Ltd.; George j! Scott. treasurer and general manager, Bank of Scotland; Sir Josiah Stamp, president, Executive of the London, Mid- land and Scottish Railway; Sir D M. Stevenson, 'Bart., ex-chairman, British Coal Exporters' Federation; Rees Griffith Thomas, general manager, British Linen Bank: Douglas Vickers, chairman, Vickers, Ltd.; Lord Weir, A Short Cut to Accurate Information — a companion for your hours of reading and study that will quickly make itself indispensable for its wealth of ready infor- mation on just the questions which most often puzzle you. You will save time and insure accuracy when you have at hand WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE The Best Abridged Dictionary // is Based upon Webster's New International 106,000 entries from which to get exact definitions, spellings, pronunciation, and use of words: a dictionary of biography to identify characters of history or literature; a Gazetteer depart- ment to give salient facts about points of geography; a guide to rules of punctuation, use of capitals, abbreviations, etc.; a dictionary of foreign phrases with pronunciation and trans- lations; and many other features of practical value. It is a splen- did book of 1256 pages with 1700 illustrations. New Words —including the latest accepted vocabulary terms and important additions to the biographical and Gazetteer de- partments— such entriesascamou'/eur, hinetophone* Latvia, Vimy, Hughes, Lenin, The thin- (tatter edition is especially handsome and convenient to handle. Art Canvas binding, $5.00; Fabri- koid, $0.00; Leather, $7.50. Purchase of your bookseller; or send order and remittance direct to us; or write for information. Free specimen pages if you mention The IS at ion. G. &C. Merriam Co. Springfield Mass. I THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE Twenty-ninth Season opens Sunday, November 7th at 8 o'clock IN THE GREAT HALL OF COOPER UNION Aator Place and 8th Street WITH A CONCERT BY THE AMERICAN ORCHESTRAL SOCIETY EVERETT DEAN MARTIN— What is the Matter with Modern Ideas? A Course for "Successive Friday Evenings. First Lecture. November 12th, "The Loss of Intel- lectual Leadership in the Modern World." FLOYD H. ALLPORT— "Personality and its Social Relationships," Tuesday, November 9th. BRUCE BLIVEN — "Debunking Our Politics." Sundav. November 14th. Lectures with open forum discussion every Sunday and Tuesday evening from November to May ADMISSION FREE THE SCHOOL OF THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE In the small auditorium of THE MANHATTAN TRADE SCHOOL, Lexington Ave. and 22nd Si. MARK VAN DOREN— Literary Critics of Our Civilization. Seven Lectures. Monday Evenings. SI. 50 IRWIN EDMAN — Varieties of Metaphysical Experience. Five Lectures. Wednesday Evenings. $1.50 E. G. SPAULDING— Outlines of Philosophy. Ten Lectures. Thursday Evenings. $2.00 G. KINGSLEY NOBLE — Evolution : Facts and ! hei 'ries. Ten Lectures. Salurdau Evenings. $2.00 SCHOOL OPENS NOVEMBER 8TH Season Tuition - - $15.00 Single Lecture - - .25 IKE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE, 70 Fifth Ave. - wati™* 7945 When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Nov. 3, 1926] The Nation 4(53 Weir & Co., Glasgow; Sir Glynn H. West, chairman, Ry- lands Bros., Ltd.; William Whitelaw, chairman, London and North Eastern Railway; Col. F. Vernon Willey, Francis Willey & Co., Ltd., Bradford; Sir Percy Wood- house, president, Manchester Chamber of Commerce; Sir Alexander Kemp Wright, K. B. E., general manager, Royal Bank of Scotland; D. Young, Clydesdale Bank, Ltd. Holland: Dr. C. J. K. Van Aalst, president, Nederlandsche Handel Maatschappy; S. P. Van Eeghen, merchant banker, Amsterdam; F. H. Fentener Van Vlissingen, manufacturer, Utrecht; E. Heldring, president, Chamber of Commerce, Amsterdam; Dr. A. J. Van Hengel, din Rotterdamsche Bankvereeniging, Amsterdam; Dr. P. Hofstede De Groot, managing director, Amsterdamsche Bank; Paul May, Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co., bankers; Dr. W. A. Mees, R. Mees & Zoonen, bankers, Rotterdam; A. P. Philips, managing director, "Philips Gloeilampenfa- brieken," Eindhoven; ami seven others. Hungary: Anthony Eber, manager, Hungarian Italian Bank; Charles De Emey, manager, First National Sav- ings Bank; Henry Fellner, chairman First Hungarian Steam Milling Co. of Budapest; Exc. Gustavus Gratz, ex-minister of foreign afFairs; Count John Hadik, ex- minister of the crown; Baron John Harkanyi, ex-minister of commerce; Baron Maurice Kornfeld, director, National Bank of Hungary; Baron Paul Kornfeld, director, Hun- garian General Credit Bank; Baron Marcel Madarrassy- Beck, president, Hungarian Discount and Exchange Bank; Emil Mutschenbacker, managing director, Hun- garian Agricultural Union; Count Ladislas Somssich, president, Agricultural Union; Exc. John Telesky, ex- minister of finance. Italy: G. Agnelli, president, "Fiat" Co.; Antonio Benni, president, General Fascist Confederation of Italian In- dustries; Biagio Borriello, vice-president, Union of Chambers of Commerce; Ettore Conti, senator and indus- trialist; Riccardo Gualino, president, "Snia Viscosa"; Felice Guarneri, director general, Association of Italian Corporations; Gino Olivetti, chief secretary general, Fas- cist Confederation of Italian Industries; Nicola Pavon- celli, president, Board of the Bank of Italy; Alberto Pirelli, president, Association of Italian Corporations; L. Toeplitz, administrator, Banca Commerciale Italiana. These signatories, while signifying their agreement with the spirit which has dictated the above manifesto, wish to place on record that had it been possible for them to cooperate in the framing of the document, they would have preferred to give a different and more precise form to some of its passages. Above all, they would have liked that criticism should have been ex- ercised not only as regards the excessive height of customs tariffs and the rigidity of customs regulations in force in some countries but also in respect of all the numerous forms of direct or indirect protection, discriminations or preferences, artificial subsidies, and restrictions on emigration. With such reservations they willingly subscribe to the manifesto. Norway: Caesar Bang, president, Federation Norwegian Industries; E. G. Borch, president, Royal Agricultural Society; Sir Thomas Fearnley, shipowner; Kamstrup Hegge, managing director, Nan Norske Creditbank and president of Association of Norwegian Private Banks; Hieronymus Heyerdahl, chairman, Christiania Bank of Kreditkasse; A. F. Klaveness, shipowner; N. Rygg, presi- dent, Bank of Norway; H. Westfal-Larsen, president, Norwegian Shipowners; Wilh. Wilhelmsen, shipowner. Poland: Dr. Henry Aschkenovi, manager, Banque d'Es- compte de Varsovie; Stanilaw Karpinski, president, Banku, Polskiego; Exc. Marjan Szydlowski, representa- tive, Association of Mining Industries of Upper Silesia; A. De Wieniawski, vice-president, Banque de Commerce. m.-fSGS^rSES' •-S6S' ®5& >.-i*Ge ®S£ #9? IS ITGOD SWORD? AN EXPOSITION OF THE FABLES AND MYTHOLOGY OF THE BIBLE AND THE IMPOSTURES OF THEOLOGY By Jose pit Wli dess Associate Editor, American Bar Association Joiu~nuL CLARENCE DARROW says : "The book shows a remarkable amount of merit, a fine analytical ability, a good sense of humor and is altogether far ahead of any other book on the question that I have, ever read." $5.00 at all bookstores Alfred A. Knopf, 730 Fifth Ave.,X. Y. '£^S> NEW SHAW PLAYS TRANSLATIONS and TOMFOOLERIES By BERNARD SHAW Mr. Shaw, after addressing the world at large on the occasion of his seventieth birth- day, with a Jovian gesture, presents to America this volume of Six Plays and One Translation All with his inimitable introductions AT ALL BOOKSTORES $2.25 BRENTANO'S Publishers New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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464 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3200 Rumania: Maurice Blank, vice-president, Banque Marmo- resch, Blank & Co., Bucharest. Sweden: Gannar Dillner, manager, Trafikaktiebolaget Grangesberg-Oxelosund, Stockholm; J. S. Edstrom, man- aging director, Almiinna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebola- get, Stockholm; Gust Ekman, general manager, Aktiebo- laget Goteborgs Bank; Ivar Kreuger, managing director, Svenska Tandsticksaktiebolaget, Stockholm; Victer Moll, governor, Bank of Sweden; 0. Rydbeck, general man- ager, Skandinaviska Kreditaktiebolaget; Helmer Sten, general manager, Aktiebolaget Svenska Handelsbanken; K. A. Wallenberg, chairman, Stockholms Enskilda Bank; Marc Wallenberg, chairman, Swedish Bank Association. Switzerland: G. Bachmann, president, Banque National Suisse; F. Dominice, Adm., Union Financiere de Geneve; Leopold Dubois, chairman, Societe de Banque Suisse; Albert Lombard, vice-president, Swiss Association of Bankers; Rudolf Sarasin, president, Chamber of Com- merce, Basle; Carl Sulzer Schmid, president, Gebrvider Sulzer Aktiengesellschaft, Winterthur. United States: Gates W. McGarrah, banker, New York; J. J. Mitchell, president, Illinois Merchants' Trust Co., Chicago; J. P. Morgan, Messrs. J. P. Morgan & Co., New York; Thos. N. Perkins, delegation of the Citizens of the U. S. A., member of the Reparation Commission; Melvin A. Traylor, president, First National Bank, Chicago; Albert H. Wiggin, president, Chase National Bank, New York. Contributors to This Issue Oswald Garrison Villard spent the summer observing conditions in Germany, England, and France. Chapin Collins, a graduate of the University of feattle, is the editor of the Elma (Washington) Chronicle. Benjamin Stolberg is a student of the labor movement. Hollace Ransdell, formerly with the Baltimore Sim, is doing publicity for the Passaic strikers. Tansy McNab is the pseudonymn of a Washington news- paper correspondent. George Sterling is a well-known poet of California and the author of "Robinson Jeffers." Robert H. Lowie, professor of anthropology at the Uni- versity of California, is the author of "Primitive Lociety" and other books. Carl Van Doren's latest book is "The Ninth Wave." Mary Ross is associate editor of The Survey. Daniel Gregory Mason is a composer and professor of music at Columbia University. Laura Benet is the author of "Fairy Bread." Charles W. Ferguson, the son of a Methodist minister, has contributed articles to the American Mercury and other magazines. INSTINCT IN THE CELL AND ORGANISM (Descriptive Tab!,- of Contents Free) THIS volume of NEANDER P. COOK is a survey of the instinctive reactivities of the livinir organism. Based upon the most recent biological discoveries, it is an amazing revelation of the hidden powers that drive the living world onward and upward, from its lowliest beginnings in the Protozoa to its higl f in man. Tho n for the scientific investigator, it comes in language and illus. that any intelligent reader, desiring first-hand knowledge, need not page of it. $5.00 postpaid. THE WEIMAR PRESS. Alhambra, Calif. Your Fall Problems If you want to rent a house or an apartment or if you have one to rent — or sell, advertise in the classified section of The Nation, read by honest landlords ;uid desirable tenants. Rates on application. Special three-time rate. Dept F. P., The Nation. The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers a fifteen months' course of graduate study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Centers. For further information, address the Director, THE TRAINING SCHOOL for JEWISH SOCIAL WORK (Initiated by the National Conference of Jewish Social Servie*) 310 WEST fist STREET NEW YORK CITY A new and entertaining biography by the author of "La Belle Stuart," etc. The Vagabond Duchess By Cyril Hughes Hartman A fascinating account of Hortense Mancini, Duchesse Mazarin, and the men and manners of one of the most brilliant periods in his- tory. Louis XIV, Cardinal Mazarin, Charles II, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and Nell Gwyn are some of the interesting figures in the story. Price $5.00 E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., New York 6*CKl Mmn inc. 1 r3a wai ■■tt GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New York IDEALISTS, THINKERS, TRUTH SEEKERS:— The Cr.-«i of Natural ReliEion (a folder) is FREE to you. Elements of Honest Law sells for and every cent realized noes to help Honest Law and Natural Religion. Lever 700 N. Write for them to-day 43rd Street Philadelphia, Pa. CHILD STUDY GROUPS for Fathers and Mothers of Young Children Fathers and Mothers of Adolescent Boys and Girls Grandmothers, guardians, teachers, social workers, camp directors, etc. Whatever yo^r interest and needs, you will find this group work healthful and stimulating. WRITE FOR INFORMATION TO CHILD STUDY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC. 54 WEST 74TH STREET NEW YORK CITY writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation F O U N D E I) IS Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1926 No. 3201 Contents (RIAL PARAGRAPHS 468 EDITORIALS: , . .-o The Supreme Court as Revolutionary «» Res: Recreation ,1'^ The Se:i Devil Arrives JS0 Marie's Rumania TEARS OF BOLSHEVISM. Ry Louis Fischer 471 -.■>m; tafl ••;;••■ •,;••• v v"» j» TO THE VILLAGE. Ry Vera DanchnkotT 174 n DREAMS. Bj Marian Tyler *'' THOM fcS MOTT OSRORNE. By Winthrop D. Lane *78 BARBARISM TO CONVICTS By Burl M. MoConnell *"'9. HE DRIFTW VY. By the Drifter 480 CORRESPONDENCE 4M BOOKS AND PLAYS: ,„ Dagger By Lhermontov. Translated hy Max Eastman J« First Glance. By Mark Van Doren "•< Uky Again. By Sidney R. Fay ......... . . . ■ • • ■ • ■ ■ ■ ■■ ■ • • «■ •» The • hod of Willa Gather. By Joseph Wood Kmtch Selling Dinosaurs. By Lewis S. Gannett «< By Lenore G. Marshall <»» Historical Portraiture. Ry Clarence Walworth Alvord 48h Pale Rain. By Grace Frank *** A Bibliography. By Emery Neff «" ■ in Brief " ' Thr Nation1* Poetry Prize ■■■■■ :' "rir" 'a"v VC ass Drama: Something New in Theaters. Ry Joseph Wood Kmtch 488 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Soviet Industry. By Harold Kellock 4»U Japan in Manchuria jj"' The USSR and the Chinese Eastern Railway 491 Increase of Wages in the USSR 492 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HORSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager SrnscRlPTloN Rates: Five dolln-s per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico : to Canada. S&.50 : and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street. New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising : Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London W. C. 1, England. IT IS NOW NINE YEARS since a little group of men and women of virtually no administrative experience, economists and dreamers, the major part of whose lives had been spent in Siberian prisons or in exile, forcibly took over the power in the Russian state. Russia was then a chaos of political factions, a frantic, starving, disease- swept debating society, into the heart of which the Kaiser was steadily pushing his legions. In this situation the Bolsheviks, numerically the smallest of the political groups, agreed on a course. In effect they said to the debaters: "We have decided to take the helm and steer steadily thus. Our direction may possibly be wrong, but at least we shall no longer be drifting. Any of you gentlemen who disagrees with us will have to be chucked overboard." Thus the de- bating ended. The men at the wheel were, at least, realists — ruthless, dogmatic, welded together with a common pur- pose and a self-imposed Spartan discipline which they have been ready to enforce despite its cruel toll. There followed four years of civil strife, invasion, blockade, with a steady acceleration of starvation and disease. Various Czarist ad- venturers—Wrangel, Denikin, et al— looked like good in- vestments to foreign imperialists interested in acquiring lian oil, manganese, iron, and timber for the price of supplying the warriors with munitions, cash, and cham- pagne. But the Russian peasant, weary as he was of ex- changing bayonet-thrusts with German workingmen, had brought his rifle home with him, and was quite willing to fight for his newly won farm against the Czarist land- lords. So Kolchak was crushed, and Denikin was chased into the Black Sea, and by 1920 Lenin and his colleagues found themselves masters of the ruins of what remained of the former Russian Empire. THE BOLSHEVIKI are still masters of Russia; and a study of their policies and of Russia's progress as recorded in The Nation's annual special issues reveals an amazing process of successful adaptation and material ad- vancement during the last six years. In the course of our editorial remarks on Soviet production a year ago the fol- lowing statement appears: "Agriculture and industry have each risen 71 per cent of pre-war figures; next year they are estimated at 89 and 91 per cent, respectively." It is always interesting to compare estimates with actual results. The figures reported in other pages of this issue indicate that the year's production exceeded these official prognos- tications in both fields. Russia's grain harvest this year was 93 per cent of the pre-war amount; her industrial production rose to 95 per cent. This material improvement has not been accomplished without heavy cost, both politi- cal and economic. Some of the cost is described in Mr. Fischer's article, which exposes the roots of Russia's recent political crisis and the serious effects of her credit famine. Russia has come up to her present level of productivity with none of the financial sustenance that has kept the rest of Europe afloat. But she wants credits in order to stabil- ize her internal life and keep industry moving. Economi- cally speaking, Russia deserves financial backing; her sins are political. To get adequate credits requires in the long run the recognition of the United States. Meanwhile the Coolidge Administration continues to base its policy on the pompous, ignorant moralizings of the State Department and the vindictive anger of Mr. Hoover. It is to be hoped that before too long it will heed the changed tone of bankers and business men and read with attention the special editions of Wall Street newspapers devoted to impressive expositions of Russian progress. CHINA'S CIVIL WAR has stopped for breath. The Canton armies have swarmed over nearly half of China, and the next step may well be negotiation rather than new battles. The gallant little army from the South has suffered heavy losses and needs time to organfze civil administration in its rear. Its first attempt to take Shang- hai— by the Russian method of stirring up revolt within the enemy's ranks — has failed; but no one who knows the Chinese Nationalists believes that the first attempt will be the last. Meanwhile, of course, Canton's enemies, however much they may have fought each other in the past, are patching up a skin-saving peace with each other. Sun Chuan-fong, master of Shanghai, may swear blood brother- hood with Chang Tso-lin, the war-lord of the North, but he

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466 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 is unlikely to renounce his ambition to rule his native province of Shantung, held now by one of Chang's hench- men. These ambitious personalities cannot in the long run prevail against the cohesive force of Nationalist principles. The next step may well be the reemergence of Feng Yu- hsiang, the "Christian General" of the North, as an ally of Canton. He has just returned from Moscow, where they teach nationalism and internationalism with equal zeal. ANOTHER BLOW has befallen the British Liberals. Commander J. M. Kenworthy, one of the most gal- lant fighters in the war and an equally gallant combatant in Parliament for the rights of small nationalities and op- pressed peoples everywhere, has announced his withdrawal from the Liberals and is joining the Labor Party. Here is an important accession, for he is a pugnacious fighter who asks innumerable annoying questions of the front bench and does not hesitate to say what he thinks of gov- ernmental adventures in imperialism. He has accompanied his resignation with an appeal to Lloyd George to follow him into the other tent. This will, of course, be in vain, although that pirate captain now commands a mere handful of followers who are not even united in their devotion to him — some of them hate him. We are well aware that prominent English publicists believe that the day is not far distant wh.n th_re will be a revival of Liberalism, think- ing as they do that the British middle class stands at least for Liberalism. Unfortunately for them, the determinant economic power of the middle class has passed from it. The revival may come, but it is not in sight today, and neither is a personality able to lead the parliamentary representatives of Liberalism out of their present slough. In this, however, the plight of the Liberals is little worse than that of the other parties and of the trade unions. MEANWHILE, THE BRITISH COAL STRIKE has reached its unhappy end. Thanks to Mr. Baldwin and his Government, it is a victory for the mine-owners which is in sight, a victory so complete that it should satisfy the most vindictive of the coal barons. Yet it is a Pyi /hie victory, for the miners will go back to work with bitterness and justified anger in their hearts, accepting lower wages and longer hours — it is the first time in the history of the British labor movement that hours of work have been lengthened. Yet that the lengthening will not increase measurably the total output of the coal mines is the belief of all who have studied the situation. At the close of a gallant fight which has lasted six months, where the most optimistic thought it could endure only four, the trade unions are rent asunder, bankrupt, at loggerheads with one another. It is a tempting opportunity for the worst of the Conservative bitter-enders to attack the entire trade-union movement. If they do, it should mean a Labor Government within two years. THE RESIGNATION OF HENRY N. BRAILSFORD as editor of the New Leader is a grave loss to British journalism and to the labor movement, for Mr. Brailsford possesses honesty, courage, an analytical mind, and is never without constructive suggestions. Under his guidance the Neiv Leader has achieved a large circulation, but it has apparently not been large enough to suit the directors, who, according to reports, are credited with the desire to popu- larize it and cheapen it. Mr. Brailsford has been singu- larly free from that imperialistic bias which is too often the besetting sin of British journalists. He has clearly visioned the Russian situation and he has incessantly ap- pealed for the ending of all bickerings and dissensions in the European and British labor movements. A controversy with J. Ramsay MacDonald, when he was Prime Minister, made many of the friends of both men unhappy during the brief life of the Labor Government. But no one questions Mr. Brailsford's motives or his belief that in criticizing Mr. MacDonald as he did he was serving the cause to the best of his ability. There are so few of his type remaining j in journalism that his retirement is a calamity. ADVERTISING," President Coolidge told 'the Ad- j vertising Association in convention assembled, "ministers to the spiritual side of trade." Further, it is a great educator, and a driving force in the elimination of economic waste. Further, it is "the most potent influence in adapting and changing the habits and modes of life, af- fecting what we eat, what we wear, and the work and play of a whole nation." We agree with the latter pronounce- ment, and only wish it were not so true. One hundred and fifteen million Robots walking the chalkline of the national advertiser; walking a mile for the skin you love to touch; four out of five asking the man who owns one; with a little fairy in the home, and happiness in every box, listening to the master's voice. . . . With the first pronouncement we would also agree if the word "spiritual" could be changed to "mystical." The goods we consumers buy advance upon us from behind a great smoke-screen of advertising, brewed by astute psychologists in vast retorts where shame, envy, fear, pride, love, and every other human emotion are skil- fully blended to "break down sales resistance," stimulate wants, create new facts, and force us to buy, buy, buy, until it hurts, hurts, hurts! Of the value, the utility, the relative cost of the goods themselves we learn nothing whatever from advertising. THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT when it buys soap and ink and textiles pays no attention to pretty girls on the backs of magazines nor yet to supersalesmen with pants like the Prince of Wales's. It pays attention to instructions from the Bureau of Standards, where skilled chemists, physicists, and laboratory experts are busily en- gaged in debunking advertising and getting at fundamental values. This debunking process saves the Government $100,- 000,000 every year. Could consumers at large avail them- selves of such a service the savings would run into the bil- lions, the bulk of competitive advertising would evaporate like a pricked balloon, and the sodden lockstep in which we move would be snapped and broken. If advertising flour, tooth paste, crackers, hats, perfumes, handkerchiefs edu- cates, so does the Rev. William Sunday; and if it makes for the elimination of waste, so does a superdreadnaught. If President Coolidge had really thought before he read the paper which some bright go-getter probably handed to him he would have realized that most advertising creates the waste which all his New England blood abhors, and that its great virtue lies in the escape it provides for Henry Dubb and his wife into a dream world of shining teeth, creamy complexions, culture by the yard, success in the snappy lessons, perfect-fitting union suits, regularized digestive ap- paratus, and — at the last — marble mausoleums where "you, too, may have consolation in Cypress Hills Abbey."

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 467 NOTE ON NEWSPAPERS: Ogden Mills, Republican candidate for Governor of the State of New York, waged his campaign on the issue that New York City's milk supply was bad and that Tammany officials were responsi- ble. He cited, somewhat vaguely, analyses o( city milk sam- ples made for him by a chemist. Finally, in the last weeks of the campaign, the chemist was discovered. He made a full statement thai : No harmful or injurious matter was disclosed by these analyses. . . . With only three exceptions the milk exam- ined was equal to or well above the minimum standard of the sanitary code with respect to the fat content, which is the most important single factor in milk. ... In my opin- ion the milk supply of the City of New York is of as high if not higher quality than that of any large city in the United States. It was a cave-in of Ogden Mills's charges. The milk issue collapsed like a punctured balloon. And how did the Repub- lican papers treat it? The Sun featured it as important news; the Herald Tribune put it at the bottom of an inside page, under the headline of another story; Mr. Hearst's American, which had passionately supported Mills, simply omitted mention of the chemist's story. There are news- papers, party papers, and personal papers. FREQUENT ROWS in the past between Comptroller General McCarl and the Coolidge Administration give an immediate practical interest to the Supreme Court's deeision upon which we comment on a later page. Mr. Coolidge now has the power to remove this troublesome appropriation-slasher, whose independent tenure of office Congress sought to safeguard. Virtually every constitu- tional system in the world has provided, in order to insure legality and prevent corruption, that the audit of accounts should not be under the control of the Executive. Our American Congress, in the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, created a Comptroller General, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate for a term of fifteen years, removable only by joint resolution of Congress for incapacity, inefficiency, or neglect of duty. The Supreme Court has ruled this unconstitutional; the President may now remove at will. But Chief Justice Taft's opinion suggests a loophole when it says The remedy for the evil of political executive removals of inferior officers is with Congress by a simple expedient, but it includes a change of the power of appointment from the President with the consent of the Senate. Congress must determine first if the office is inferior, and second that it is willing that the office shall be filled by the ap- pointment of some other authority than the President with the consent of the Senate. The Comptroller General, therefore, could be made appoint- able by the Secretary of the Treasury, in which case he could be made irremovable until his term expired. He might be a tool of the Executive, for there would be no Senatorial confirmation, but when the Administration changed the tool might serve Congress instead of the Cabi- net. It may be that Congress will decide that the chance is not worth taking, but it is the only one permitted by ex-President Taft's revolutionary decision. AUGUST HECKSCHER has given additional proof that his head as well as his heart is behind his $1,500,- 000,000 project to clean up the slums of New York. At a recent meeting presided over by Mayor Walker he admitted that his first proposal to secure 500 millionaires to con- tribute $100,000 each for five years smacked too much of private philanthropy, and proceeded to amend the plan, as follows: The city — possibly with help from the State — shall finance the entire project. One-half the needed sum shall be borrowed from insurance companies and private in- dividuals. Philanthropists of course can subscribe to the loan, but it will be a straight investment, duly secured, not in any sense a charity. The other half will be provided by the municipality, which shall proceed to condemn wide areas of slum property subject to gradual and successive improvement, involving a comprehensive scheme of city planning, with wider streets, radiating avenues, more light, sunshine, playgrounds, and parks. It will be municipal landlording on a grand scale, but on a sound financial basis without an atom of charity in it. It moves closer to reality than the original proposal, and deserves careful and sympathetic consideration. THE LYNCHING TREE never bore more hideous fruit than has come to us from Bristol, Tennessee, by way of the Chicago Defender. If a news dispatch in that paper is to be believed — the story is almost too atrocious for belief — a fourteen-year-old white girl a fortnight ago shot and then kicked to death a colored boy nine years old. The girl is now in prison; her mind is said to have been affected by lynchings of which she had heard, or perhaps in which per- sons known to her had participated. Hers was no mob spirit; she was quite unaided, and, as far as is known, quite unprovoked. The lynchers never meant such work to be carried on by children. But they took part in lawless and violent murders themselves, they shielded each other from the feeble attempts of the authorities to punish them, they tossed off a lynching as easily as if it had been a barbecue, and every day an impressionable child might see ill-treat- ment of one race by another, injustice in the courts, Jim Crow on the streets, segregation, contempt, fraud against persons and against property. And this is the result. THE FAME OF HARRY HOUDINI (Eric Weiss), dead in Detroit, can be measured by the fact that for years, both in America and elsewhere, his name has been synony- mous with "magic" and "magician." He was invoked in many a story whose theme was manual cleverness; it was the custom to say of difficult situations that "only Houdini" could extricate himself from them. He was the representa- tive magician of our day, and a marvelous showman. But the interesting thing is that he once more proves the ca- pacity of the best man in a profession to be more than a mere member of that profession. Houdini was so good at his game that he could afford to have fun with it, and to use its technique for other ends. Perhaps he will be longest remembered for his exposure of spiritualist mediums through demonstrations that they were only fair magicians. Watching them, he could see through their tricks and re- produce these himself. The mediums have been called our modern witches — analogues of those disturbers of the peace who turned Salem, and many a European village, upside down in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If this be just, we can but wish that Cotton Mather had had his Houdini too. There would have been no hanging then, and there would have been some laughter. But Houdinis, it seems, do not come to every generation.

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468 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 The Supreme Court as Revolutionary SELDOM does a dissenting Supreme Court justice char- acterize the opinion of the majority of his colleagues as "revolutionary." It is the more remarkable when a con- servative like Justice McReynolds is moved to such expres- sion. The recent decision of the federal Supreme Court will not quell dissenting voices, yet it settles American practice in this: henceforth, unless the Constitution is amended, the President may, alone, Congress to the con- trary notwithstanding, arbitrarily remove any of the men whom, by and with the consent of the Senate, he has appointed to office. This question of the President's power of removal is an old one. It divided the first Congress and inspired some ■)f the greatest constitutional arguments in our history. The Constitution provides that the President Shall nominate and by and with the advice and con- sent of the Senate shall appoint ambassadors, other pub- lic ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States whose appoint- ments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law. But Congress may, by law, vest the appointmert of such inferior officers as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments. The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session. No mention is made of the power of removal. The first Congress was called upon to interpret this section when a bill was introduced for the establishment of a department of foreign affairs, providing that the head of the depart- ment should be removable by the President. The debate ended in the House approving by a small majority the in- terpretation vesting the power of removal in the President alone. It was necessary for John Adams, as Vice-Presi- dent of the Senate, to cast the deciding vote in that House. Madison, a strong supporter of the President's power, dis- counted the idea of any abuse of it on the ground that re- moval without cause would subject a President to impeach- ment, and undoubtedly this view influenced the final inter- pretation given by Congress. Certainly there was no con- templation then of the "spoils system" under which Andrew Jackson removed some 2,000 officials. The question was revived in 1867 during the famous reconstruction fight between President Johnson and Con- gress. At that time a statute was passed providing that removals, to be valid, needed consent of the Senate, and that during recess the President might suspend only for good cause, a report of such suspension to be made to the Senate within twenty days after the beginning of a new session. President Grant complained of the statute, but no dispute arose under it until the Cleveland Administration, when the President refused to report on suspensions to the Senate, and Congress thereupon refused confirmation of his ap- pointees. The Senate finally capitulated. At the next ses- sion the requirement that reports of suspensions be given was repealed. On several occasions the question has been presented to the Supreme Court, but that body hitherto has managed to avoid it, though voicing an occasional dic- tum to the effect that the power of removal was exclusively in the President. The portion of the 1867 statute which is relevant to the recent decision of the Supreme Court provides that Postmasters of the first, second, and third classes shall be appointed and may be removed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and shall hold their offices for four years unless sooner removed or suspended according to law. ... Frank S. Myers, postmaster at Portland, Oregon, was removed by President Wilson in 1920, no reason being as- signed for his removal. Myers protested and finally brought suit for back pay, alleging that the President was without power to remove him in the absence of the consent of the •Senate. The issue was fought through to the Supreme Court, which has just held the statute unconstitutional in so far as it attempted to restrict the President's power of removal. Chief Justice Taft, reading the majority opinion, argues that the executive power is in the President alone unless specifically confined by the Constitution; that re- moval is an exercise of executive power unhampered by any specific clause of the Constitution and may therefore be exercised by him alone. Further, the requirement that the President enforce the laws necessarily implies his unre- stricted power of removal. Justice McReynolds, dissenting, argues that since Congress has power to prescribe duties, qualifications, and term, the real question is whether or not the otherwise plenary power of Congress in dealing with postmasters is remitted when they are appointed by the President in concurrence with the Senate. Finding no such remission, he decides that Congress acted within its powers in passing the act. Justice Brandeis holds that the majority opinion overrules the famous case of Marbury vs. Madison. The position of the majority judges is curious. They admit that Congress may take from the President the power of appointing inferior officers and, by vesting it in the head of some other department, restrict removals as it will, yet they hold that the moment Congress transfers that appointing power to the President it is deprived of this restrictive power. The decision is, as usual, political rather than legal. The settled habit of the court is so to interpret the Constitution as to prevent legislation which seems to disturb intrenched interests. The power of patron- age in the President has been so long established and is such a powerful political weapon that to deny him the full bene- fits of it would cause a vast upheaval in political circles and make it possible seriously to hamper the Executive. The majority of the Supreme Court recoiled from such a decision. Justice Story once assured us that "it will be a con- solation to those who love the Union, and honor a devotion to the patriotic discharge of duty, that in regard to inferior offices the remedy for any permanent abuse is still within the power of Congress, by the simple expedient of re- quiring the consent of the Senate to removals in such cases." These are now empty words. Despite the dictum of Chief Justice Taft that there may be quasi-judicial offices free from executive control until a decision is reached in any given case involving third parties, the fact remains that any such officer rendering a decision contrary to the policy of the President may be removed immediately thereafter. The decision makes it impossible for Congress

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation to give any determined tenure to these officials, and the fear of removal will henceforth operate to bow hitherto inde- pendent officials to the will of the President or of his party speaking through him. The attempts of Congress to up non-political expert commissions are nullified. An arbitrary Executive has free play for his prejudices. This may be the law and the Constitution— although when the conservative Justice McReynolds, the liberal Jus- Brandeis, and the Olympian Justice Holmes unite in nt laymen may be permitted their doubts. But it is certainly a menace to free government. If a constitutional amendment is necessary to give independence and a fixed tenure to public officials, let us have it. Restlessness or Recreation EIGHT hours to work; eight hours to sleep; and the great question that haunts— or should haunt— our modern civilization is what shall be done with the eight hours that remain? Fifty years ago the idea of a forty- hour working week would have been greeted with scorn and derision by employer and employees alike. Today the five- day week is widely discussed, and is in practice in more than one industry. Children now spend some six hours of their day in school. From nine until approximately three they sit — the great majority of them — in enforced silence, as nearly with- out squirming as nature permits, soaking up scattered of information that often enough seem to them to be incoherent and meaningless. At three o'clock they be- gin to live; the stored-up energy of the whole day bursts forth like a charge of dynamite. They dash down the school steps, fling their books inside their own doors, and are ready for play. And what kind of play shall it be? The Playground and Recreation Association of Amer- ica at its recent congress discussed how the newly ac- quired leisure of adults, how the child's hours out of the schoolroom will be spent. There are the movies, the radio, the automobile, the dance-hall; there are the street gang, the ball game in the shadow of towering buildings and pounding motor trucks, the more or less harmless tricks played on neighbors and tradespeople, actual though not particularly malicious destruction of property — window- breaking, upsetting sidewalk displays and pushcarts, petty pilfering; and by a not too devious route there is the mature gang, the small thief graduating into the expert, and the distressing increase of violent and criminal careers among boys and girls of less than twenty-one years of age. Besides these activities which by no stretch of the imagina- tion could be called recreation, there are, of course, numer- ous flourishing enterprises for organized play. Community theaters, community music, handicrafts, sports, gardens, parks, and groups formed for sociability alone abound in various cities and towns. But for every child in a play- ground there are hundreds on the streets ; and the popu- larity of lurid movies and the circulation of "sex" maga- zines and the tabloids show how the majority of adults spend their hard-won leisure. A great need, the Playground Association believes, is for trained workers competent to direct recreation among both adults and children. Nobody wants to play silly games with a sort of teacher. Nobody wants authority waved over his head even in play-time. There is enough of that sort of thing in school and shop. The expert play director has to be both adept at games and full of con- tagious enthusiasm, lie cannot he a goody-goody, a mar- tinet, a slacker, or a hoss. His accomplishments must be almost unlimited — how to make a good kite, how to play the piano, how to can peaches, how to make a wagon that will go, how to find the right play for a group to give, how to direct, cast, and costume it. how to make the cos- tumes. Of these trained and gifted persons there never has been enough. It is too mueh to ask that the overworked and harassed school-teacher add supervised play to her duties. But it is not too much to demand that the schools be made a little less remote from the real, expressive life of both child and adult. They are natural centers, they are convenient, they are heated and lighted and large enough to house a con- siderable group. Ideally the school is the source of recrea- tion as well as education. In some communities it is. The child remains when lessons for the day are over, because so many delightful and important activities are going on; the adults congregate there in the evenings. But it is hard to make public officials, the guardians of the school- buildings, see the relation between ill-used leisure and a dull and inert, if not actually criminal, citizenry. It means expense — more janitor service, more electricity, more coal, more wear and tear on the buildings, and worst of all, more salaries of workers. The Playground and Recreation Asso- ciation has made a brave beginning, but it has a problem on its hands. The Sea Devil Arrives THAT is what they call Count Felix von Luckner, and "Sea Devil" is the title of the book in which he de- scribes one of the most romantic sea careers ever recorded. Not in the annals of Marryat or Cooper is there a more amazing story of adventure. Indeed, had it been written in any work of fiction it would have been set down as an in- credible bit of imaginative writing. What makes it more re- markable is that it has to do not with the era of John Paul Jones but with a sailing vessel in the World War, the war of submarines and dreadnaughts, of fast destroyers and battle cruisers and airplanes. Now this adventurer, who ran away from home at fourteen to go to sea as a cabin- boy, has turned up in New York in charge of a peaceful four-masted schooner which is a floating exhibition of Ger- man industry, one of the various devices hit upon to restore her pre-war trade to Germany. Incidentally, he is to lec- ture about his romantic career. If he can describe it on the platform as he has written it, he will speak to crowded houses. With the exception of the exploit of that portion of the crew of the German cruiser Emden which found its way back from the middle of the Indian Ocean to Germany after the capture of their vessel, there is no episode in the naval annals of the war more sensational than von Luckner's run- ning the blockade with his sailing vessel, which was fitted up with incredible patience and skill as the Norwegian ship Maletta, which she closely resembled. An oil engine was installed and a propeller, and underneath a load of wood, which apparently filled the entire hull, were accommoda- tions for sixty-four men who were to be the fighting con- tingent, whereas the apparent crew comprised twenty-three

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470 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 men, each of whom spoke Norwegian perfectly. To turn these Germans into Norwegians required endless labor. They were given letters purporting to have come from their families over a period of a number of years. Each one had to learn the names of his Norwegian parents, brothers, and sisters, as well as the names and records of the ships in which he had previously sailed. His seaman's papers were carefully forged and the man was drilled incessantly until he was letter-perfect as to a past which he had never lived. One of the sailors of youthful appearance took the role of the captain's wife, wearing a blonde wig and the clothes of a skipper's consort. The only entrance to the hidden quarters was through a trap-door in the floor of a closet which apparently was intended only for brooms and other cleaning material. Below there was also accommodation for many prisoners, much ammunition, and two old cannon — which was all that the admiralty would allow to so wild an undertaking. After the ship had left Hamburg and gone into North Sea waters her departure was so long delayed that the real Maletta left Copenhagen before her imitation could pre- cede her. The ship's papers had to be altered— twice, in- deed, since the second selection of a Scandinavian proto- type proved as unhappy as the first. To make over the papers a second time seemed impossible. Luckner hit upon a curious way out. He ordered the carpenter to destroy every port-hole in the cabin, the glass being replaced with roughly made pieces of wood such as the seaman uses to repair damage at sea. The ship's papers were then dipped in water and the dangerous portions smooched. They were then displayed as damaged by the flooding of the cabin. Finally, the Irma, as she then was, flew down the Channel before a favoring gale and met no vessel until almost out into the Atlantic. There she was boarded by a British officer, with a boat's crew, who discovered nothing. When the officer returned to his cruiser that vessel signaled "Stand by for an hour." One of the crew remarked : "Then we are lost." This remark was heard below by one of the sixty-four men in hiding. They determined to blow up the ship as had been agreed upon in the event of her dis- guise being penetrated. Fortunately, when the spark was within a couple of feet of the end of the fuse, Luckner him- self brought word that all was clear. Two minutes later the magazine would have exploded and the ship would have been blown into the air. But an hour later she was on her way to the South Atlantic and the Pacific, where she sank fourteen of the enemy's ships before being herself wrecked upon one of the Society Islands, where she had put in for fresh water and repairs. Thirty-five thousand miles she cruised, and her last three prizes were American schooners. The indomitable captain was not to be kept idle. With five of his crew he sailed 2,300 knots in an open boat eighteen feet long, a voyage of incredible danger and hard- ship, in the course of which these daring men nearly perished of thirst and hunger and scurvy, only to be cap- tured on Wakaya Island, from which they were taken to Auckland for imprisonment. Even here this indomitable spirit could not be kept behind bars. With nine others he stole the motorboat of the commandant of the camp, captured a schooner, and succeeded in getting as far as Curtis Island before being recaptu.-ed after ten days of freedom. Such in brief is the record of the Sea Devil who has now turned to the art of commerce and of trade. Marie's Rumania LORING PICKERING, in behalf of the North Ameri- can Newspaper Alliance, which copyrights and syndi- cates Queen Marie's well-paid love of the rocks and rills of America, telegraphed to Upton Sinclair in Pasadena, Cali- fornia, requesting the pleasure of his company at a recep- tion to Her Majesty the Queen in New York City. Mr. Sinclair was busy campaigning as Socialist candidate for Governor of California, but he paused to reply. Assure Her Majesty [he said] that we shall be with her in spirit and shall tell our Pasadena audience what we think of her Government, the most infamous and blood- soaked in Europe. In due course we expect to learn that Her Majesty has come to borrow American dollars to be used in enabling Rumanian peasant-slaves to slaughter Russian workers groping toward freedom. We suspect that if Marie came to America hoping to raise a loan for her country the hope has gone aglimmering. Society ladies may still pay good money for the privilege of meeting or entertaining royalty, but even the newspaper cartoonists have begun to laugh at Marie's passion for pub- licity, and financiers are unlikely to be moved by the tactics of a Valentino. Yet it is just as well for rude persons like Mr. Sinclair to inject a serious note into the round of frivolity. Whatever Queen Marie may be personally, her kingdom is one of the plague-spots on the map of Europe. The spirit of Locarno has touched neither its internal nor its foreign policies. It was cursed with one of the rottenest aristocracies in Europe before the war, and unfortunately for its people its rulers picked the winning side so that the peace confirmed their power. It annexed Transylvania, but instead of placating the Rumanian peasants who lived there the Rumanian land-barons made terms with the feudal Hungarian landlords. It stole Bessarabia from Russia — as Czarist Russia had once stolen the same province from a weaker Rumania — and has steadfastly refused to consult its inhabitants as to their wishes in the matter. Today, under the inspiration of Mussolini's Italy, there is even talk of uniting Rumania and the remnant of Hungary — a fantastic project, for the only cement to bind the two na- tions is the common interest of the land-barons in checking the inevitable rise of the oppressed peasantry. The pretense of democratic government in Rumania today is a farce. At the last election the Government in- structed its officials not to permit opposition candidates to enter their districts, or to permit candidates to enter but not to speak; it made wholesale arrests, threw men, women, and children into jail for mere expression of independent opinion, and held them often for months without trial. Nowhere in Europe today is the lot of the Jews more ter- rible. They are excluded from the universities and subject to constant attacks in the streets; a Rumanian officer has confessed that under the direction of his commander he murdered numbers of Jews who were seeking to cross the River Dniester and leave the country, and despite his own confession a Rumanian court acquitted him! Of Marie's personal connections with the crimes com- mitted in her country we know nothing. But it would be well if the public which listens to her over the radio and gapes at her glorious strings of pearls should realize what misery lies behind their beauty and upon what bloody suffering is built the throne of her country.

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 471 Nine Years of Bolshevism By LOUIS FISCHER Drawings by Louis Lozovnck Berlin, October 5 NOVEMBER 13, 1922. A thousand delegates to the annual congress of the Third Inter- .,,-.■ assembled in the throne-room of the ex-Czar'a Kremlin palace. Lenin is speak- ing, watch in hand, for the physicians have lim- ited him to an hour's address. At his feet, on the boards of the platform, sits Radek who ! aid when Lenin snaps his fingers and whispers a Russian word to indicate that his German vocabulary has failed him. The leader is discussing the Russian situation and review- ing the NEP. He picks out the one significant achievement and dilates upon it: the Soviet state has been able during the past year to save 20,000,000 rubles which will be "definitely applied to raising the level of our heavy industries." Three years later, in 1925, the Russian bud- get could spare 765,000,000 rubles for the same purpose. The Soviet Union is suffering the pains of rapid growth; one is almost tempted to say, of too rapid growth. The value of industrial out- put (in pre-war rubles) rose by 50 per cent in 1921-1922, 33 per cent in 1922-1923, 30 per cent in 1923-1924, 35 per cent in 1924-1925, and about 45 per cent in 1925-1926, and has now reached an average of 95 per cent. of the 1913 standard. But while such progress is no proof of any fundamental weakness in the Soviet eco- nomic system, it does mean that the resources of the country in money, plant, and materials have been well-nigh exhausted in the quick ad- vance. A loan of, say, $200,000,000 would do much to solve Russia's current economic prob- lems and lay the present controversy in the Communist Party. It might not erase the dif- ferences of principle and opinion between Trotzky and Bucharin or between Stalin and Zinoviev, but it would make the dispute less acrimonious and cooperation more likely. The Soviet Union thirsts for capital. It is ready to make every honorable concession to the United States in order to win that political recognition without which there can be no ap- preciable flow of loans and credits from New York to Moscow. Should such help from Amer- ica or other countries not be forthcoming, re- current crises will probably afflict the Bolshe- viks for many years to come unless they are able to capitalize their own tremendous natural and human resources. On a small scale this is actually being done. The state, for example, now has 570,000,000 rubles for investment in industry next year. But such a procedure ;; i*m u* m m ■''■*C ■ •■} *v r s »%«# • Sara m* Kremlin Tower would be expensive for the inhabitants of the country. The Russians have paid and are pay- ing, and the burden is causing them to grumble more and more. The murmurings of the peas- ants, who number 125,000,000 souls of a total of 140,000,000, are the direct cause of the rup- ture in the Communist Party. The fundamental interests of a peasantry often conflict with those of urban industry, in the Russian case, of the proletariat. The his- tory of Bolshevik Russia shows a series of com- promises on the part of the city workers' gov- ernment in favor of the politically weak but economically irresistible mujik masses. Today, the scarcity of capital, together with other con- tributing causes, intensifies the demand of the village for further economic concessions and for the wider political prerogatives by which these can more easily be obtained. The "trouble" is that although the peas- ants have had to settle most of the bills of the revolution and to carry the expense of Com- munist mistakes, they have nevertheless grown too prosperous for the town. This condition will become more serious for, whereas the in- dustries have now consumed the larger part of available capital and will show only 5 to 15 per cent annual progress in the next few years as compared with 30 to 50 per cent in the past, the potentialities of agriculture for expansion are enormous. While the urban proletariat requires millions of rubles for new factories and new equipment in order to increase the quantity, improve the quality, and cut the cost of its products, the peasant has merely to plow three inches deeper and clean his seed with greater care to double his crop. Continued financial, educational, and organizational assistance by the Government to the peasants should suffice to send the crop curve high above today's level ; but all the energy, money, enthusiasm, and ability of the entire country will not avail to prevent the retarded motion of industrial prog- ress from setting in. The beginning of this development ap- peared in 1925. The unprecedented rise in the purchasing power of the peasantry could not be gratified by domestic factory output. Hence the prolonged "goods famine." This "new dis- proportion between the industrial supply and the peasant demand," says the Moscow Pravda, "is not diminishing. It threatens further com- plications in the relationship between the work- ing class and the peasantry" — and, therefore, in the party. To adopt the obvious solution and import the required goods would be inadvisable because in the absence of foreign loans such im-

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472 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 ports could only be paid for out of the return from exports, and the volume of exports does not warrant heavy imports. The problem of exports thus acquires paramount im- portance. Russia exports lumber, oil, furs, etc., but far the largest item of export is grain. Now the last two crops have been fairly good, and a paper surplus of many million tons exists for shipment to foreign countries. The mujik, however, will not part with his excess cereals except in exchange for textiles, machin- ery, leather goods, and other manufactured articles, and these the Soviet industry can- not give him to the exte: t to which he can afford to buy. Moreover, the stale's machin- ery for surplus grain collec- tion is inefficient. Lenin warned the Bolsheviks to "learn to be merchants" and they have not done so. They can manufacture but not sell. If the Nepman's role in mer- chandising is shrinking — from 40.8 per cent of the total trade turnovei in 1923-1924 to 24 per cent in 1924-1925— he still controls a huge block of the peasant market. He is not handicapped by a clumsy bureaucracy. He goes directly to the mujik's house to close a deal. He has ready cash. His turnover is rapid. He can therefore pay higher prices for grain, and the Government as well as the cooperatives must frequently accept the standard he sets. The peasant, too, is re- sponsible for high prices. Ivan says, "Before the war I gave a pood of rye for a linen blouse. Now the blouse sells at three, sometimes four times the 1913 cost." So he avenges himself by raising the price of the unused part of his grain to what for the Government, which is the sole exporter, must be a prohibitive level. The result is a limi- tation of exports and therefore of imports. According to the plan for next year, therefore, exports will amount to 790,000,000 rubles and, to create an active trade balance, imports will be restricted to 700,000,000 rubles. Much of the latter are to consist of machinery, raw materials, and semi-manufactured goods which will help to accelerate the process of domestic industrialization. On this one point there are no two opinions : the his- toric function of the Russian Communist Party is to further the industrialization of the Soviet Union and thus to weaken the economic balance in favor of the peasants. In- deed, the Stalin administration and the Opposition are in accord on so many subjects that it becomes a difficult task to define the difference between them. To say that the administration majority is promoting the- welfare of the peasantry and forgetting industry and the proletariat would be an over-statement. To argue that the Opposition, if it were in power, would carry out a policy of peasant Red Square, Moscoiv exploitation in order to further the interests of the city working class is to lose sight of the fact that whoever rules in new Russia dare not antagonize the village. It is too assertive, and the revolution has made it conscious of its strength. There can be no question, however, that the Opposition in some form has come to stay 'n Soviet Communist politics, and that it will find its chief inspiration and support in the urban proletariat. The pri- mary raison d'etre of the Op- position is the retreat of the party in the face of peasant pressure, and its existence must consequently grow in- creasingly justifiable as the economic power of the peas- antry, developing as it must at greater speed than that of the proletariat, forces the Government to ever further concessions. The Opposition believes that it is still possi- ble to stem the onrushing peasant tide by fewer and less radical compromises than those which the Stalin group has been making. It empha- sizes the danger to Bolshe- vism in the rise of the kulaks or rich peasants, and in their union with the "middle" or comfortably situated peasants against the poor and farm- hand elements in the villages. It charges that the adminis- tration minimizes this men- ace; and the administration returns with a counter-charge of exaggeration. So trivial does Bucharin, the arch-theorist of the party, regard the peasant danger that he urges them to "Enrich yourselves." This slogan was responsible for much bad blood in Communist ranks last year and probably accounts for the alignment of Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, with the Opposition. For although the Bolsheviks aim to enrich the village as a whole, it was obvious that the enrichment meant by Bucharin could only be attained by some peasants at the expense of others. Bucharin subsequently repented officially, nevertheless the idea of "Enrich yourselves" is consistent with his philosophy and theories and indicative of what may await the party if Bucharin is permitted to impress his views upon it. Zinoviev and Kamenev, too, when they and Stalin con- stituted the leading Triumvirate, legislated far-reaching concessions conducive to class differentiation in the villages and to the aggrandizement of the kulaks and "middle" peasants. But the party's last reforms— the right to rent land and to hire laborers— were apparently too much for them. They were appalled by their own handiwork. Hence the famous "Leningrad" Opposition at last December's party congress. It is significant that this proletarian Opposition insists on giving the name of state capitalism to the industrial svs-

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 473 tern developed under the new economic policy, whereas the majority of the party wishes to style it socialism. It is not merely an academic question. This matter of a name has shaken the whole party because it involves basic consid- erations of policy. The Opposition accuses the administra- tion of "coloring the NEP," of painting it in too rosy hues, , listening it socialism. The NEP, all agree, is neces- sary. Only through it can socialism be attained. But it is not socialism. Nor is it capitalism. It is the bridge from the one to the other. With the government, the industries, the cooperatives, the monopoly of foreign trade — the "So- cialist heights" as they are called — in Communist hands, the danger that capitalism will overwhelm near-socialism is not great. Yet the control of the "heights" does not im- ply a conquest of the plains. The plains where dwell the Nepman and the mujik are capitalistic. The "heights," on the other hand, are the advantages which accrue to the pro- letariat from its dictatorship. In them the party possesses the means for attempting the socialization of agriculture and the industrialization of the country. But by idealizing the NEP, the Opposition argues, you induce a feeling of overconfidence in the security of the "heights." Believing that you have achieved socialism in the city you imagine yourself immune from an assault from the plains; conse- quently you make more concessions to the peasant than you ought. There is much truth in this analysis. It requires no eagle eye to discern the peasants creeping slowly up toward the city proletarian "heights." The village wants political power, too, and is evidencing an activity in elections which has caused alarm. "Permanent revolution" is the solution offered by Trotzky, that is, uninterrupted resistance against peasant demands until the world revolution diminishes the danger they represent; concentrated effort to socialize agri- culture and to make the village more dependent on the town by introducing the cooperative use of tractors, machinery, etc.; and cooperative buying and selling by the peasants. After fighting this idea and defeating Trotzky in the fight, Zinoviev has succumbed to it, as, I believe, the entire Oppo- sition eventually must. The Opposition will sooner or later frankly declare itself the defender of proletarian interests against peasant encroachment. Such, in very broad outline, are the elements in the Communist Party controversy and in the economic situa- tion from which it springs The mere existence of an Oppo- sition, however, be its platform what it may, presents an immediate and severe problem to the party. The funda- mental concept of the Communist Party is "monolithism." The party must be a unit. The Communists are intolerant of groupings, factions, fractions, caucuses, and other combi- nations prejudicial to the most hidebound solidarity. Indi- vidual Bolsheviks may express any views they wish. They may publish them in party organs and air them at party meetings. But once the annual party congress has voted them down, they must advocate their views no longer and undertake no steps to organize support for their opinions. In 1922 the so-called "Workers' Opposition" was silenced in this manner. Then the Trotzky opposition met a similar fate. And now the Kamenev-Zinoviev-Lashevitch opposi- tion is faring no better. In fact, it is being suppressed more ruthlessly than its predecessors. Kamenev and Zino- viev have been expelled from the Political Bureau, Kamenev has been removed from the state offices he held. Pyatakov, first assistant to the late Dzerzhinsky in the Supreme Eco- nomic Council, may not return from his present extended "vacation." Trotzky has not been n I to the presi- dium of the Supreme Economic Council even though "good behavior"- silence— has enabled him to stay in the Politi- cal Bureau. When such important leaders ran be shelved in this wise, it need hardly be said that lesser opposition lights receive similar and in sonic cases worse treatment. .Many of these measures preceded and many followed the secret meeting of the Opposition in a wood outside .Mos- cow one evening last June. Picl re posted and other conspiratory trappings were present. There is no greater crime in the Communist calendar than to arrange and par- ticipate in such a gathering. Yet the purely proletarian attendance braved the risks of so grave a breach of party discipline because they could see no other way out. They are not reconciled to blind obedience. They want to champion their ideas. But they are muzzled and suppressed. Hence their recourse to illegal measures. On the other hand, the Opposition gives the administra- tion a most effective weapon by resorting to such secret assemblies, for nothing is more unpopular or considered more un-Communist than this. In general, any opposition starts with a handicap in that it exposes itself to the accu- sation of wishing to destroy the unity of the party and of precipitating a discussion when the need of the hour is work not words. The path of an opposition in Soviet Russia is thorny and hard, and its chances of success are few. A Communist Party consisting of two or more factions is inconceivable at present, and the oppositionists are too good Communists to dream of organizing another party even if it were physically possible, which it is not. The secret midnight meeting shows that the Opposition is restive under restraint, but it is difficult to imagine what it can do under present circumstances. Trotzky has already reconciled him- self to silence, passive obedience, and soldierly service at any post to which he is commanded. It appears that Zino- viev, Kamenev, Krupskaya, Pyatakov, Sokolnikov, Lashe- vitch, and the others can do little else. At each annual con- gress and conference they may present their case once again. Otherwise nothing remains, it seems, but to bide their time until the day — if it ever comes — when the de- mands of the economic situation will recall them to power or until they are convinced by the majority and join forces with it. Noah By JAKE FALSTAFF In Noah's pious blood there stirred The father of the Pharisee; A secret bibbling elder, he Spoke with assurance of The Word. Still he was wise, for he had heard The grumblings of a deity. He laid his adz about the tree And gathered in the beast and bird. But there were giants in that day; God was a gaffer of their house. "The Old Lad's peevish," chuckled they, And did not pause in their carouse. Waist deep in cataclysm they stood And, drunken, cheered the rising flood!

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474 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 Communism Comes to the Village By VERA DANCHAKOFF THE first time I saw the spring airing of Vlassievna's death clothes, it filled me with awe and trepidation. From early morning we children had been on our guard, so as not to miss the hour when Vlassievna, the mother of our twin-servants, should open her trunk. A long linen robe was to be her death shirt. Her slippers must be tight, she explained, so that they would not fall off her feet during her long heavenward flight; and light, so that she might not sink down while walking in the gardens of Paradise. But her greatest concern was to prevent them from creaking, so she oiled all the seams lest she disturb us when at night she would return to walk through our rooms. She hoped after leath to pay us frequent visits. A wooden cypress cross and a black head-dress with small white dots completed her death trousseau. She was critical in her choice of the place in our yard for spreading out her treasures. She cleaned away the ants and beetles and sat near by or walked around driving away insects with a branch of fragrant lilacs so that nothing might desecrate her death garb. Never did we children miss an opportunity to sneak into the back yard or into the kitchen at night. I remember often falling asleep in the lap of Vlassievna, as she sat in her comfortable old armchair by the brick kitchen stove, wrapped in a shawl, with familiar white kerchief pulled deep over her eyes. I would be lulled by her soft monot- onous voice. Nights when everybody was busy in the master's rooms, she would talk freely. "Grandmammy, I want to hear how you became betrothed," suggested my elder sister. "And how you fell in love," she added, with hesitation. "I was about twenty," Vlassievna starts her story anew, "when the match-makers came to visit our home. Even though I was well known through the whole district, I was carefully scrutinized by my future mother-in-law. 'Hearty as a stag,' she said approvingly, clapping me on my back. "Without a scratch," added my mother, lovingly. "The bargaining was quickly made, my linen (5 pieces of 25 yards each) and my clothes shown, the counter offer of my future parents accepted: 25 rubles, a sheep-skin fur, shoes, two poods of flour, and a bucket full of brandy. A general inspection followed. Agrafena, my married sister, led me in front of my betrothed. 'Isn't he getting a dainty bit, this mushroom!' 'Surely enough,' the storekeeper's wife grinned, 'somebody gets a dainty bit; much talk is heard about the lass . . . who knows . . .' "No, mother, no," I thought. "You and father will get the first drink the morning after my marriage; the cup will have no hole at its bottom; no shame upon you, mother!" In many villages it is the practice to offer the first drink on the morning after a marriage to the parents of the bride if she proved to be chaste, and to the parents of the bridegroom, if not. In the latter case the best man offers the parents of the bride a drink in a cup with a hole drilled at its bottom, which he carefully stops with his finger. As they accept the cup, he withdraws his finger and the brandy is spilled. " 'Hand out the bride,' shouted merrily the members of my new family on the wedding morning, approaching our house in a long procession of carriages. Highly colored ribbons fluttered in the manes of the horses, dozens of bells tinkled on the bows over the horses' heads. Women and men were gorgeously attired. ..." I remember how as children we often suggested that when grown up we would live in the village and become either a teacher or a physician. We willingly assumed in our imagination the post of physician's assistant, Feldscher, but none of us would be a priest and even less a policeman. The image of village priest was strongly associated in our minds with the intoxicated priest Evdokim who was drowned in the lake. The policeman of the district inspired in the peasant such a fear that at a mere mention of him they used to cross themselves. The childhood dream came true, at least for me, when, after graduation from one of the Swiss medical schools and admission to medical practice in Russia I found myself once more, at twenty-five, in the district I had known as a child. My interest in practicing medicine was never very genuine, my longing to become a village physician was no more than a part of a general yearning prevalent at the time among the intellectuals to be of service to the people. Office work in the day time, trips at night, patients number- ing about a hundred on Sundays and holidays, struggles with the ignorance of the village midwife and with the incredible superstitions of the peasants, efforts and under- takings doomed at their conception. . . . My own sojourn in the village might have been very short, indeed, had it not been for the priest's recovery from pneumonia, helped along more by his own strong constitution, no doubt, than by my two calls. Nevertheless, he took a fancy to me from that time and even told me about a conspiracy launched against me that summer. I had been engaged in scientific work in the Leningrad Institute for Experimental Medicine and had been making experiments on rabbits. Those I took along with me in cages to the village for observation. At the same time I was raisint1; axolotls as material for research. To raise chickens or even rabbits for market was well enough for the peasant, but to see "fish-like frogs" in jars and rabbits in cages was more than the peasant was willing to accept. A secret and mysterious purpose was ascribed to my ven- ture. "They thought you meant to transform one animal into another, to make rabbits live in water and make hair grow on the frog-like fishes. They were afraid to see you break the will of our Lord," the priest informed me. "Father, why did you not explain to them?" I asked. Quickly the priest folded the written complaint, which was to be sent to the police department. He did not want me to see what I had already noticed, namely, that it was in his own handwriting. After his recovery the priest held a special prayer in the church, in which he thanked the Lord for his recovery and asked Him to enlighten me and to direct me into the path of Holy Truth. . . . I eagerly devoted myself to a study of the peasant in his home, of his wants and his problems, of his weaknesses and aspirations. I soon found that the peasant would die rather than be operated upon. I also found that the village

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 475 midwife was much more popular with the peasant than was the doctor. She was a woman of about sixty, who had no education whatever. She just decided one day that she was going to be a midwife and forthwith embarked upon her profession. I had naturally thought that even with my lim- ited medical equipment — one forceps, a pair of long scissors, a couple of scalpels — I would be of great help to the women and children. She decided otherwise. I still possess a beautiful linen embroidered towel, a present to me from a woman who, against my expectations, those of the midwife, and her own, somehow managed to livo. I had known Tania since childhood. We used to play together. The girl was expecting her first baby when I, the village doctor, met her as a young woman. She was happily married and her mother-in-law spared her and frequently excused her from work. I heard Tania's husband tease her: "Now, wife, thou mayst possibly bring me a son," and Tania reply: "De- pends yet upon whom the Lord will send; I may possibly have a chance to bring myself a daughter." In the case of Tania I did my best to prevent the midwife's usual pro- cedures in a delivery but when Tania's husband came for me I found that everything the midwife had ever heard about had already unsuccessfully been set in operation. How my heart ached when I was told that Tania had gone through the board! (To put the baby back into a normal position, the woman in labor is launched head down from a board fixed in an oblique position.) The night I spent in her home will stay in my memory as long as I live. Tania, in a deep faint, an ikona over her head, a candle in the bottle, held by the trembling hands of her mother, and my- self with no other instruments than thoee I have mentioned. Tania lost her first baby. But the Lord knows how she herself managed to stay alive! Just as I had an irreconcilable oppo- nent in the midwife, so the teacher of the village had his oppo- nent in the priest, who taught religion in the school and had an informal supervision over the school af- fairs. The village pub- lic schools at that time were of two kinds, some under the jurisdiction of the Holy Synod, others under the administra- tion of the Ministeri- um of Public Educa- tion. The schools of the first group were more numerous. The teachers in them, mostly women, came almost exclusively from the families of clergymen. "Don't you see," the teacher complained bitterly, "the program in our schools is so arranged that all the subjects are closely related to the lessons on religion, and those are given by the priest. We are hindered in every attempt to give the children even the most fundamental knowledge. You may see yourself," he added, handing me some printed pages; "here are the instructions we have received lately. Read: 'While teaching the Russian language, limit the teaching to the study of language proper and avoid addi- tional topics like information in science.' And further: 'The study of Russian history must form an integral whole with the study of the history of the Creek Orthodox Church.' " The most interesting paragraph in the instructions, however, was the one purporting to outline beliefs that the school should impress on the pupils. "They should leave the school," read the instructions, "with the firm belief that the strength of our fatherland depends upon the Holy Greek Orthodox faith and the Czar's autocratic power, and that dire distress and calamities ruin our fatherland every time the one or the other declines." My friend's school was opposite my office and I used to visit his classes rather frequently. I was present once at one of the final examinations. It was amazing how well the children could recite a number of prayers in the Old Slav language used exclusively in church services. The archbishop, a guest at the examination, was elated over the results and highly complimented the minister. Finally the children's choir sang praise to the Virgin: "The most pure Cherubim and, without comparison, the most glorious Sera- phim"— the words of the prayer rang in the air. A girl of about nine in the first row of the choir could not take her eyes from the Archbishop. Musingly the Holy Father smiled at her. "Who, then, child, is the glorious Sera- phim?" he asked. The girl blushed, looked down, again raised her eyes full of tears: "Seraphim, seraphim . . . ," she muttered, "it is what makes our lamps burn when we have a party." silently The Archbishop entered his carriage drove away. and Russian Village While traveling in Russia last year I longed to renew per- sonal contact with the peasant in his village. Chance helped me in bringing me to my old teacher friend, Niko- lai Pavlovitch. My inquiries for him in the district where we both once served brought no informa- tion. He had left years ago, I was told. I found him in one of the innumerable wait- ing-rooms of the Nar- kompross (Commis- sariat for People's Education), the same tall figure in a time- worn suit, the same sharp smiling look over the gold-framed spectacles. Upright, with unbent shoulders, his blond head without gray hair, he wore his fifty years almost to his ad- vantage. Our eyes searched each other, while we exchanged words of greeting. We both were trying to bridge over a period of twenty years. He wore two emblems frequently

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476 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 seen in Russia at present, the one representing a small pho- tograph of Lenin, the other bearing three letters: N. 0. T., marking his membership in the Scientific Toil Organiza- tion. "Yes, I am a party member," he answered my ques- tion, "working in R. K. I.— Workman Peasant Inspection," he translated. "Nothing could please me better than to take you along on an inspection trip of village schools, as you suggest," he said to me, "but then, in the presence of an official, you may expect to find the peasants somewhat reserved. Why not go by yourself? I suppose Vassiliev may do for you. You may stay in the village for a night or two — it is fifteen miles from a railway station in the suburb of Moscow." I found that the new schoolmaster had come two years ago into a little snow-bound village. The old teacher to whom the peasants were indebted for the little they knew had died. Some of them could scribble down their names or spell together a sign on a store or even note down their neighbor's debt on the wall with a piece of chalk. They missed the old teacher who had been for so long a habitual figure at every celebration and who during drought used to walk along with them and the priest in religious proces- sions, singing carols and searching skies for rainy clouds. "They looked at me with concern and discontent." My friend told me of his arrival. "My request for withdrawal of the priest from school was met by a common decision to keep their children away from school." "'Where is thy boy? Why doesn't thou send him to school?' I inquired, making a round of the peasants' homes. " 'The priest will teach him.' " 'Why the priest?' " 'At least a prayer will he learn from the priest. What will he learn from thee?' And yet after talking awhile: 'Why, if you are going to teach him husbandry and thrift- ness,' every peasant would say to me, 'I am not against it. You may have my boy tomorrow. Trim him well, grind him sharp, so he may support his parents in their old age.' "It was, however, pretty hard to break the peasants' suspicion and distrust. 'In no respect a match to the de- ceased, may he be admitted to the Heavenly Kingdom,' I ofter heard them openly discuss me. And even though they seemed finally to agree upon the value of gym- nastics, when they saw their children moving their arms in a queer and seemingly impertinent way, they would sneak unobserved on their tip-toes and smack them energetically on their backs: 'Will you little ruffians stop swinging your arms!' "And yet," the teacher added, "there was no vacant bench in the school the following term." I visited the children's carpenter shop, I saw the schoolroom equipped with the furniture made by the chil- dren. A piece of ground in the swamps was shown to me by the peasants, allotted to the school at the request of the teacher. There was pride in their words: "No less than a horse's head in size was the cabbage they grew on this waste after draining it." I stayed over a week in the little village. About sunset, after the last cow of the village herd had turned into her home yard, I had long chats with villagers. No peasant in the summer is found at that time in his log cabin. The women may be busy with children vithin, the young folks are heard singing and laughing at the outskirt of the forest or on the meadow. Those, however, addressed — Uucle An- drei or Uncle Ivan, men between 30 and 50 — are found seated on log benches along the front of the log cabins. Almost motionless, they might be taken for a bas-relief had ever a sculptor chiseled groups so picturesque. To ad- dress them may seem much more difficult than it usually proves to be. They know I came from across the ocean and they want to hear again and again about the sea which cannot be crossed in less than five days, and about the large steamers, larger than any house in the district city. In certain things they simply do not believe me. I never • could make them believe that there may be houses over ten stories high. And in return for my cheap stories of our everyday surroundings which to them seem unbelievable wonders I often got stories from them exquisite in develop- ment, poignant in effect. "A 'woman' showed up in the neighboring village," says a peasant half-mockingly. "No 'baba' is Natalie now, but 'woman.' ' (In Russian the village woman is called not woman, but 'baba' — something like squaw.) Through the half-coordinated sentences of the peasants I begin to see the image of Natalie, an image beautiful and pure of a Russian peasant woman given her first chance, standing against the background of her many centuries of subjection. Since the revolution gave Natalie the right to attend meetings she not only began to frequent them, but now and then ventured a word. "Not a squaw's business," grumbled the men. "Not a squaw, but a woman I am." After that Natalie could appear nowhere without be- ing scorned. "Woman, woman!" even the children scoffed at her. They knew that Natalie could not write. "Ask her to sign the records," cried one of the peasants at a meet- ing. For three months thereafter Natalie was absent from the meetings. When she again appeared, there was a roar : "The woman has come! Ho, ho, ho, the woman has come! Let her sign the records!" The secretary of the committee, a quiet man as a rule, became frenzied and presented her with the records. "Look, look, she is going to sign!" — and on the white paper close to one another letters steady, though crooked, lay in line: Natalia Moisseeva. There was no end of amazement: A woman indeed!" I saw this story confirmed in a maga- zine, the Peasant Woman, and many other stories contributed by newly literate women. The dead earnest of the peasant delegates at meetings in the city greatly impressed me on many occasions. Last summer I took a seat in the third row in the Great Moscow Opera House. The stage was decorated with red banners and a gorgeous flag hung low over the balustrade of the imperial box. Peasants began gradually to fill up the large hall of the theater, the row of the boxes, and the benches on the platform. Krassin, Kalinin, Bucharin, and others took seats around the table on the stage draped in red. They had all gathered to celebrate Cooperation Movement Day. I kept looking intensely in the faces of the peasants. In their traditional garb, many of them with long beards, with wrinkled faces browned by the sun, they did not differ much from the physical image of the Russian tiller of the soil which I had retained in my memory from my childhood. Their presence in the elegant hall, however incongruous it might have been ten years ago, did not seem out of place now. They moved with certainty and spoke in unadorned but logical language. Are these people the direct descend- ants of those who, like chattels, could be sold and moved some seventy years ago?

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 177 Sochi Dreams By MARIAN TYLER WHEN people go on n they often lea real selves at home and play at being what would like to be. In Sochi you can see Russians on vaca- tion, and Russians are the best actors in the world. They put on a good comedy, if it is a comedy. No one but a Russian would think of going South for the summer. Sochi is near the southernmost tip of Russia at the foot of the Caucasus and on the shore of the Black Sea. People travel three days and nights from Moscow to lie in the scorching sun on Sochi's stony beach. It is heroic. But then only Russians think of going North for the winter. The czars had their Winter Palace in old rsburg and journeyed through the bitter cold to enjoy the Antic night. To soft Anglo-Saxons who run away from their seasons this seems a little mad; and yet what could be more logical, if you like winter, than to go where winter is really winter, and. if you like summer, to go to Sochi in July? Sochi likes to think it is a health resort. In the twenty-odd years since the first sanitarium was built the malaria has. it is true, been greatly reduced. Some re- markable cures are credited to the capable staff of doctors and to the sulphur baths near by. But an even better remedy, the best in the world, is faith. In its pre-war splendor the place must have been very beautiful in an exotic, un-Russian way. The gardens are still full of palms and roses— a little shabby now, a little frayed by the crowds that overflow from the spacious old villas. During the season the visitors are expected to spend money and enrich the town. They must make the fortunes of dozens of izvostchiks, fur-hatted pirates perched on the graceful old carriages of the aristocracy; of numerous vendors of scarves, sunflower seeds, Communist magazines ; barbers, bands of actors, and second-story men, and ex- ploiters of dancing bears. The streets seem always full of animals — herds of goats, long-horned buffaloes harnessed to heavy carts, geese, cows, pigs, and the poor bears led around by the nose — until one wants to start a zoological revolution. Against this quaint and draggled setting the vaca- tionists stage their unfulfilled desires. There is the inevi- table pair of typists, who have spent a year's savings on their grand clothes, very grand indeed for Russia. There is the member of congress, that is, the Central Committee, who manages to forget politics for two months by a remark- able series of romantic conquests. There is the provincial teacher, disappointed that Sochi's night life ends at 10 o'clock. There are a great many tired people, worn with responsibility, whose only wish is to sleep and eat until they have to take up the load again. And there are still too many who, in this environment of ancient wealth, like to pretend that they are fashionable aristocrats themselves. But what have all these types in common? What makes Sochi more Russian than Atlantic City? Talk to half a hundred of the vacationists and behind all the per- sonal dreams you begin to see one large dream — a long and prosperous Main Street for Russia. How to get it is the point at which parties split and individuals disagree, but they all see the same ideal picture. Factories, clothing, electricity, machines — machines above all. Any piece of machinery, from an electric crane to an eversharp pencil, is reverently admired. If it is foreign so much the better. Russians were always likely to be over-modest about any- thing native. After a few days the foreigner begins to understand. The new stock of the provincial stores still looks scanty to him. He begins to feel the discomfort of a life without enough beds and automobiles and stockings and dishes. He thinks of Mr. Woolworth's piled counters in every American town. How much difference a few job lots of tin spoons and nails and eggbeaters would make in the economy of hundreds of Russian households! One side of the world hasn't enough of the things of which the other side has too many, like a man sitting by the fire on a cold night, his back freezing and his face blistered. But Russia makes a virtue of necessity, and sits in the cold to improve her circulation. "Even if we could afford to import every- thing, as they did before the war," runs the explanation, "we would rather build up our own manufactures." That is the excitement of living in Russia, the ex- citement of planning a house or a bridge or a castle in Spain. Sochi must have the biggest, best, and shiniest Main Street in the world. Of course we can't begin it yet. No use starting till we can afford to build it on a grand scale. We know that Sochi fairly cries to be developed, with all the power from its mountain streams, with trans- port facilities by land and sea, and a population largely- unemployed during the winter. Perhaps we shall have a great dam and a power plant as part of the national elec- tric system. Around the dam we shall build factories, a furniture factory perhaps, a paper plant, a woolen mill. The view up the river valley to the snowy mountains? Of course we aren't sentimental about views any more, but it will be more impressive to see the mountains behind the dam. The dam will be like a great wonderful waterfall. The factories will be the best factories that can be built. The harbor will probably be deepened so that freight-boats can come into the river mouth; through trains will run. The Government is planning to develop the Caucasus on a large scale, and all this would obviously fit into the program. Sochi's dream is something like this. But its facts are different. The town's trade is done in a permanent bazaar of flimsy and squalid booths. Such larger stores as are not vacant are occupied mostly by barber shops, closed half the day for dinner and all day Sunday and Monday. The head of the state bank wields an enormous abacus and takes a month to cash a traveler's check. When Sochi once begins it will doubtless proceed with the thoroughness and dispatch seen in other parts of Russia — the thoroughness of the railroad schedules, for example. In a country where time hardly exists, where no one is less than an hour late for an appointment, and a week or so delay in any transaction does not matter, trains run on the minute, and often ahead of it. Sochi, however, is a vacation resort, infected with vacation illu- sions. It still dreams and its dreams are large and grand.

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478 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 Thomas Mott Osborne By WINTHROP D. LANE JUST where Thomas Mott Osborne, who died week before last in Auburn, N. Y., will stand in the history of efforts to make prisons more intelligent places cannot be easily forecast today. It need surprise no one if he takes his place with Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, John Howard, and others who, in their generation, cried out against absur- dities in the treatment of offenders. If he does, Mr. Osborne will perhaps be known more as a stirring propa- gandist, an exposer of the old and senseless, than as a scien- tific contributor to the technique of reforming criminals. Why did Mr. Osborne, a cultured and wealthy man, fifty-four years old, who had held influential positions and could choose almost any way of spending his time, decide in 1913 to live for a week in Auburn prison as a voluntary inmate? To answer that question would probably require the procedure of a psychological investigator. Doubtless there was something in Mr. Osborne's personality that gave him a strong emotional interest in the outcast, the under- dog. As a boy he had gone through Auburn prison on a visit. The dark, scowling faces, bending over their tasks, made a deep impression on him. The evil dreams of his childhood, he tells us, centered about an escaped convict; this convict pursued him, holding a long knife. Whether such visions had any relation to Mr. Osborne's interest in prisoners we need not stop to inquire. Later he b'ecame a trustee of the George Junior Republic, naturally acquiring an interest in offenders that way. On a red-leiter day he read Donald Lowrie's "My Life in Prison." Finally, Gov- ernor Sulzer appointed him chairman of a State commission on prison reform, and Mr. Osborne's relation to prison affairs became official. He decided that he needed the inti- mate acquaintance that actual incarceration would give him. So he entered Auburn prison. He slept in the same kind of cell as the other prisoners and ate the same kind of food. He wove baskets and shoveled coal. In line each morning he carried his bucket, the prisoner's only toilet. He sent and received notes by the "underground" system. He saw the miserable failure of the prison to do anything helpful for these men. Refusing to work, he merited pun- ishment and spent a night in "hell," the solitary hole. With Jack Murphy, a convict, beside whom he worked, he dis- cussed the way prisons are run. Out of these conversations came the idea of the Mutual Welfare League. To Mr. Osborne self-government was a means of mak- ing prisoners better; it was a therapeutic agent. If was not a concession to imagined rights of prisoners, as some peo- ple thought; that would have been ridiculous. It was a way of preparing prisoners for a return to society. Mr. Osborne looked at the old autocratic prison system and said: "That system kills initiative, the power of choice, ability to render judgments, every faculty needed by a man in the world out- side. Why is it sensible to prepare people for a return to society by holding them for three years, five years, some- times ten and fifteen years in an environment as unlike that of society as possible?" To him self-government was a means of training people in the ~.rt of living in concert. It was the setting up of a miniature world in which rela- tionships became spontaneous, acts normal, and men were allowed to control their own lives with as much freedom as was possible in a prison in which they had to be confined. The Sing Sing prison into which Mr. Osborne, as warden in 1914, introduced this plan was an extraordinary institution. It was old, unhealthful, disease-ridden, lacking in accommodations. It was the most famous prison in the Western Hemisphere, receiving among others the most con- firmed type of offenders from New York City and else- where. It was the prison which almost anybody would have picked out as least auspicious for such an undertaking. Mr. Osborne walked in with a courage born of confidence and zeal. He established his plan of inmate self-govern- ment. Almost overnight changes were apparent. Fights between prisoners, that barometer of prison influence and atmosphere, decreased. Men went out with heads erect and shoulders straight. Work was done more cheerfully; a new spirit pervaded the place. Tony Marino, Bowery bad man, escaped and, standing ready to catch a train with money in his pockets, listened to the pleas of former prisoners to return and "save the name of the League" ; he returned, alone, knowing that two years would be added to his sentence. But the establishment of self-government was not the only reform Mr. Osborne instituted at Sing Sing. He went after the grafters; he put out the cheating contractors who were defrauding the State. Such a record could not escape attack. Enemies arose on all sides. For a few months Mr. Osborne was the object of a campaign of abuse such as probably has had few parallels in this country. His per- sonal character was assailed; a Westchester County grand jury indicted him for "perjury and neglect of duty." When the case came to trial the judge threw the charges out as too weak to be seriously considered. Mr. Osborne replied to these attacks, and he did not confine his replies to the courtroom. He took the stump. He went before audiences everywhere. Not only did he explain the grafting that went on at Sing Sing but he explained his new ideas about prison management. He described the abuses of the old system with a wit, an irony, an invective, a bitter denuncia- tion of its aimlessness and stupidities that stirred his hearers deeply. Never have the follies of our conventional methods of handling prisoners been so effectively dealt with as in the speeches of Thomas Mott Osborne. His resignation from Sing Sing came partly as a result of official meddlesomeness and partly as a result of the limitations of his own temperament. Meanwhile, self-gov- ernment has not been much used as a therapeutic agent in American prisons. It is aside from the main line of crimi- nological thinking. We are learning today that many criminals — probably more than half — are the victims of mental abnormalities and ailments that bear a direct causal relation to their crimes. It is the removal or modifying of these abnormalities that gives the greatest hope for the reformation of prisoners. Self-government takes little ac- count of such factors. Mr. Osborne himself disclosed small understanding of this deeper approach to the problem. It was his genius for personal relationships and his power of appeal to the hearts of afflicted men that accounted pri- marily for his success.

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 479 Barbarism to Convicts By HURT M. McCONNELL AT intervals within the last three years there have come from Florida, Alabama, and North Carolina stories of the cruel and inhuman treatment of convicts that bring back visions of the thumb-screws and racks of the Spanish Inquisition. There is the case of Martin Tabert, for example, a twenty-two-year-old farmer boy from North Dakota who wanted to "see the world." Arrested as a vagrant in Florida and sentenced to pay a fine of $25 or become a convict for ninety days, he wired home for the money. It was sent to him by special delivery letter, but the Sheriff returned it, marked "Unclaimed." The Sheriff was getting $20 for each ninety-day prisoner turned r to a certain lumber company. Tabert was farmed out to work for this lumber com- pany, was flogged frequently with a heavy whip, and died in a delirium after an especially severe beating. When the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death were called to the notice of the North Dakota Legis- lature, a resolution was passed calling upon the State of Florida to investigate. Despite the fact that there was some resentment against this "interference" with the af- fairs of one State by another, the Florida Legislature ordered an inquiry. This investigation, which established the fact that Tabert was beaten to death, resulted in such a wave of protest against Florida's county convict system that legislation was enacted prohibiting the leasing of all classes of convicts. It was established that the Sheriff who had returned the money to Tabert's parents had an agreement writh the lumber company to furnish it with free labor. The Sheriff was dismissed. The county judge who sentenced young Tabert was likewise dismissed, and the prison physician who was responsible for the care of prisoners in the lumber camp where Tabert died was denounced before the entire State as a "disgrace to the profession." The convict boss who wielded the lash was found guilty of second-degree murder in connection with the youth's death, and received a sentence of twenty years' imprisonment. Furthermore, a particularly brutal form of modern slavery was abolished ; and with it the practice of whipping county convicts. Thus passed a regime that rivaled in hellishness the Siberian prison regime under the Czar of Russia or the horrors of the African slave trade. Martin Tabert, therefore, did not die in vain. In fairness to the citizens of Florida, however, it should be stated that they believed the convict-leasing sys- tem to have been abolished several years before. And such traffic in human beings on the part of the State actually had been abolished by statute. But counties were still permitted to lease short-term prisoners to corporations or individuals. The publicity given to the Tabert case helped to abolish this form of modern slavery in Florida, just as the story of "Uncle Tom" is credited with having played a large part in the abolition of slavery in the United States. Condi- tions were perhaps overdrawn in both instances, but it was necessary to cite extreme examples. It was necessary just before the Civil War to shake Americans out of their natural complacency, just as it was essential to bring sharply to the attention of Florida the cruel and barbarous methods in force at its county convict camps. For an easy-going and forgetful tolerance, especially regarding evils which do not happen uncomfortably close to our own doors, is one of the fundamental traits of Americans. It was this complacence which permitted the slave trade to flourish for so many years. Last spring the Attorney General of Alabama conducted an investigation into the death of a convict which revealed a system that coins the sweat and blood of helpless human beings into profit, chiefly for a few corporations, and, secondly, for the State. The officials responsible for this deplorable state of affairs maintain that Alabama's con- victs must be made self-supporting; and that it is neces- sary to lease them to private corporations and work them in coal mines. But in five Alabama prisons where there are no mines 1,784 convicts turned into the State treasury a net profit of more than $300,000 for the last fiscal year. The three prisons where there are mines continue to earn around $600,000 each year. The Governor of Alabama has the power under State laws to end every form of convict leasing in Alabama, and it has seemed that each of the last three administrations might abolish the system; but it has always been passed along to the next. The excuse is that some way must be found to handle the convicts without placing further tax burdens upon the people. The State therefore sends its convicts to work in mines and other properties of private corporations. In the case of coal companies, where State convicts are concerned, the State supposedly leases the property from the corporation, mines the coal with con- victs under its own control, and sells the coal back to the lessor. Actually, the State merely leases the prison stockade and its grounds and buildings. This was the arrangement which replaced the outright leases. But this condition applies only to State convicts. County convicts, even in this enlightened age, are leased outright to private corporations. In fifty-one of sixty- seven counties in Alabama the county convicts are leased at so much per head to private concerns and individuals' for work in coal mines, saw-mills, on farms, roads, etc. The concerns leasing them work them as they see fit, with their own bosses and guards. This amounts to the leasing of human beings into bondage. It is a system that en- courages chain-gang bosses to practice brutality to keep production up to a certain standard. Both State and county systems are grounded in human greed and a species of moral cowardice that restrains Alabama's officials from levying taxes sufficient to bring in the necessary revenue. What of North Carolina? Two serious convict scan- dals have come to light within the last year and a half. Early in 1925 Mrs. Kate Burr Johnson, executive secre- tary of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, brought two chain-gang guards to trial for the killing of convicts at one of the prison camps. The evidence which

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480 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 her investigators procuced sent these men to prison for twenty years. Last summer this same determined official brought about the prosecution of a former boss of the Stanly County convict chain-gang for the murder of two Negro prisoners. Although the convict road boss was acquitted on the testimony of two physicians that the convicts had died of sunstroke, the State's prosecutor proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the road boss cruelly beat the two Negroes on one of North Carolina's hottest days, when the men either were ill or feigned illness. They were beaten both in the morning and again in the afternoon. The last time they lapsed into unconsciousness and died the next morning. Other witnesses — ex-convicts, ex-guards, and citizens — told tales of cruel treatment administered by the road boss to his prisoners which rival the merciless methods used by slave drivers in the building of the pyramids. But it was not for the jury to decide whether it was the practice in Stanly County to flog convicts with heavy leather straps, to beat them with clubs or shovels, to drag them behind a tractor over rough ground, or hang them up by their wrists to the ceiling. And in finding the con- vict boss not guilty of the killing of the two Negroes, the jury rendered no verdict on the question of general cruelty. But it is significant that the road boss, although accused of murder, did not take the witness stand to give testi- mony in his own defense; and that he was defended by ten of the best attorneys in the State. Stanly County's "whipping boss" was acquitted, but North Carolina's chain-gang system was convicted. That, in a nutshell, is the result of the trial. However, the trial brought to the attention of the public one of the serious problems that will confront North Carolina's next legis- lature— the abolition of the county chain-gang. It was abolished in Stanly County last fall, after the indictment of the former chain-gang boss. But more than fifty counties in the State still maintain these gangs. North Carolina has two penal systems — the State penitentiary, where prisoners are employed in factories, on the prison farms, or are hired out to road contractors undev State guard; and the county chain-gangs. There is no connection between the two, and the State Prison Board has no authority over the chain-gangs. The latter had their inception in the carpet-bagger days. They have continued with all the cruelty that might be expected when a chain- gang boss is vested with the authority of a czar. When convict bosses and guards have the power to inflict brutal treatment upon human beings, sooner or later they inflict it. That is the history of penal systems and the law of human nature. Convicts are human beings, and they are helpless in the hands of the State. They should not be pampered and they should be required to discharge the debt which they owe to society. But, however far the convict may have fallen from grace, he is entitled to humane treatment. He is entitled to the protection of the State. And while it is right for the State to punish crime, for the protection of society, it should realize that every Christian nation in the world has prohibited the flogging of prisoners. The United States Government specifically prohibits the whip- ping of inmates of federal prisons r- of men in the army and navy. If other nations and our other States can maintain prison discipline without the use of the lash, why can not Alabama and North Carolina? The Governor of Georgia abolished convict leasing eighteen years ago, simply by calling a special session of the legislature. There was no quibbling, no hesitation, no beating about the bush, such as we have seen in Alabama. In Georgia convicts are not subjected to the cruelties of a coal-mine or chain-gang straw-boss; nor do they endure tortures in an 'isolated lumber camp, such as were exposed in Florida by the death of Martin Tabert. Nor is there complaint by State welfare officers of conditions among the convicts of Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Cruelty is not a characteristic of the people of the South. For this reason it is all the more urgent that the disgrace of the cruel convict boss be wiped out. For civilization depends, in part, on the general tendency to be humane and decent, even to criminals. In the Driftway THE Drifter, alas! is not a go-getter, a he-man, or yet a 100 per cent American. From an earlier and more leisurely generation he takes a profound suspicion of this new and upstart culture. But he loves America, and because he loves her, the more bitter sometimes is the pill he has to swallow. Yet his face is by no means granite as he confronts the totality of the kingdom of Babbitt. The Drifter, heaven forbid, is no accountant. He would almost rather be a realtor. But he recognizes that such a term as "balance-sheet" may have its uses. It is a term to suit the philosopher, if he be so inclined, as well as the ac- countant. So the Drifter has made a balance-sheet of America, with assets to represent the things which please him and liabilities to represent the things which displease him. He is prepared to admit that some features of the asset items as listed are not altogether satisfactory, while some features of the liability items are not total losses. What he has done is to cite words standing for things which give him, as a whole, a rather definite reaction either of pleasure or of pain; of pride or of shame. THE BALANCE-SHEET OF A CRANK Assets Liabilities The Lincoln Memorial The Movies Bathrooms The Radio School buildinps Telephones The Theater (in New York Saxophones at least) Advertising Henry Ford The cult of the automobile New England farm houses Correspondence Courses Bobbed hair Comic Supplements Engineers Rotary clubs 90,000 readers of the Mercury Professional sport Amateur athletics The Gi'eat Open Spaces Public health stations Slums About six novelists Mr. Bruce Barton Ditto poets Politicians (no exceptions) Ditto artists 99 per cent of all fiction Hydroelectric stations Investment bankers The outside of country clubs The inside of country clubs Anthropologists The Saturday Evening Post Mr. Herbert Hoover (see Mr. Herbert Hoover (see contra) contra) More out-of-door children The Ku Klux Klan More rebellious under- The Ghost of the Sage of East graduates Aurora

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Nov. 10, 1926 J The Nation 481 Assets Experimental schools -tockings Cement bridges The National Geographic M dos John Dew One-piece bathing suits Some psychologists Ring Lardner Short skirts The lads who build sky- scrapers California wines Flappers (in reason) Departments Birth Control Slang netics tin reason) Motor buses Professional women The Hotel Shelton The Marx Brothers The Hudson River Oil heaters on Hill on Christmas Eve Mr. Clarence Darrow To balance Liabilities Suburbia Fundamental Prisons (no excep The National Manufacturers Association Home, Mother, and the Flag Tra\ eling salesmen Millionaires Tabloids Bridge Pittsburgh Skyscrapers (with exceptions) Subways Men's clothes Prohibition Professional uplifters Atlantic City ge presidents Publicity directors Evangelists (no exceptions) Mission furniture Soft drinks Mr. William Lothrop Stoddard Phonographs Chewing gum Associated Charities Stock exchanges Stock yards Florida Interior decorators Currency reformers Boy friends Automatic pianos Y. M. C. A.'s Mr. Bemarr Macfadden Railroad stations (4 exceptions) Lawyers Package goods Los Angeles Mr. Arthur Brisbane Personality perfumes Service Dr. Frank Crane WHICH runs him out of assets with no check whatso- ever on the free mental flow of liabilities. He bal- ances forthwith. The Drifter will welcome audits and cor- rections or even comparative balance-sheets. But do not try to trip him up for being illogical. He admits it in advance. The Drifter Correspondence Why Profanity Declines To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: John Nicholas Beffel comments on the Decline of Profanity but he does not tell why it has declined and what has replaced it. Profanity has declined because religious faith has weakened, and thereby crippled the power of profanity to shock. The modern substitute for profanity is obscenity. I often marveled, when in the army, to hear discourse in which every sentence reeked with obscenity. The speaker usually lugged it in, evidently seeing that without it his utterances would have lacked force and style. Englewood, X. J., September JO S. C. GilFillan Remember Anthony Burns To the Editor of The Nation: SIR: It may interest seme readers of The Nation to learn that the grave of Anthony Burns, whose surrender under the Fugitive Slave Law stirred the nation in 1854, is in the ceme- tery at St. Catharines, Ontario. The gravestone bears the fol- lowing inscription: In MEMORIAM Rev. Anthony Burns, The fugitive slave of the Boston riots, 1854, Pastor of Zion Baptist Church; Bom in Virginia, May 31, 1834; Died in the triumph of Faith in St. Catharines, July 27th, A. D. 1862. The stone has fallen over and is broken into three or four pieces. A very small sum would repair it and set it upright once more. No doubt the city authorities at St. Catharines would look after this if friends would provide for it. London, Ontario, October l!) FRED Landon Progress ? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Like Nathan Haskell Dole, I was brought up "after the straitest sect of the Pharisees," though with no such melan- choly remembrances of the Sabbath, then rather rigidly ob- served, as seems to have followed him. I am not sure that the American Sunday as we have it now is an altogether cheerful spectacle, and I doubt very much whether it produces the moral stamina which came out of many of the old Puritan homes. But the world of our day differs from the world of grand- father Dole's day in much more important particulars. It is one world in a measure then undreamed of. The labor power of the world is a giant compared with the pigmy of a century ago. In the expansion of human contacts and the expansion of man's creative power we are ahead of all the generations that have been Whether these two items are to work for good or evil is the issue we face, and the event is by no means as certain as some of our liberal optimists would have us infer. The field is ours and the tools are ours. But whether better- ment is really ours only our ability to get beyond individualism and idealism into the necessary economic adjustments can tell. Los Angeles, October 15 Robert Whitaker Are Farm Speculators Entitled to Pity? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The material of Mr. Marsh's article is valuable and many of his deductions well worth consideration, but I fail to perceive the ground of his corollary that immigration should be stopped for a term of years and a government effort made to place superfluous farmers in industry. That misses the point. The farming industry in this country has been based on a continuous increase of population. The cessation of that factor is a main cause of the present trouble. Nevertheless it produced artificial prosperity through the continuous rise in land values. An end to that condition was due, although not perhaps for fifty years, and much might have happened in that time. The cardinal defect of our farming system is treating the land itself as merchandise instead of treating the products as such. Rent should be not a fixed sum but dependent on the returns, as it was the world over prior to the Reformation;

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482 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 and where the farmer owns the land his taxes should be on the same basis. I have personally undertaken over periods of years several agricultural experiments, always profitably for the reason that 1 secured my market first. This is what is still done in many parts of Europe, notably France. The secret lies in bringing the consumer to the producer to consume the products on the spot, instead of indiscriminately producing and then howling for markets. But the corollary of that system requires that the land itself should not be treated as merchandise. Oakland, California, October 21 Edward HENDERSON Solving the Slums To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your editorial, Cleaning Up the Slums, is clever and does you justice. May I diffidently add that it does not seem to solve any problem? It is true that I have had small success as yet with the Five Hundred. McAllister fared better witli his Four Hundred until in an unguarded moment a friend induced him to try a new polish on his high hat, which turned green when the sun shone on it. The parable of the camel and the needle and the other quadruped still holds good. Some of the wealthy are like the stamp collector with the possible exception that the stamp col- lector is not a bird of prey. Tut-ankh-amen tried an Egyptian recipe for taking his wealth with him and we know that he failed. But we have a new plan now which the wealthy will applaud and which v e may give to the world next week. It will then remain for State and city to tell us whether they will come in, and I believe they will. I am familiar with Governor Smith's bill passed at the last; legislature, but, as you say, it was emasculated and we need more drastic action and opportunity for action. Cooperation between State, city, and our citizens can be had. Polities in this particular instance can, in my judgment, be eliminated. I have some knowledge of the facts of the case. I may be too optimistic. Who can tell? In one way or another we must support or help support those less mentally well equipped than we are, whose arms are falling from sheer fatigue. I know that with your generosity you will support our new plan when it is made known. New York, October 23 AUGUST HECKSCHER Florida Again To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The natural laws that operate in Florida are fortu- nately operative in every locality on earth that is suddenly vis- ited with partial or complete loss, by fire, flood, earthquake, or hurricane. Immediately communal interest is aroused and self- preservation is secured through mutual aid. What was before a loose aggregation of individuals, each seeking personal success through competitive methods, becomes a welded group enlarged through sympathy of distant groups until well-nigh the entire nation is a unit for and during the emergency. This is in reality the most hopeful evidence of future advancement, for the spasmodic effort may sometime become the general and con- stant trend. The first manifestation we look for after a disaster is aid from the outside. But would any locality be so abject and cow- ardly as to trade upon its losses, fail to round up its resources, and by general inaction announce to the world that it is both doivn and out and is willing henceforth to bo the object of national charity? Now when a community knows that its assets are sunshine climate, shelter, food, recreation, pleasure — and also knows that unless these are amply provided at a given time there will be continued loss and suffering — is it not admirable rather than damnable for that community or commonwealth to go resolutely to the work of rehabilitation and boldly announce that it in- tends to accomplish the seemingly impossible? Is it not legiti- mate if any community knows that its condition is grossly ex- aggerated, to ask for a restatement? Let us not heap upon a stricken State the necessity of coping with unfriendly propaganda. Let us leave its citizens free to use all their mental, moral, and financial resources for the task of getting their communities ready to supply their winter guests with all the comforts they desire. Real-estate frenzy may in the futur-e as in the past break out in any locality. Realtors may flock from every State in the Union, as they have to Florida. But this condition cannot dominate the situation in any State that can offer a winter home. California and Florida welcome the winter tourist as the Northern resorts do their summer guests. Why should they not all frankly admit that self-preservation lies that way? Why should self-efforts to rehabilitate any stricken area, and brave demeanor that looks forward, be considered worthy only of scorn? Mrs. Owen R. Lovejoy St. Petersburg, Florida, October 15 Another Kind of Animal To the Editor of the Nation: Sir: I don't see why you don't mention in your editorial The Political Zoo the program of the Socialist Party. It is true, as you say, that thinking persons everywhere are greatly worried by the steadily growing control of the country's life by the vast corporations centering in Wall Street. The only way to stop that control is the Socialist remedy of having the country own these corporations. Experience has amply demonstrated that mere attempts to control them will not suffice, because when the government tries to control or regulate the corporations the corporations or their owners simply put forth extra effort and extra cash to control the government by buying the Democratic and Republican parties. Both these parties today get their campaign funds from the plutocrats and both of them, as your article well shows, are therefore servants of plutocracy. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, has stood stead- fastly against this tendency. It alone had the courage to op- pose the war, and since the war it has been banding its shat- tered forces to recover the ground lost at that time. It had the courage to sympathize with and support the Russian Revo- lution while at the same time it had the wisdom to refuse to accept Moscow domination. Cambridge, Mass., October JO Alfred Baker Lewis Indispensability Discovered To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: A former classmate of mine returned to China early in September and left me with the request to send him, among the scores of American periodicals that he used to read, only two — The Nation and the American Mercury. His request has been a blessing to me, for it necessitated a more careful reading of these two journals. I learned more about The Nation and found it better than I suspected. I dis- covered the excellence of the book reviews — the review of "The Story of Philosophy," to mention only one — and began to read Mr. Krutch's dramatic column regularly. And there are, of course, the never-failing editorials. The Nation is becoming indispensable to me, as it has become to thousands of others. When I return to China I hope I shall have the price of a subscription. New York, October 22 Chi-Chen Wang

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Books and Plays Dagger (Translated from the Russian of Lhermontov) By MAX EASTMAN I love you well, my steel-white dagger, Comrade luminous and cold; Forged by a Georgian dreaming vengeance, Whetted by Circassians bold. A tender hand, in grace of parting, Gave you to mark a meeting brief; For blood there glimmered on your metal A shining tear — the pearl of grief. And black eyes, clinging to my glances, Filled deep with liquid sorrow seemed; Like your clear blade where flame is trembling, They darkened quickly and they gleamed. You were to be my long companion. Give me your counsel to the end! I will be hard of soul and faithful, Like you, my iron-hearted friend! First Glance THE study of literary reputations is not as secondary as it sounds. Possibly the primary thing for a writer about literature to do is to discuss the qualities of great works, and in doing so to keep himself pure from contact with anything outside the authors under discussion and their books. But the trouble is that no good book stands alone. Poor ones do; they speak to nobody, nobody speaks to them. Good books are good among other reasons because people talk about them. And often it develops that the things thought and said about a masterpiece are as inter- esting as the masterpiece itself. This is particularly true of books which are centuries old, and which, through being constantly read while changes come about in the public taste and point of view, become virtually new books. The study of reputations thus becomes the study of the history of lit- erary ideas. Not long ago I reviewed three large volumes from the Cambridge University Press which followed the turns, of Chaucer's fame through five centuries. Now from the Yale University Press comes another such study of an English reputation, on almost as great a scale. "Fielding the Nov- elist," by Frederic T. Blanchard ($6), is an exhaustive account of the things which have been said about "Joseph Andrews," "Tom Jones," and "Amelia" since their first appearance. To some readers the account will seem fright- fully complete; but if they read on they will be vastly entertained and informed. They will see Fielding's repu- tation growing in its proper dramatic relationship to the reputations of other men — now down, now up, now suffer- ing from comparisons and now benefiting by them. All the while, incidentally, they will be aware that the inarticulate public has read Fielding without stint; and this is interest- ing. Mr. Blanchard, allowably enough, confines himself to expressed opinions. First there was the opinion that Rich- ardson spoke more directly "to the heart" than Fielding did. This was and is true — the significant thing being, however, the eighteenth centurj rence for Richard- son because of this. From the first also — and well on into the nineteenth century— there was the opinion that Field- ing's novels could not be good books because their author was supposed to have been a bad man. Then there was the opinion that Fielding had not been great because he had not been sublime or romantic; there was the competi- tion he had to face with Scott and later with Stevenson. There were charges in turn that he lacked "imagination" and "mystery," that he laughed too much, that he was only an observer of life — not a critic of it, or something like that. Always, too, there were individual champions, from Gibbon and Coleridge to Henley and Professor Cross. Mr. Blanchard himself is so much the champion that he neglects to consider, after bringing his hero to the pres- ent full tide of his fame, the possibility of future descents into disfavor. I hope that none of these, if there are any, will be serious or for long; but I am sure they will occur. In the very near future, for instance, will there not be schools of critics who cannot get excited over Fielding's simplicity, democracy, and worship of nature? Will not these elements seem superfluously emphasized in "Tom Jones"? Doubtless nobody knows. But anyone may guess, and Mr. Blanchard's book would have been even more complete than it is had he done some guessing. Mark Van Doren Izvolsky Again Izvolsky and the World War. By Friedrich Stieve. Alfred A Knopf. $3.50. pRIEDRICH STIEVE has placed students of war origins under a double debt of gratitude. In a four-volume German edition of Izvolsky's correspondence he has rendered accessible some five hundred more letters and telegrams sent or received by the Russian ambassador in Paris from 1911 to 1914 than are given in Marchand's much-quoted "Livre Noir." Then by summarizing and commenting on the more significant passages in this correspondence he made the readable and compact study of Franco-Russian diplomacy before the war which is here translated into English. He comes to the following conclusion: "Since 1911 Izvolsky had been working for world war. Poincare' joined him in the autumn of 1912. And since the end of 1913 Sazonov also had seen in European complications the road which would lead Russia to the Straits." Against Izvolsky Herr Stieve seems to make a pretty con- vincing case. After Izvolsky had made three futile attempts to open the Straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles to Russian warships in 1907, in 1908, and in 1911, he appears to have come to the conclusion that this could not be accomplished except through the complications of a general European war. It was, however, not Germany or Austria which had blocked his path but mainly England. Sir Edward Grey was unwilling to see the Straits opened to Russian warships but left closed to other Powers; to allow Russian warships to sally forth from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean and retreat again where the ships of other Powers were not allowed to follow them would be to convert the Black Sea into a great potential Russian naval fortress. So after 1911 Izvolsky appears to have done all he could to tighten the Triple Entente as opposed to the Triple Alliance and so prepare for the war which he regarded as inevitable and of which he said exultingly when it came in July, 1914: "C'est ma guerre!"

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484 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 But as regards M. Poincare and M. Sazonov, Herr Stieve is less convincing. By over-simplification and by his selection of passages to prove his thesis, he seeks to make it appear that the aims and policies of Izvolsky, Poincare, and Sazonov were identical and in harmony. But if one reads the original documents carefully and without bias, one sees that this is by no means the case. Sazonov was a changeable, secretive, weak minister, who was much afraid of Pan-Slav press criti- cism. He did not always reveal his purposes to his ally or to his ambassador in Paris. He sometimes shifted his ideas in a manner most disconcerting to the French and the English. M. Poincare, as he now asserts in his recently published memoirs, was often suspicious of both Sazonov and Izvolsky. The latter he now declares was a snob, an arch-intriguer, and an unreliable reporter of conversations; the pity is that, if he really felt so about him before the war, he did not get him recalled and have a more reliable Russian ambassador sent to Paris in his place. But he evidently feared that any serious attempt to do so might jeopardize his great aim of tightening the bonds of the Triple Entente. In working with might and main for this, he tended to divide the Powers of Europe more and more into two armed and opposing camps, so that the Triple Entente could impose its will on the Triple Alliance; or if a diplomatic crisis arose, the former would defy the latter and willingly risk war rather than accept diplomatic defeat. This was exactly what happened in 1914. A European war was not "inevitable." But Poincare believed that it was inevitable. He made his prepa- rations accordingly by tightening the Triple Entente, by the adoption of the three-year term of service, and by his loans and repeated promises of support to Russia. In so doing, he did in fact tend to make the war "inevitable." This is his great responsibility, rather than that he plotted deliberately with Izvolsky to bring about a war by which France should recover Alsace-Lorraine. Even if one does not accept all of Herr Stieve's conclusions, his book is one which students of war origins .should read and check up by reference to the original documents from which he has made selections. Sidney B. Fay The Modest Method of Willa Gather My Mortal Enemy. By Willa Cather. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. A CHARACTERISTIC contemporary novel which lies open before me begins: "The door opened and the sunlight spr: ng into the hall like a great blond beast." Miss Cather, on the other hand, commences thus: "I first met Myra Hen- shaw when I was fifteen." Where the first would capture the attention by violent assault, the other asks only with classic courtesy for the loan of one's ears, and this beginning is char- acteristic of a certain modesty of method in which half the charm of Miss Cather's stories lies. In a penetrating essay, The Novel Demeuble, she has herself made a plea for a type of fiction less elaborate in its mechanics than the conventional novel, and she has put her preaching into practice by scrupulously avoiding in her best work any machinery more elaborate than her tale required; yet the modesty of which I speak is something beyond that-- something which inheres in the very fact that her stories are frankly stories, events retained in the mind of, and recounted by, a definite person. At a time when novelists are seeking above all else "immediacy" of presentation and are employing not seldom fantastic means to attain it, she has sought no such illusion, has made no effort so to dramatize her narrative as to make it the equivalent of a contemporaneous experience. Events are seen frankly through the haze of distance; the thing immediately present is not these events themselves but the mind in which they are recollected; and the effect is, therefore, not the vividness and the harshness of drama but something almost elegiac in its softness. The knowledge of the narrator is both mellow and imperfect; he gropes, reflects, and tries Selling Dinosaurs On the Trail of Ancient Man. By Roy Chapman Andrews. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $6. HP HE advertising experts should go to school to the paleon- *■ tologists. They sold books to millions at a few dollars each; but the experts of the American Museum of Natural History sold million-year-old dinosaur eggs to a few, at thousands of dollars each. Where other scientists have plodded across the nearer sands of Mongolia in painfully lonely expeditions the Museum has persuaded the public to finance the wildest, hap- piest, completest expeditions, equipped with up-to-date Gobi- conquering Dodge cars, caravans of camels, jazz to tame the unruly llamas, white table-cloths, and all the latest scientific apparatus. There is in the history of science no advertising success to compare with the Third Asiatic Expedition, which Mr. Chapman here describes, unless it be the feat of making Einstein world-famous with millions who had no idea what it was all about. The beauty of it is that with all the trumpet-blowing it was in fact both a merry and a successful scientific adventure. Kozloff and Sven Hedin followed their camels for years; Roy Andrews picked the best months of the year and in his Detroit motor-cars covered a camel's week in a day, and, with his crew (after the manner of a human, far from omniscient, spec- tator) to piece together the bits of his information and to extract from it as much as he can of its secret meaning. What we get is not that sense of present action for which novelists more commonly seek but rather a mood — the reverberations of wonder, of interest, and of pity which have lingered after many years in a sensitive, resonant temper. Told in a different fashion the story of "My Mortal Enemy" might be almost lurid. Its central character, a some- what spectacular woman who made in her youth a sacrifice of wealth for love and then found herself throughout life unable to maintain the high mood which would make of such sacrifice a success, is all but flamboyant. Yet told as Miss Cather tells it the effect is not of storm and stress but rather of a quiet and brooding sadness, because its center is the mind of the nar- rator. She has known the woman when she was still the heroine of a village legend, still a symbol of the love and youth that triumph over difficulty; she has seen her at intervals during the years that follow; and she has gradually divined how things stand, how what began as high romance has ended in the sordid impasse to which a wife who insists upon luxuries beyond her husband's income leads both him and herself. To the girl who tells the story, Myra was more than merely an acquaintance, she was one of those from whom life could be learned. In her she had hoped to see romance justified, young faith encouraged; but from her she heard instead: "People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know. We were: — A man and woman drawn apart from that long embrace, and see what they have done to each other. Perhaps I can't for- give him for the harm I did him. Perhaps that's it. In age we lose everything; even the power to love." And it was not, we feel, that Myra was worse than most; only that high reso- lution is an affair of minutes, life an affair of years. Only things founded in selfishness and prudence last it out — hence the lachrymae rerum for which there is no help. This method of Miss Cather's — and she has never, I think, been entirely successful except when adhering to it — has its obvious limitations. It does not stir deep passions and it is, as Nietzsche would have said, to the last degree Apollonian. , The mood is a minor mood, brooding and faintly melancholic, with an eye turned always backward. But in the midst of our strident literature its graceful ease has a charm not easy to overestimate. Whenever Miss Cather evokes memory there comes with it a lingering fragrance. Joseph Wood Krutch

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Nov. 10, 1926] Thr Nation 185 of botanists, zoologists, geologists, paleontologists, and motor mechanics, forced the Gobi Desert to yield up treasures which slower travelers had never suspected. "On the Trail of Ancient " is the first ha nary, a sort of report to stock- holders. It tells a gorgeous story of hunting the Golden I in the rugged mountains of Shensi, of wild motor rides across country unknown even to the Mongols, of mad races with gazelles who spui ixty miles an hour and wild who kicked up the sands for sixteen steady miles at thirty miles per hour, of the discovery of a dinosaur nest where a lice dropped into rt, of sandstorms that ripped the beds from under sleepers, of the patient work of scientists who brush fossils out of sandstone with a camel's-hair brush, of baluchitheres that died in quicksand a million years ago, of impressive fossil links between Cretaceous Asia and America, of almost everything except the trail of ancient man. Of that there is little beyond Henry Fairchild Osborn's prophecy that the origin of man would be traced to Mongolia, "the roof of the world." They did discover relics of a prehistoric race of dur.e- dwellers who made dinosaur eggs into necklaces some twenty thousand years ago — but two unadvertised French Jesuits had found as much and more, in the Ordos Desert south of An- drews's hunting-grounds, two years earlier, and these dune- is are by no means the earliest known men. The Jesuits knew less of advertising than the New Yorkers, which perhaps is their loss. For the world has a right to ask that its scien- tell it the news in terms that it can understand, and it • nds to those who tell the tale. Roy Andrews has the gift of communicating his own enthu- siasms. Apparently the whole expedition absorbed his adven- turous passion for the uncrowded reaches of the earth, and the hunt for fossils became a rollicking chapter in pioneer romance. There is melodrama in his account of how six armed Americans overawed a score of zealous Mongol frontier officials and of how he routed bandits beyond Kalgan; there is poetry in his pictures of the purple cliffs and dancing mirages of the Gobi; and on page after page one finds that frontier spirit which, across the barriers of language, creates a bond between Ameri- can and Mongol and — though Andrews seems not to know it — Russian. Lewis S. Gannett "Angel" Angel. By Du Bose Hey ward. George H. Doran Company. $2. *l A NGEL," like "Porgy" last year, leaves one with a com- ■**• pulsive sense of radiance and loneliness; and it is the direct continuity of spirit, running clear as water from one book to the other, that convinces one of Mr. Heyward's integrity and intensity as a writer. The books are different and similar. One is the story of a man, a Negro of the swarming tenements in Charleston; the other is the story of a girl who is raptur- ously a part of the isolated North Carolina mountains. But the two tales have in common a crystalline quality through which is felt the personal will butted against immensity, pitting a single strength against the whole procession. The passion- ate desire to remain intact possesses most of Mr. Heyward's characters. His belief in the right to live, his perception of the tragic frustrations that are so often the doom of the rebel, his sympathy for primitive people and their codes — these are the sinews which build his elemental dramas. They are made of more than sinew. They are lavishly full of beauty — "Angel" particularly, for Mr. Heyward knows the North Carolina highlands well. Angel is a girl of these hills. She lives with her father, the Rev. Thornley, a gaunt itinerant preacher. Submissive habit makes her follow her father's ex- hortations, but the hills speak to her more deeply than his prayers. When Angel falls in love with Buck Merritt she must abandon herself to him joyfully. Buck makes whiskey and is as honestly proud of his still, which has come to him from his grandfather, as Thornley is proud of his pi t; but it Is against just such moonshiners that Thornley has battled : tenaciously. He betrays Buck to the sheriff; the moun- taineers burn with the outrage; but they cannot puess the traitor, and Angel is unable to sacrifice her own parent. Angel forth is more isolated than ever. Yet, married to a « uncouth fellow whose cabin is far from any settlement and who is willing to say nothing about Buck's child, she saves herself from the bitter defeat of other mountain women. The complicated climax is the only weakness of the book. "Porgy" was superbly simple; "Angel" shines with the same simplicity at first, but the end is not so convincing. Lenore G. Marshall Historical Portraiture Jefferson. By Albert Jay Nock. Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany. $2.75. Fathers of the Revolution. By Philip Guedalla. G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.50. fTMIESE two volumes offer a challenge to the historian. They *■ have literary merit. Needless to say neither of the authors is a professional researcher. I feel almost compelled to take upon myself the defense of my fellow-craftsmen who sin so ently against the laws of belles-lettres and sometimes even glory in their independence. Substance is so much more de- sirable than form. I shall not gird on my armor, however, for the challenge is a fiction. The majority of historians are crafts- men, and worthy craftsmen; but they are not artists. For- tunately a few do combine a knowledge of their trade with the practice of artistry. Consider Carl Becker and Claude Bowers. "Le style e'est l'homme." What need for a defense? The purpose of the two volumes is the same, historical portraiture. Both have succeeded, but not in equal measure. Their problems differ somewhat. The space at the disposal of Mr. Nock is sufficient for a full-length portrait with every detail carefully worked out. On the other hand, Mr. Guedalla portrays in less space twelve men, six Englishmen, four Americans, and two Frenchmen (by a whimsical inversion he places among the founders of the Republic George III, Lord North, and Generals Burgoyne and Cornwallis). But this difference in acreage does not affect a comparison of the results. Mr. Nock calls his book "a study in conduct and character." He is careful to deny that he is an historian. The denial was superfluous, provided he means by the term a man of research. His instinct has been a safe guide. It has led him to a careful perusal of the best monographs on his subject; and he has evidently soaked himself for years in Jeffersoniana until he has been able to identify his own mind with that of the Great Democrat. This is an excellent preparation for his purpose of presenting to his readers a picture of Jefferson in his many activities as farmer, politician, political philosopher, diplomat, scientist, and inventor. He has been remarkably successful. The man Jefferson stands forth with all his virtues and vices. I have but one serious criticism to make of the portrait. Mr. Nock has failed to do justice to the politician; Jefferson was a pioneer in developing the machinery of politics and in experi- menting with the manipulation of public opinion in a democracy. The reader of this work is never conscious of the art of the author. The simplicity of the style and its directness constitute the charm of the narrative. Jefferson through his acts and his words is constantly kept in the forefront of the picture. Thi3 is the proper historical method. The man is revealed through his activities, physical and mental. Whether he likes it or not, Mr. Nock must be accorded a place among the skilled historians who are primarily interested in synthesis. Mr. Guedalla is a professional litterateur, and he never lets you forget his vocation. His literary mechanism is always in evidence. That the reader may be intrigued at the start, he

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486 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 begins in a majority of cases with a clever little essay of three or four pages on a subject wholly foreign to the portrait of the personage to be drawn. Thus Lord North is introduced by a dissertation on memorial statues, General Cornwallis by three pages on the failure of historic persons to recognize their significant acts. Perhaps his straining for effect grows weari- some, but at times Mr. Guedalla is very happy in his descrip- tions. He is graphic when he describes the aged Chatham as speaking in the House of Lords "less like an ex-minister than as chorus of a tragedy." Too frequently, however, one feels that truth is sacrificed to epigram. To write of Chatham in 1766 as having made "his name grotesque with a peerage" is downright silly. To call him "an Elizabethan minister astray in the eighteenth century" sounds clever; but unfortunately the Great Commoner resembled Disraeli much more than he did Walsingham. Neither comparison has any meaning. Mr. Guedalla has failed in his portraiture where Mr. Nock has been most successful. He does not present his "Fathers" as acting or thinking. One outstanding reason for this is that he is not familiar enough with his characters. He has never lived with them. Furthermore his interpretation of the political situation is not up to date; it is of the vintage of 1900. He should have read numerous monographs and essays of which I fear he has never heard. He has read widely, but his interest has lain in externals, physical appearance, mannerisms in walking and talking. My pleasure in the book comes from the feeling of intimacy which I have with the subjects — the intimacy of watching a friend shaving. Clarence Walworth Alvord Pale Rain Sumvier Storm. By Frank Swinnerton. George H. Doran Company. $2. I N most of Mr. Swinnerton's novels there is an architectural •* symmetry that inevitably delights the lover of technical excellence. By their harmonious parts, their neatly fitted joints, and their beautifully matched or contrasted decorative details they remind one of those flawless Romanesque churches that were built in such numbers at the beginning of this century. Instinct with artifice, if not with art, they are obviously made rather than born. And yet, in "Nocturne" and occasionally in "September" and "The Elder Sister," how unobtrusively the und srlying framework reinforces the graceful structure laid upon it! In "Summer Storm," too, one cannot but admire the skill with which Polly and Beatrice are counterpoised and every scene between them — or between either of them and Falconer — is made to yield its predetermined contribution to the whole drama. Nevertheless, as each carefully plotted conversation leaves its precisely measured quantity of enlightenment and uncertainty behind it, one becomes so much aware of the mechanics involved — especially in the matter of creating suspense — that one's apperception of the characters themselves is dimmed. It is as though a wall had been erected between us and the protagonists of the story, a wall of glass through which we see them clearly but always with the consciousness that they are out of reach. The love of two girls for the same man is of course one of Mr. Swinnerton's favorite themes, but never before has he taken this problem so lightly. Polly is an engaging but colorless little creature, Beatrice by contrast suggests melodrama and the movies, and Falconer remains throughout merely a vague rep- resentative of the social class that Mr. Swinnerton seems loast able to make convincing. Their loves and jealousies affect none of them very vitally and us not at all. It is in the subtle inter- play of the relations between these three, rather than in them or in their feelings, that the reader will find his interest engaged. The story will hold him, as a story, despite any recognition he may have of its essential artificiality. He will applaud the author's successful projection of his varied backgrounds — the girls' office, the Lane house, the London streets — and of some of his minor characters — Mrs. Lane and Mercy, perhaps, though certainly not the incredible Mr. Abel. The sensitive reader will also be rejoiced by certain revelatory flashes of insight into the more delicate phases of emotion, such things, for example, as the recognition of the significant intimacy of the pronouns "we" and "you" on the lips of unacknowledged lovers. These flashes, however, are unexpectedly and disappointingly rare, and one's final impression of "Summer Storm" is that by the side of Mr. Swinnerton's lustrous best it must be ranked as a rather pale achievement. Grace Frank Social Bibliography A Guide to the Printed Materials for English Social and Eco- nomic History (1750-1850). By Judith Blow Williams. Co- lumbia University Press. Two volumes. $10. "fpHE history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we * know too much about it. . . . Concerning the age which has just passed, our fathers and our grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated so vast a quantity of information that the industry of a Ranke would be submerged by it, and the per- spicacity of a Gibbon would quail before it." Mr. Lytton Strachey's familiar paradox haunts the weaker hours of his- torians of modern England. Yet in their best moments they know that their formidable task must and will be done. Society cannot afford to be without the guidance of reliable knowledge of its past, especially its immediate past; and contemporary England and America, reeling through the chaos of post-war and industrial disorganization, are in desperate need of what wisdom may be gleaned from England's experience of the Napoleonic Wars and the unprecedented problems of the Indus- trial Revolution. But by the bewildering acceleration of the printing press so vividly described by Mr. Strachey the Indus- trial Revolution has discouraged its interpreters at the very outset. Little wonder that there has been hitherto no source- book of recent social and economic history comparable to those which so dependably direct research into the ancient and medieval periods. This lack Professor Williams has supplied most competently. She has surveyed the century between the inception of machine industry after 1750 and the emergence of the complex industrial state about 1850. Her "Guide" is much more than a compila- tion and classification of book titles, although even here her rummaging among obscure libraries, court and parish records, etc., contributes definitely to knowledge. Her method is selec- tive. She has winnowed out the valuable third or quarter of some 25,000 volumes examined. She has subjoined to each bibliographical item a concise summary of its content, and often has added a personal judgment of value. The author's Foreword is a keen and sane analysis of the importance and difficulties of research in the period; and short histories of journalism, banking, trade unionism, law reforms, public-health movements, etc., introduce special sections. There are full bibliographies of government reports, of industrial technology in various stages, of economic and political theories and move- ments, of biographies of significant figures. The American scholar will welcome the greater proportion given to books avail- able in libraries in the United States. Remarkably few valuable books published anterior to 1925 have escaped inclusion in Professor Williams's 1,100 pages. She has foreseen "the incomprehensible omission of the obvious," of which one may instance the correspondence of J. S. Mill with Carlyle and with Gustave d'Eichthal, and the scholarly volumes of Mr. D. A. Wilson which are superseding Froude's untrust- worthy "Life" of Carlyle. But any serious objection must be directed, not at her vigilance but at her judgment of the value

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 487 of certain volumes or her policy of excluding certain materials. For example, the reviewer regrets her omission of "a systematic survey of works of general literature as reflecting the social problems of the time," for which she refers the reader to the "Cambridge History of English Literature" and similar works. Such departmentalizing of knowledge is unfortunate at a time when historians are increasingly recognizing the importance of literature as the classic expression of social attitudes, and when literary historians are awaking to the indispensability of social background for the adequate interpretation of letters. Encour- agement to healthy cooperation among specialized historians could have been given by the mention of Professor Louis Cazamian's "Roman Social en Angleterre" and "Carlyle," and of American works like Professor Vida Scudder's "Social Ideals in English Literature" and Professor Ashley H. Thorndike's "Literature in a Changing Age." But such cavils seem ungrateful in view of Professor Williams's thorough and self-effacing accomplishment of an enterprise so large and socially valuable. Her survey of pri- mary sources comes at the opportune moment when an unusual number of secondary and interpretative works are in prepara- tion. Hereafter there will be little excuse for glib or senti- mental generalizations concerning the Industrial Revolution and other origins of contemporary civilization. The general student of history will welcome the selective character of Professor Williams's work, and the specialist will find it an invaluable point of departure. The productivity of the next decade and interest in events subsequent to 1850 will, it is hoped, bring forth a new edition; but the main roads through the field seem definitely opened. Emery Neff Books in Brief Cornish Names. An Attempt to Explain over 1,600 Cornish Names. Longmans, Green and Company. $1.50. An interesting excursion into practical etymology. The Inner Harbor. More Maine Coast Poems. By Wilbert Snow. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $1.75. The author of "Maine Coast" continues in his vigorous vein to celebrate the simpler virtues of New England. His material is interesting, and he is interesting; few recent volumes of poetry have been more readable. But his original fault, a somewhat wooden regularity of beat, is still present; and it would seem that he is most promising in those lyrics wherein he gets farthest away from the ideas of "description" and local color. Pope. The Leslie Stephen Lecture for 1925. By Lytton Strachey. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $1. This essay is so good that it could have been better. As an appreciation of Pope's immortal poetry it is welcome and even exciting; but in the course of defending Pope against his romantic detractors, such as Matthew Arnold, Mr. Strachey had several opportunities to analyze the poet's quality, and this he never does. He only describes it. Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg. Edited by Rebecca West. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2. This selection is especially distinguished by Miss West's introduction, which brilliantly describes for a British audience — and for that matter an American one — the idiom of Mr. Sand- burg, relating that idiom to the loquaciously introspective genius of the Middle West. Science and Poetry. By I. A. Richards. The New Science Series, Vol. II. W. W. Norton and Company. $1. An arresting analysis, inspired largely by the same author's "Principles of Literary Criticism," of the handicap incurred by poetry in any day, and particularly our own, when it bases itself upon beliefs. Beliefs change and poetry dies — unless it is pure. As in his previous book, Mr. Richards is concerned with a definition of poetry which shall make of it an instru- ment capable of clarifying and assisting, rather than thwarting or evading, the fundamental psychological processes. The Elder Brother. By Anthony Gibbs. Dial Press. $2. Viewed from the level of his first novel, this second one by Mr. Gibbs is a distinct step up. The author has put aside some of his Christmas-tree ornaments of style; he no longer turns verbal handsprings in front of his characters. The London and Oxford backgrounds are skilfully managed, and the narrative moves at a good clip. To be sure, one accepts the story with certain reservations, but unlike "Peter Vacuum" it does not deserve to be thrown bodily out of court. The Keen Desire. By Frank B. Elser. Boni and Liveright. $2. A certain kind of idealist recoils from life in silence. There is another kind, like the hero of this book, who with energy rushes terrified upon life, most afraid always of his fear, crying out with the pain of it. Martin Lavery has keen desires, but for just what he doesn't know. The book is a re- markably straightforward account of the behavior of a young man who is moved by mixed urgings, obsessional and rational; by the tension that comes from a fear of being patronized (he's so unsure of himself) ; and by an even more compelling fear of that fear. For the man of any insight knows that the real terror of life is terror of self. Martin's drunken debauches, his erotic reveries, his flutterings toward romance, his cruel and delicious self-torture, his unhappy consciousness of self are all put down, sometimes with shrewd observation and al- ways with a terrible sincerity. The Nation's Poetry Prize rrjHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for jf the best poem submitted by an American poet in a contest conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. This year in addition a second prize of $50 and a third prize of $25 will be offered. The rules for 1926 are as follows: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. 3. No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- cumstances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent from this office. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. 6. The winning poems will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation, to appear February 9, 1927. 7. Besides the winning poems, The Nation reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted in the contest. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. Poems should in no case be sent to them personally.

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488 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 Drama Something New in Theaters ON October 25 Miss Eva LeGallienne moved with a com- pany into the dingy old playhouse on Fourteenth Street and constituted it forthwith The Civic Repertory Theater. On the outside the same old paint is peeling from the columns, and inside the same garish gold and red, dictated by Neapoli- tan taste in the recent days when the building housed popular- priced opera by and for the inhabitants of Little Italy, still offends the eye. The aisles are lined with well-worn linoleum and the seats are far from resplendent, yet the institution born amid these depressing surroundings is one to pique curiosity and to stir hopes. During the first week of its existence two ambitious plays were presented — one extremely well — and a long list of others is promised. Moreover the top price is one dollar and sixty-five cents. That Miss LeGallienne is not a supremely great actress is obvious enough. She never succeeds in submerging her own rather odd personality in any role, and her plaintive voice is suitable only to baffled and querulous characters; but the energy which enabled her to launch her enterprise almost, it would seem, single-handed augurs well for its success, and she has, besides, proved herself a director of unusual skill. Of the two plays so far presented the first, Benavente's "Saturday Night," is merely, I think, a second-class work — pretentiously empty symbolism not quite redeemed by some bright lines and one act of colorful mel'odrama; the second, however, Chekhov's "The Three Sisters," is not merely a remarkable play but a challenge to any director as well. Almost completely innocent of action in the ordinary sense and depending entirely upon character and atmosphere for its effect, it demands the most skilful handling if it is not to fall into an intolerable tedium. In it three sisters, marooned on a Russian Main Screet, bewail the dulness of their lives; when the final curtain descends it leaves them in a state somewhat worse than the one they were in when it rose; and that, in one sense, is all. Yet in the meantime the famous Russian soul has been skilfully anato- mized by one who was enough of it to share its moods, enough above it to regard it with humorous detachment. A full dozen delicately delineated characters have had their hour upon the stage and the whole tone of Russian provincial society, with its mixture of poetic melancholy and rowdy gaiety, has been ric .'ily evoked. Chekhov has transferred to the stage both the baffled aimlessness of his stories and their charm as well. Or, rather, Chekhov has devised a text which challenges the director to do just that. No play could be less trusted to play itself, no play calls for more delicate emphasis or more skilful man- agement of the numerous characters who are held in relation to one another not so much by the thread of any action as by their relation to a chord which the playwright has struck and of which they constitute the component notes. All that it de- mands of a director Miss LeGallienne has acomplished extraor- dinarily well, and the members of her company have found themselves uniformly capable of interpreting the various roles they are called upon to play. More interesting, however, than either of the two plays so far produced is the question of the fate in store for the organi- zation which produced them. Here is something new in the world of the New York theater, new not because it is a repertory theater but because it is one which apparently in- tends to make no concessions in the direction of what it is generally supposed that the public demands. Not only are "The Three Sisters" and most of the other plays so far an- nounced plays which have no obvious appeal to even the more arty portion of the general ,ublic, but the institution itself has been founded without provision for any of the ad- ventitious aids to success. There is no imposing list of patrons, no suggestion, a la Vanity Fair, that the best people will be expected to discuss Civic Repertory. Society can hardly be tempted to the shabby confines of the present building, which is not even picturesque like a Greenwich Village cellar or a remodeled horse-barn, but merely dingy instead. One does not even pay more here than elsewhere — one pays, indeed, con- siderably less — and so there is not the least reason for coming except, perchance, the desire to see a play which has nothing, not even sensational novelty, to recommend it except its own intrinsic merits. Never before has the t^hing been tried. George Kelly's "Daisy Mayme" (Playhouse) is an amusing acid comedy which deals with a family struggle not unlike that which furnished the basis of the same author's "Craig's Wife." The scene is again Suburbia and the theme again the bitter, Machiavellian struggle of a woman for the possession of a house — this time the house of her brother into which a wife threatens to intrude. The malicious minuteness of Mr. Kelly's observation and the verisimilitude of his mimicry in dealing with the conversation and manners of the middle-class Ameri- can are not surpassed by any of the numerous dramatic authors now exploiting the same milieu, but the thing which most clearly distinguishes him from the others is the dramatic ten- sion which he manages to impart to his satires. Ridiculous his characters are, but his women have a demoniac intensity, a poison in their pettiness, that makes them terrible as well. "Daisy Mayme" is not merely funny, it is, like "Craig's Wife," exciting as well. At Henry Miller's Theater Raquel Meller is again appearing in a program of Spanish songs. Joseph Wood Krutch n THEATER □ -The Neighborhood Playhouse,466 REPERTORY Telephone Drydock 7516 OPENING NOV. 4 The Revival of the Hindu Classic The Little Clay Cart Playing thru Nov. 10th. Mai. Sat. Also Nov. 11 to 17 (incl.) The Lion Tamer " \ >> extremely saucy comedy of the French circus." — Alexander Wovll- cott. f r» !-» <r 51 r» r *» Theatre, 48th St.. West of Broadway. Evenings 8:30 L.uilt,dLi t Matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2:30 A * THEODORE DREISER'S n American tragedy "A PLAY WHICH IS ROUND TO WRENCH A MILLION HEARTS." Journal. DRAMATIZED BY PATRICK KEARNEY. THEATRE GUILD PRODUCTION WERFEL'S STIRRING DRAMA JUAREZ g MAXIMILIAN with the Theatre Guild Acting Co. C\ TIf T) Theatre, West 52d Street. Evenings, 8:30 ^^ **-'*-' Matinees, Thursday & Saturday, 2:30 D L E C T U R THE ARTS of the THEATRE of TODAY OUR CONTEMPORARY ARTS: SECOND SERIES TI'ESDAY MORNINGS AT EI EVEN At the Anderson-Milton School of the Theatre 128-130 EAST 5STH STREET Helen Arthur, Nov. 9 Sidney Howard, Dec. 7 Stark Young, Nov. 16. Jan. 25 Christopher Morley, Dec. 14 Richard Boleslavsky, Nov. 23 Lee Simonson. Jan. 11 Aline Bernstein, Nov. :;0 Adulph Bolm. Jan. 18 Joseph Wood Krutch. Feb. 1, Feb. 8 Single Admission $2.25 Special Rate for Course $22. Tickets on Sale: National League of Girls- Clubs, 472 West 24th St. Anderson-Milton School of the Theatre. 128 East 58th St. Ma payable to National League of Girls" Clubs. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation William Morrow & Company The Outstanding Biography of the Year George Washington The Human Being and th«> Hero by RUPERT LJGI "lVfR- HUGHES has taken 1V1 the youthful Washing- ton, a fading myth, and made him a red-blooded, lusty. Rusty human being for the first time. A splendid, stirrinp story. . . ." — Claude <•'. Bowers in The Nation, <«nPHIS figure is made un- J- derstandable by Rupert Hughes and places Geonje Washington really on a higher and more imposing pedestal than that which has been built by generations of flatterers and endless volumes of fulsome and uncritical praise." — Editorial in ■ land Flain Dealer. <<A SERENE, well-balanced, **■ but keenly critical study. ... It is :i great relief to find an able, popular author coming buck to the old. well-bred tradi- tion that a writer should talk to his reader across the printed page in the same spirit in which a gentleman would talk to another across a dinner table. . . . This first volume has set a high mark for the second." — Nathaniel Wright Stephenson in N. Y. World. «<T^HE Washington presented J- by Mr. Hughes can be accepted as the truest picture yet offered." — W. C. Ford in Boston Herald. Second printing. 590 pages, with many illustrations. $-1.00 303 Fifth Ave. lilPl+UFl+UPUliJfS+UFItUI mm* New York pitun«UFi«hii<itiijntyi<! THE MEANING OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION By Everett Dean Martin WHAT IS WORTH KNOWING? Does knowledge really help us? What do people expect to be- come when they set out to improve their minds? What are the essentials of a liberal education? This book is not concerned tviln schools or colleges but raises the deepest questions about human life. It undertakes to interpret education as a possible way of think- ing about questions of daily living, and to help us to determine what an educated person really is. $3.00 Modern Science Edited by Benjamin C. Gruenberg THIS IS THE STORY of what science is doing for people's health. A group of distinguished authorities, including an anatomist, chemist, physiologist, psychiatrist, bacteriologist, and former public health official, have joined forces to give to the general public, in clear language, the "secrets" of the re- markable advances in medical science. A book certain to become a health classic. $2.50 Leading booksellers everywhere carry these books. If your bookseller cannot supply you write to the publishers. IS IT GOD 'SWORD/ AN EXrOSITION OF THE FABLES AND MYTHOLOGY OF THE BIBLE AND THE IMPOSTURES OF THEOLOGY By Joseph Wheless GEORGE A. DORSEY (author of Why We Behave Like Ilurnan Beings) says: "Every boy and pirl in America should have access to 'Is It God's Word?' and every pulpit in Christendom should have a copy. The time has eome for a showdown between mummied superstition and enlightened curiosity. Wheless deals the fetish worshippers a staggering blow —they should no longer be allowed to control the education of the youth." $5.00 at all bookstores Alfred A. Knopf, 730 Fifth Ave.,N.Y. THE MODERN WORLD Edited by JESSE LEE BENNETT m- -0 A MAGAZINE SEEKING TO DEAL CONSTRUC- TIVELY WITH THE IDEAS, THE PERSONALI- TIES AND THE INSTITUTIONS WHICH ARE MOLDING AND SHAPING THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD. A NON-NATIONALIST, NON-PARTI- SAN, NON-SECTARIAN, NON - DOCTRINAIRE JOURNAL EMPHASIZING THE FACTS AND IDEAS WHICH UNITE MEN RATHER THAN THOSE WHICH SEPARATE THEM n- -m In the November number are the following articles: Tabloid Minds and Celluloid Emotions Phillips Russell Giant Power — The Hope of Civilization . McAUster Coleman Medley of Modernity M. H. Hedges International War Debts John W. Bennett The Corrosive Effect of Anti-Babbittry. . .McKee Barclay 15c. a copy. $1.50 a year. The Modern World, 331 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Md. Name Enclosed find $1.50 for one , , , Address years subscription. City State When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Soviet Industry By HAROLD KELLOCK KRASSIN, at the time he was Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Government, remarked: "If Russia can get foreign loans, she can recover. Without foreign loans she will have to crawl on her hands and knees." There have been no foreign loans. Yet the ninth anniversary of the Soviet state finds the monthly reports of the principal industries showing an output equal to that of 1913_with the exception of iron mining and the metal in- dustry. The railways have reached pre-war effectiveness, and the mileage is several thousand miles greater than in 1913. The grain crop this year is close to pre-war produc- tion in the same territory. Other crops, with the exception of cotton and sugar beets, have increased over the pre-war rate of production. The Soviet Union, altogether unaided, has made a more complete recovery than most of its European neigh- bors who have received substantial aid in the form of for- eign loans. It has had 25,000 tractors — most of them im- ported from the United States — at work this fall, where there were only 12,500 a year ago and less than 500 before the war. It has reequipped and modernized its oil fields and is starting the same process with its coal mines. The per capita consumption of electric power in Moscow last year was 225 per cent of that in 191". Industrial produc- tion during the fiscal year 1924-1925 (ending September 30, 1925) was 60 per cent greater than the previous year, that of the year ending September 30 last, estimated on the returns for eleven months of that period, was about 40 per cent above the output for 1924-1925. Labor efficiency has shown a steady gain; in the oil fields, during 1924-1925, it increased 15 per cent over the previous year. The rise of the cooperatives has been a marked factor in the recovery. The consumers' cooperatives alone now have a membership of 11,000,000 and conduct 53,446 stores as compared with 42,^00 a year ago. Their turnover during the fiscal year just ended was upwards of three billion dollars, an increase of 50 per cent over the previous year. The foreign trade turnover of the Soviet state for 1922-1923 amounted to only $199,300,000. In 1924-1925 it had increased to $657,631- 000. During the first nine months of 1925-1926 it was $555,680,000. The trade with the United States in 1925 was about $110,000,000, two and a half times the value of the pre-war trade. According to preliminary statistics made public in Oc- tober by the Supreme Economic Council in Moscow, the net profit yielded by State industry during the fiscal year end- ing September 30, 1926, was 450,000,000 rubles ($231,750,- 000). The gross value of industrial production increased 43 per cent, reaching 6,780,000,000 rubles as against 4,060,- 000,000 rubles in 1924-1925. The output of some of the principal industries follows: 1925-1926 1924-1925 Coal (met. tons) 24,302,000 16,083,500 Oil (met. tons) 8,240,029 6,960,576 Pig iron (met. tons) 2,201,121 1,291,511 Martin steel (met. tons) 2,879,871 1,868,642 Rolled iron (met. tons) 2,138,440 1,390,203 Cotton cloth (1,000 meters) 1,999,282 1,499,020 Coal production for the year was reported as 87 per cent of the pre-war figure; oil, 90 per cent; iron and steel, 70 per cent; cotton textiles, 90 per cent. The number of workers employed in state industry on September 1, 1926, was reported at 1,931,478, as compared with 1,563,501 on September 1, 1925. These are signs of remarkable progress. But a miracle of this sort has its limitations. While the gain in produc- tion is impressive there has been no commensurate gain in fixed capital. In fact the Soviet Union today is like any concern whose turnover is out of proportion to its capital resources. Factories and plants are now working pretty well up to 100 per cent of their capacity, the best factories under three shifts, yet there is virtually a famine in many classes of industrial goods. Prices of commodities are more than double pre-war prices. During the fiscal year just ended about $200,000,000 was squeezed out of the fed- eral budget for the expansion of industry, agriculture, and the cooperatives, and internal loans added perhaps $100,- 000,000 more, but this was but a small mite toward new factories and reequipment, toward satisfying the soaring demands of the population for manufactured goods. Now more than ever, it would appear, the placing of industry in the Soviet Union on a firm Oasis for the future depends upon the establishment of normal relations with the United States. Apparently the diplomatic stumbling block is the failure of the Soviet Government to acknowl- edge the American debt incurred by the transitory Keren- sky regime — somewhat less than $200,000,000. Responsible Soviet officials have repeatedly expressed a willingness to negotiate a funding agreement for the Kerensky debt, but at the same time they point out that funding payments can be paid for only in goods which can not be produced with- out a substantial American loan for new factories and workshops. Perhaps a bit of diplomatic amiability will con- tribute to a solution of this impasse and promote a friend- lier understanding between 115,000,000 Americans and 140,000,000 Russians. Japan in Manchuria WE print below extracts from an article by Sen Kata- yama, the noted Japanese revolutionist, which ap- peared in Pravda (Moscow) on September 12. Japanese enterprises in Manchuria are at present using Chinese labor, the Japanese numbering only one-third of all labor employed there. Nevertheless the strength and influence of Japanese capital in Manchuria are constantly increasing; Manchurian industry and commerce are almost monopolized by Japanese, and the capitalists of other countries are pushed away from the territories under Japanese influence. Furthermore, Japan is not even satisfied with the South Manchurian enterprises and is planning to extend her influence further north and into Inner and Outer Mongolia. As a means to this end Japan chose railroad construction. The Japanese Eastern Company, with headquarters at Korea, and the Japa- nese millionaire, Okura, hold possessions in Mongolia. They hold large plantations of rice and also various industrial enter- prises, in which they use Korean labor. During the World War Japan plotted to place under her influence Siberia, Kamchatka, and Mongolia. The intervention in Siberia was the beginning of realizing that scheme. All of these plans of Japan failed except those which were related to South Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, although even :

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 491 those acquisitions are threatened by awakened China, which insists on the annulment of the remainder of the Twenty-one Demands. Moreover, Japan encounters much more hindrance in the growing influence of USSR in Manchuria and in the whole of China. The rich resources of Manchuria, which are developing rapidly since Manchuria became linked with the outside world through the South Manchurian and Chinese Eastern railroads, offer the means for creating an independent economic unit. For this purely economic consideration, as well as for its political significance, Manchuria attracts very serious attention among the countries of the world, and especially among the capitalists of Japan. The territory of Manchuria comprises large plains with a soil very favorable for agriculture; its entire population consists of less than fifteen million, i. e., there are only forty inhabitants to each square mile. Japan, having a very small area greatly overpopulated, is coping with a problem which is, owing to an aggressive imperialistic policy, constantly growing worse, as almost all doors are closed to the Japanese. The only open door is Manchuria. Naturally enough, Japan is anxious to intrench in Manchuria and in Inner Mongolia, to turn her immigration wave in that direction, and to develop there her industries and commerce. The temporary failures of Chang Tso-lin, which have dam- aged Japanese interests in Manchuria, have also reflected on the governing elements of Japan. The Japanese banks alone lost, when his currency broke, about 400 million yen. His fall would be a most destructive shock to the interests and influence in Manchuria of the Japanese imperialists and capitalists. It may even be that Japan is looking for a war with Soviet Russia. At any rate, she is trying to provoke it through this Manchu- rian bandit. Apparently Japan is preparing to intervene in Manchuria. Chang Tso-lin is carrying on an aggressive policy with regard to Soviet Russia. He began by demanding the dismissal of the Soviet ambassador from Peking, charging that he was the instigator of the nationalistic movement in China. At present the chief of Manchurian bandits attacks Russia at another front — the Chinese Eastern Railroad. His entire con- duct is inspired by the Japanese military clique, which aims to undermine the interests of USSR and to promote Japanese in- terests in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. The USSR and the Chinese Eastern Railway THE course of the recent Russo-Chinese conflict in North Manchuria is reflected in the vigorous note sent by Chicherin, Commissary for Foreign Affairs, to the Chinese Charge d'Affaires in Moscow on September 8. I have the honor to request you to communicate to the Gov- ernment of the Chinese Republic the following. Notwithstand- ing the emphatic warning expressed to the Chinese Government contained in the note of the Soviet Government of August 31, in connection with the illegal demands presented by the authori- ties of the three eastern provinces of China to the board of the Chinese Eastern Railway to deliver up the river fleet belonging to the Chinese Eastern Railway and the dissolution of the edu- cation department of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the Soviet Government has not only not received a proper reply to its communication from the Chinese Government, but has received information that the authorities of the three eastern provinces have committed further illegal acts. According to this informa- tion, on September 2 the Chinese authorities in Harbin forcibly seized all the vessels of the river fleet and all the property appertaining thereto belonging to the Chinese Eastern Railway. At the same time the staff of the Chinese Eastern Railway in the offices of the river fleet were ejected and their places were taken by others; the flag of the Chinese Eastern Railway was removed from the vessels and replaced by the flag of the Chinese Built by Oty Housing Corporation A Limited Dividend Company REAL Cooperative Apartments With playgrounds and gardens. Only 15 minutes by subway from the Grand Cen- tral zone. A NEW model community has grown up just across the Queens- boro Bridge from Manhattan. Two years ago it was started as an in- telligent experiment in building attractive homes for people with moderate incomes. Speculative profits were done away with by limiting the company's dividends to 6%. Today over 600 families are living there, including a number of Nation readers. Acres of playgrounds and gardens The most unusual and talked of feature of this community is the permanent provision of acres of playgrounds and gardens. There are tennis courts, baseball field, swings and slides for the private use of Sunnyside residents. Instead of unsightly backyards cluttered with clothes poles and fences, a new block plan provides artistically land- scaped central garden courts. Compare these terms with present rents A small number of delightful cooperative apartments are ready for immediate occupancy. All rooms are outside, newly decorated, and unusually attractive. Efficiency kitchens are equipped with overhead driers, enamelled kitchen cabinets and ice-chests. Steam-heat and hot water are of course included. To give you an idea of how low costs really are, following are the prices and terms of two of these apartments: 4 Rooms $6,000 Cash $750 Monthly $62.10 5 Rooms 7,100 Cash 880 Monthly 73.20 (Garages available at $6.50 monthly extra) The increased equity and dividends through savings reduce these monthly charges still further. Sunnyside Gardens is well worth a visit. It has attracted the favorable comment of people from all over the United States and from abroad. Sunnyside Office, just across from the Bliss Street subway station, is open all day Sunday or week days until dark. Take Corona Line to Bliss Street, B. M. T., I. R. T. or Second Avenue Elevated, or Fifth Avenue Bus No. 15 SMueyside Gsirdees City housing corporation A Limited Dividend Company — Organized to Build Better Homes and Communities. L. I. CITY OFFICE TELEPHONE Queens Blvd. & Carolin St. Stillwell.8475 When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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492 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 navy. On September 4 the same authorities committed further illegal acts by forcibly ejecting the staff of the Chinese Eastern Railway from the educational department and sealed those premises. Indignantly placing on record these unexampled acts of the local Chinese authorities, which not only flagrantly vio- late the treaty relations between the USSR and the Chinese Republic, but are absolutely intolerable as between states which are in normal diplomatic relations, the Soviet Government points out that by tolerating such conduct on the part of the authorities of the three eastern provinces the present Chinese Government cannot but agree that serious difficulties are created for the continuation of normal diplomatic relations and conse- quently it must bear all responsibility for aggravating the rela- tions with the USSR. Reaffirming its declaration that it is fully prepared to give careful consideration to all the contro- versial questions arising out of the agreements existing between the two governments, the Soviet Government expects the Chi- nese Government to take urgent measures to secure the immedi- ate cessation of the above-mentioned infringement of its rights, and for the elimination of a situation that may react most un- favorably upon the future diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Soviet Government expresses the firm conviction that, in order to preserve and further develop normal relations between the two states, the Chinese Government will not delay in replying and in taking the necessary measures for the settle- ment of the conflict with the USSR. Increase of Wages in the USSR THE following discussion of increased wages in the Soviet Union was contributed by W. Schmidt, People's Commissar for Labor, to International Press Correspon- dence for October 7: The resolution of the Council of the People's Commissariat of the Soviet Union, dated September 21, concerning the in- crease of wages for categories of workers in receipt of the lowest rate of pay, is a measure of very great significance, espe- cially when it is taken into consideration that the advancing of wages during the whole time has not been interrupted and continues constantly. If we regard the months of April to June of the economic year 1922-1923 as representing 100, the average real wage in the whole of industry rose to 124 in the corresponding months of the economic year 1923-1924, to 14? in April to June in the economic year 1924-1925, and to 167 in the corresponding months of the economic year 1925- 1926, and, therefore, rose altogether by 67 per cent during this period. , This advance was achieved through a general increase of wages, on the one hand, and, on the other, by the introduction of piece-work for the skilled workers and of supplementary premiums for the laborers. In view of the high piece-work wages the increase of the wages for skilled workers has exceeded the increase in the pay of the laborers. The growth of the wages of the skilled workers is ade- quately guaranteed by the system of piece rates, and will still lie in the future, as the output of labor increases in consequence of the fresh equipment of industry and the introduction of rational methods of organizing work. This possibility, how- ever, does not exist for unskilled and semi-skilled laborers work- ing at so much per hour, and it is, therefore, necessary to bring their earnings more into accord with those of the skilled workers. This was, and still remains, a task of the labor movement. A number of measures were adapted to this end: incn of wages for those in receipt of the lowest rates of pay under the collective contracts, increase of salaries of the lowest cate- gories of employees, together with -the execution of the stand- ardization of the salaries of civil servants, subsidizing of the local budgets for the purpose of increasing the pay of the low grades, etc. LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE By UPTON SINCLAIR Out of print 15 years. Book stores have asked $7.50 for it New edition now ready Jack London : "It stands alone — there is no book like it." Israel Zangwill: "It seems to me to be literature of a high order." Eden Phillpotts : "I am full of enthusiasm for this splen- did work of art." Robert Herrick : "You will want my opinion of its frank speaking, of course. It is about the frankest book I have ever seen in English, and yet it is perfectly clean in every word. That is much. As compared with a novel like Sudermann's 'Song of Songs', it is as mountain brook water tn a sewer." Frederik van Eeden : "It is surely your greatest book, and very nearly one of the great books of the world. . . . You give wooing, marriage, pregnancy, birth in great classic lines. ... It is one of the best things in English literature. (If course, you will be attacked and decried, but that is all right. This book will make your world fame. Even the Russians will appreciate it." 663 Pages, cloth $2.00, paper $1.25 UPTON SINCLAIR Pasadena, California. for Facts About Russia Read Slavonic Nations of Yesterday and Today Milivoy S. Stanoyevieh Handbook Series $2.40 each Reminders of the scholarly education of the Old Russia, the native intelligence and industry of the peasant, the high cour- .i" hi the idealist present the character of the Russian people m a pictureful way. The problems of the Russia of Today and the possibilities of the Russia of Tomorrow are also pictured. Recognition of Soviet Russia James Goodwin Hodgson Reference Shelf Series 90c each Gives arguments pro and con for the diplomatic recognition of Russia by the United States. Full bibliography and briefs. Complete list of Handbook and def- ence Shelf Subjects sent on request. THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY NEW YORK CITY 971 University Avenue n<$£9 nor Hia&ft ?enr«sy ; Inconvenient Akisvmias Bav <«s Vy^Ax^ msr Y GENERAL DRUG CO., 9* N Moor*- Strict. New Ynrlr When writing to advertisers, please mention' The Nation

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Nov. 10, 1926] The Nation 493 AMTORG TRADING CORPORATION 165 BROADWAY, NEW YORK Sole representatives in the U. S. of Gostorg (State Export and Import Bureau) of the RSFSR, Moscow Gostorg of the Northwestern Region, Leningrad Ukrainian Gostorg, Kharkov Transcaucasian Gostorg, Tiflis White-Russian Gostorg, Minsk All the leading industrial and commercial organiza- tions and combinations in the Union of SSR and Arcos Ltd., London Exporting to the Union SSR: Agricultural machinery and implements Mining machinery Technical equipment for industries and transport Drugs and chemicals Office materials Objects of general use, etc. Importing from the Union SSR: Furs and hides Bristle, horsehair, wool, casings, and other animal products Kemp and flax Fish products Medicinal herbs and other raw materials Moscow office: KUZNETZKY MOST 14 Centrosoyus -America INC. 17 BATTERY PLACE NEW YORK CITY 9 Sole American Representatives of the All-Russian Central Union of Consum- ers' Cooperative Societies — "Centroso- yus" and other Russian Cooperative Unions. Importers of Russian furs, bristles, flax, caviar and crabmeat. Exporters to Russia of American manufactured products. ALL-RUSSIAN UNION OF AGRICULTURAL (PRODUCERS') CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES SELSKOSOJUS HEAD OFFICE: B. Dmitrovka, 4, MOSCOW, U. S. S. R AFFILIATED CO-OPERATIVE ORGANIZATIONS "MASLOCENTR" (Dairy Co-Operatives) "LNOCENTR" (Flax and Tow Co-Operatives) "PLODOVINSOYUS" (Vegetable, Fruit and Wine Co-Operatives) "SOYUSKARTOFEL" (Potato Co-Operatives) "TABAKSOYUS" (Tobacco Co-Operatives) "PTITZEVODSOYUS" (Poultry Co-Operatives) Represented in America by: SELSKOSOJUS, INC., AMERICA MAIN OFFICE 90 West Street New York City TELEPHONE Rector 0117-0118 FUR DEPARTMENT 238 West 28th Street New York City TELEPHONIC Lackawanna 6985 PURCHASES^ — Tractors and Rep?ir Shop Equipments, Agricul- tural Implements, Binder Twine, Seed Cleaning Machinery and Seeds. SELLS Furs, Skins, Casings, Butter, Flax and Tow, Seeds. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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494 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3201 These steps did not previously suffice to produce satisfac- tory results, and it is only now that the consolidated general economic situation affords the possibility of putting through a number of measures in this direction in order to increase the wages of the low-paid workers. But even these measures must be effected without causing a strain to our currency and without entailing other undesirable economic consequences. It is, therefore, necessary, in accordance with the resolution of the Council of People's Commissariats, dated September 21, that we pay close attention during the year 1926-1927 to the increasing of the wages, especially of the low-paid groups of workers in industry, transport, post, and telegraph services, in consonance with their financial possibilities. A faulty calculation in advancing wages would certainly provoke, apart from financial difficulties for the industrial branches concerned, a number of difficulties in the goods mar- ket, for every increase of the purchasing power of the popu- lation, not backed by a corresponding increase in the quantity of goods available, would lead to a weakening of the purchas- ing power of the ruble and, consequently, of the real wages of all workers. A badly planned advance of wages for the groups left at a disadvantage would not only injure the position of these groups but would also be detrimental to the whole of the working class. Therefore, an increase of wages can only be permitted to an extent of 10 per cent for the low-paid groups of workers engaged in production, and then only in the following branches in which wages are depressed: coal mining, ore mining, indi- vidual branches of '.he metal industry, of the textile industry, and the chemical industry, the match industry, glass manufac- ture, china manufacture, and special production, and, finally, the railway, post, and telegraph servici The percentage of the advances and the distribution of the increases among the lowest ratings of workers will be fixed upon the revision of the collective contracts in .he branches concerned when the period of validity of the old collective contracts has elapsed. If the date of the fresh conclusion of the collective contracts be postponed, the advance in wages will be calculated as from the moment of expiration of the old contracts. Contributors to This Issue Louis Lozowick is a New York artist. Louis Fischer, who has been The Nation's correspondent in Moscow, is now in Berlin. Jake Falstafp is on the staff of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal. Dk. Vera DANCHAKOFF, who is now in Russia, was for- merly a professor at the College of Physicians and Sur- geons, Columbia University. Marian Tyler is at present living in Russia. Winthrop D. Lane has made distinguished studies of prison conditions. Burt M. McConnell is a member of the editorial staff of the Literary Digest. Max Eastman, formerly editor of the Masses and the Liberator, has lived abroad for four years, mostly in Russia. Sidney B. Fay, professor of history at Smith College, is soon to publish a book on war origins. Lenore G. Marshall frequently reviews fiction and poetry for the magazines. Clarence Walworth Alvord has been professor of his- tory at the universities of Illinois and Minnesota. Harold Kellock is the Statistical Director of the Russian Information Bureau. ( HALFONTE- " addon Hall ATLANTIC CITY In the very center of things on the Beach and the Boardwalk. "Dual Trio" Radio Concert.' every Tuesday evening — Tune in on WPQ at 9 STAND out like personal friends in the thoughts of those who love to go down to the sea for rest or play — their simple, friendly hospitality has so graced every service for so many years. Especially delightful during the winter months are the broad deck porches facing the sea with their comfortable steamer chairs looking down on the flowing life of the Boardwalk. For the more active — golf, riding on the beach, theatres, Boardwalk activities, fascinating shops, music and entertainment. American Plan Only - Always Open Illustrated Folder on Request LEEDS and LIPPINCOTT COMPANY Want someone for a position ? Want a position ? The responsive employer and the intelligent applicant for employment read The Nation. Write for rates. Dept. W, The Nation. Fresh Vegetables Whole Wheat Products Satisfying Diet for Diabetics No animal fat used True food is the foundation of Good health Jrufbod, 153 W. 44th St., East of Broadway AURORA HEALTH FARM $%&?£ne hour from New York. Open all year. Suitable for those requiring diet. electro- and hydro- therapy. Ideal fur rest and convalescence. Personal medical strper- yidioru Homelike atmosphere. No bed-ridden, contagious or mental cas^- Robert Schulman, M. D.. Medical Director. Adolph WElZENHOKrau, M. 'hyeician. Telephone — MORRISTOWN 18 2 0. you want to make extra money? Address Dept. 11 The Nation 20 Vesey Street New York When writing to advertisere, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER IT, L926 No. 3202 ^i i . country for one reason: she is an official diplomatic repre- V^OIiK. Ill-S sentative of the Soviet Government. Her desire to pass ■ through the United States gave him an opportunity to offer editorial i additional evidence of his solemn disapproval of the Work- ers' Government of Russia. As Senator Borah has pointed re".' out in a vigorous denunciation of Kellogg's act, this sort of .;;;;.;.;;;;;.;;;;:;:;::::::::::::::::::: deliberate effrontery is "intolerable and unjustifiable." THK UNIVERSE, 1 "' ll""1- ■•■ 501 £25Bn™T™ fe p. wesi ., 502 ~ UICIDE SAID DANIEL WEBSTER, is confession. So, essive Wisconsin Wii By Robert S. Allen W _ Illinois \ irruption. By Chester c. Nash. Jr >«* ^_j too, is resignation — mi occasion. One of those was the t^reVbS*™^^^^ v. By the Drifter j?07 wrote to the Pvesidenl in the following words: "I have come to the conclusion, on account of the impeachment pro- Pure ceedings against me, regardless of the final result thereof, Chiefly D.-i.its. By B oil that my usefulness as a pidge has been seriously impaired. The Mind day. By Paul Weiss ?*« Peace in the Schools. By H. E. Buchhoiz "J Marvelous perspicacity! And what a delicate sense of the CnUdren^nBooks°1ny BriS?! '. "'•'•• • • • • • • •••'•••■• ■•••••' ■"•"•••■• • sii fitness of things ! Surely, in his entire judicial career noth- d^L^-'k^ "» inS has so b«'ome JudSe English as the leaving of it. He international relations section: has thereby spared the country the expense of at least Zealand's Family Dole. By T. Walsh •?'> c-, AA Arin r i. • 4. ■ l ,. u * i t.- • j- • 1 An Editor's Farewell :'ls $100,000 for his trial on the charges of abusing his judicial powers and misuse of bankruptcy funds, a case which would have taken up a vast amount of the time of the Senate at a special session. And the bench is rid of one of those who disgrace it. Perhaps Judge Webster Thayer of Massachu- setts, as to whose temperamental unfitness there is also little doubt although his personal character seems beyond sus- picion, will now be good enough to follow suit. OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Euitor OCIATB EliITOKS LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN HUE WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH MANAGING EDITOR LITERARY EDITOR FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN CONTRIHUTING EDIT JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager .li'TloN Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United Slates Mid Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, ,$0.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. Chicago Office: No. 38 South Dearborn Street. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cros3, 13, Woburn Square, Londun W. C. 1, England. IGNORANCE, INTOLERANCE, DISCOURTESY— we can imagine these words embossed in gold, hanging above the desk of the Secretary of State of the United States. His latest act in the spirit of this wall-motto is the exclusion of Alexandra Kollontai, Russian Ambassador to Mexico, who applied in Berlin for an American visa so that she might land in New York and pass through the United States on her way to Mexico City. Mr. Kellogg has displayed these qualities on other occasions — notably in refusing admission to the Count and Countess Karolyi, hint- ing ridiculously that they might be Communist propagan- dists. His present performance is more explicable and more serious. Mme Kollontai is a Communist. This gives the State Department its public excuse for refusing a visa. But it is a poor one. In the United States are numerous Russian Communists who came in properly equipped with passports and visas. They are here on business. They lunch with bankers and make deals with American business men. No State Department official questions their presence or pretends that they are making Communist propaganda. Mme Kollontai is no more dangerous to our sacred institu- tions than are they. Mr. Kellogg has excluded her from the SPEAKING OF JUDGE THAYER reminds us that one hundred members of the Paris Bar, including many fa- mous lawyers and politicians of all shades of politics and opinions, have signed a petition asking for the immediate release of Sacco and Vanzetti — further striking testimony of the international character this case has assumed and how deeply it is affecting the American reputation for jus- tice in foreign countries. "By enduring," these French lawyers write, "for fifty-four months the terrible strain of daily expectation of capital punishment, these men have thereby gained the ritrht of freedom even if they are guilty." Of this we hope the Governor of Massachusetts will take due notice. He certainly cannot have overlooked a recent editorial on this case in the Boston Herald, a paper which can surely not be charged with truckling to labor or hav'ng the slightest symptoms of radicalism in its make- up. The Herald carefully explains that it has no sympathy with the views of Sacco and Vanzetti but in its opinion they "ought not to be executed on the warrant of the verdict re- turned by a jury on July 14, 1021." As the months have merged into years and the debate over this case has con- tinued, the Herald has been compelled to reverse its position and abandon its original judgment that the men were guilty. The final straw was the recent decision of Judge Thayer, beginning with his misstatement, not to say falsi- fication, that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts had approved the verdict of the jury. If the Massachusetts Bar only had amonor its members men of the spirit of Wendell Phillips and others of abolition days, there would be some uncomfortable hours ahead of Judge Thayer.

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496 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS in England are not always indications of the drift of public sentiment, but those that have just been concluded have naturally roused great interest because of the recent general strike and the bitter- nesses aroused by the coal strike. It was supposed, of course, that there would be a Conservative and Liberal re- action away from Labor. Instead, Labor made sweeping gains in more than three hundred cities and boroughs in England and Wales. Only a few boroughs on the outer rim of London moved in the other direction. Labor gained no less than 161 seats, with only 21 losses; the Conservatives won 15 and lost 78, the Liberals won 8 and lost 53. The Manchester Guardian has pointed out that the most signifi- cant successes of Labor are in the North of England and the North Midlands. Altogether, these elections reinforce the statement made in our columns by the former Prime Minister, J. Ramsay MacDonald, that Labor has profited politically and not lost by the general strike and its after- math. Every by-election since last spring has confirmed this. Three more vacancies, one caused by the resignation of Lieutenant Commander Kenworthy as a Liberal, and two in Conservative seats, will shortly afford another test. The fact that England faces the winter with an entirely inade- quate coal supply, and that the coal strike is not yet settled at this writing, are other reasons why the drift to Labor is so marked. EMORY R. BUCKNER, United Stales Attorney, an- nounces that in December he will retry former Attor- ney General Harry Daugherty and former Alien Property Custodian Thomas W. Miller. The announcement does him credit and relieves Mr. Buckner from any suggestion that political motives might interfere with active prosecution of the case. Mr. Daugherty and Mr. Miller already stand con- victed before the bar of public opinion; if they have the belief in themselves which they assert they must this time take the witness-stand in their own defense. Men who de- stroy ledger-sheets on bank holidays, men who happen to be discovered in possession of bonds which were paid to ottkr men substantially as bribes, must do some tall ex- plaining if the public is to be relieved of its suspicion. Friends of the two men insist that they obtained and used the mysterious bonds in order to help pay off the Republi- can campaign deficit of 1924. That may be; but it should be offered in evidence and sustained on the witness-stand, not whispered — or even printed — out of court. THERE SEEMS to be a growing bureaucratic arrogance and stupidity in this country. A Polish girl who had lived sixteen years in the United States arrived at Ellis Island. She had lost her entrance permit on the way. The authorities held her on Ellis Island, investigated, discov- ered that the permit had been issued to her, and— ruled thai since she did not have it with her she must be deported! Two British subjects came to Kentucky from Canada two years ago (after an American consul had informed them they needed no papers), played in various orchestras, mar- ried, took out citizenship papers— and then one afternoon were thrown into jail without warning by a petty official who charged them with illegal entry to the United States. They had, it seems, violated the contract-labor law by an- swering from Toronto an advertisement in the Billboard. There was no suggestion of bad faith, nothing but ignorant violation of a technicality, but the arrogant little office- holder put them in jail. Such officials should be removable for cause, and should be removed without delay. In the first case an editorial in the New York World brought a prompt revision of the ruling; in the second case the brave editorials of the Lexington Herald have not yet achieved justice or decency. THE RECENT OUTBREAK in the Tombs, in which the warden and several prisoners were killed, has led many persons to clamor again for still more stringent laws in dealing with criminals. It may be, however, that the stringency of existing legislation is the cause of such des- perate breaks for freedom. When a man convicted of four felonies, no matter what their nature or how many years may have elapsed between the first three and the last, must be sentenced to prison for life, it would seem that legislation had become about as severe as was necessary. Under the Baumes law, recently enacted in New York State, a judge is apparently compelled to sentence a fourth offender for life; no juristic discretion is permitted. And under the same law, sentences have become grotesquely distended, until a judge hands out forty years as casually as if it were a month in the workhouse. Judge Franklin Taylor, of Brooklyn, is in process of testing the mandatory character of this law. He has refused to impose a life sentence on a man guilty of stealing $11 from his employer. The pris- oner has served terms at a truancy school, at Elmira Re- formatory, two terms of a year each for petit larceny, and ten years for burglary. But his employer was ready to give him another trial, and Judge Taylor refuses to treat him as a permanent criminal and menace to society and lock him up for life. Meanwhile we are every day having an oppor- tunity to test the efficacy of these laws. Severe sentences are being imposed daily. Does it appear that crime is decreasing? IN APPLAUDING the four-times-chosen Governor "Al" Smith as a phenomenon unique in New York State's his- tory the newspapers forgot De Witt Clinton. That gentle- man was continuously in public life from 1798 until his death, thirty years later. He began his career — after cer- tain preliminaries in the Revolutionary War — as member of the New York State Assembly, where he served only a few months, resigning to enter the State Senate. From this he graduated to the Senate of the United States in 1802; his term here was also of the briefest, since he left in a year. From 1803 until 1807, from 1808 till 1810, and from 1811 to 1815 he was Mayor of New York City. Dur- ing this time he also served as member of the State Coun- cil of Appointment (1801 and 1806), as State Senator from 1806 to 1811, and as Lieutenant Governor from 1811 to 1813. He received 89 out of 217 votes for President in 1812. He organized and headed the Erie Canal Commission from 1810 to his death, with one year's intermission, and he was thrice elected Governor of New York for a three- year term— 1817, 1820, and 1825— in which office he died. This dizzying career will be a hard one for Governor Smith and New York State to beat, since we no longer encourage the holding of two offices at once, but there is still time. If New York lends its "Al" to the nation for a while, New York will want him back again. By the time the largest city in the country stops voting for him, De Witt Clinton may look like a piker.

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 497 Wet or Dry' 1 ONE certain thing emerges above the hubbub of con- flicting claims as to the meaning of the Wet-and-Dry contests at the polls: Prohibition is not a dead issue. Eight Stat ! directly on Prohibition issues, and in other local contests the Wet issue played a stellar role. Missouri, California, and Colorado turned down proposals to repeal the State enforcement laws— Colorado by the sur- prisingly small majority of 20,000; Missouri by 100,000 in a total vote of three-quarters of a million; California by a close vote in a very heavy balloting. Montana, on the other hand, by a majority of 10,000 in a total vote of about 100,000, voted to repeal her enforcement law; Nevada, with a total vote of barely 10,000, voted nearly four to one to memorialize Congress to repeal the Prohibition Amend- ment; Wisconsin, by more than two to one, urged Congress to amend the Volstead Act to permit the manufacture and sale of beer containing 2.75 per cent of alcohol. Illinois and New York voted on referenda urging Congress to per- mit the States to define what constitutes an intoxicating liquor. In Illinois the vote was almost two to one for the proposal; in New York it carried with the tremendous ma- jority of 1,200,000, sweeping most of the up-State counties where the Drys were reputed to be strong. "If popular government means anything," "Al" Smith, who rode to victory on a Wet wave, commented, "the State referendums cannot fail to influence Congress." The Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals retorts with a careful canvass of Congress. The Senate, it reports, has 73 Dry members and only 22 Wet; the House has 311 Drys, 106 Wets, and 18 doubtful members. So, it concludes, the country is quite safe for Prohibition, newspaper shouts to the contrary notwith- standing. Certainly the results do not all point one way. There is no Wet tidal wave sweeping from one coast to the other, and in plenty of States the results can be interpreted either way, according to personal inclination. Massachusetts, for instance, elected the Wet David Walsh to replace the Dry Mr. Butler in the Senate, but it gave an impressive ma- jority to Alvan Fuller, who was as Dry as his Republican colleague, Mr. Butler, over Mr. Gaston, who was more vocif- erously Wet than Senator Walsh. The early Wet victories from the California cities were more than offset by the heavy Dry vote of the rural districts. The cynical answer that the farmers are profiting too much by the high price of Prohibition wine grapes to want a change is not suffi- cient; the country districts of America are unquestionably overwhelmingly Dry in sentiment. Yet there is no question that the results reveal a sig- nificant and growing dissatisfaction with the working of the Prohibition laws. The States which voted Wet in this election cast one-third of the total vote for President in 1924; they are the leading industrial States of the Union. Rhode Island and Maryland are certainly also Wet; and if Mr. Wilson, who fought Representative Vare in Pennsyl- vania, had been Wet instead of Dry he might have made an even more impressive showing. The referenda must be heeded as a sort of weather-vane. We look for more refer- enda, and welcome them. The issue of Prohibition needs more discussion and more clarification. It is the livest issue in American politics today. South Carolina's Shame TO Walter White, assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, goes the credit for unearthing one of the ghastliest stories in American history. This young man, who has already distinguished himself in various Southern States by inves- tigating race riots and lynchings that reflected discredit on local and State officials, went down to Aiken, S. ('., alone, to find himself in the most lawless and brutal district that he had ever visited. The result of his investigation he com- municated to Governor McLeod in a letter that might well have scorched His Honor's hands as he held it. Reminding the Governor of his promise to "do everything in my power to get at the truth in this matter and to fix the guilt upon the proper parties," Mr. White furnished details of the lynching, and ended with a list of names, occupations, and addresses of a score of men who took part in it. The data which Mr. White gathered in his courageous and careful search can, he declared, be amply substanti- ated by various citizens of Aiken whenever the Governor will guarantee them immunity from the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan. According to Mr. White, the Klan engineered the lynching, and effectively controls the community. But the State militia is at the Governor's call. The good name of South Carolina is in shadow; protection can be furnished if Governor McLeod wants it. A law-abiding and industrious family of Negroes, the Lowmans, were accused of selling whiskey. A sheriff and four deputies, in plain clothes and with nothing to distin- guish them as officers of the law, approaching the Lowman house, terrified the mother and her daughter, and brought about a fracas in which the mother was killed, the daughter Bertha and a son Clarence seriously wounded by gunshots, another son, Demon, shot but not seriously hurt, and the sheriff killed. Seventeen days after the affair five of the Lowmans were put on trial for murder, with lawyers for the defense appointed by the judge. Bertha, Demon, and Clarence were found guilty, the two boys being sentenced to death and the girl to imprisonment for life. So outrage- ous was this trial that a Negro lawyer in South Carolina was able to present to the State Supreme Court a brief that resulted in a new trial. At the second hearing of the case, Demon was found not guilty. Within one hour of the reversal of the verdict persons as far away as Columbia knew that the Lowmans would be lynched that night. And they were. Mr. White, in his extraordinary story, which is now being substantially repeated by the New York World, charges that, far from being overpowered, Sheriff Nollie Robinson opened the prison doors and helped to drag Bertha Lowman downstairs to her death. Officials of the law and relatives of high South Carolina officials were present at the bestial lynching. Here is the real shame of the South. Not that a bunch of hoodlums disguised in sheets and pil- low-cases can carry off a defenseless Negro and kill him, but that officers of the law, sworn to uphold the law, too often actually aid the murderers of the prisoners they have sworn to protect. The Governor of South Carolina is faced with a task which he cannot shirk. He must prove these charges false or he must bring the guilty persons to jus- tice. Else he stamps himself as unworthy of office and his State as unworthy of the Union.

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498 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 Mr. Coolidge, the Election, and the Future SO Mr. Coolidge believes that he and his Administration were not defeated at the polls. At least that is the assurance he gave to the correspondents three days after the election. He had lost control of the Senate? Yes, but you see that had to do only with personal and local issues. The only national part of the election related to the House of Representatives, and there his party kept control albeit his majority sank from 59 to 37 and the latter figure counts the eleven insurgent Congressmen from Wisconsin as Re- publicans. So the President rests in peace and is not even troubled by the fact that his own State administered an overwhelminig defeat to Senator Butler, his Man Friday, his national chairman, his sponsor, and his chief supporter in Massachusetts. Now we do not deny that there was no single compell- ing national issue in this election and that the several Senatorial contests did hinge upon such matters as the cor- ruption in Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, the dry-Re- publican bolt from Wadsworth in New York, and other questions. But in his own State Mr. Coolidge himself made the issue perfectly clear; he demanded the return of Sena- tor Butler, whereas in all other States he refused to inter- fere in the contests. He went to his old home to vote for the Senator, and he allowed that gentleman to make his whole campaign upon the necessity of supporting the Presi- dent. Mr. Coolidge himself wrote that Senator Butler's presence in the Senate "is of great importance to me in my efforts to discharge the duties of my office," and he assured his State that in the Senate Mr. Butler "holds a place which no one else could command for Massachusetts, admired for his wisdom, respected for his integrity"! Among the many Republican spellbinders who came from outside of Massa- chusetts, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt the Lesser asserted that the defeat of Butler would be a slap in the President's face. Whereupon the electorate rose in its might and slap- ed Mr. Coolidge's face with a Walsh majority of 54,955. Yet Massachusetts is normally Republican and Mr. Coolidge is supposedly its favorite son. The Butler campaign began more than a year ago and was fortified by unlimited money and the support of some of the most influential dailies — and Butler was defeated. If this was not a direct and personal rebuke for the President, what in the world could be? Again, disguise it as Mr. Coolidge will, the loss of con- trol of the Senate is still another blow to the Administra- tion. It is idle to assert that the President is happy to have a divided Congress. Negative as his personality and poli- cies are, Mr. Coolidge knows that he will be largely judged in 1928 by his achievements during the next two years. That is already proved by his sudden proposal to return to the income taxpayers next year as a rebate their final in- come-tax payment of 1926— a move hailed in both Republi- can and Democratic camps as entirely political. But the President cannot stop there. To what else will he "point with pride" in June, 1928? More than that, the control of the Senate has passed to men who are far more dangerous to him and to his policies than the Democrats, who are the merest shadow of an opposition, wholly without construc- tive leadership. The balance of power now rests with the group of Republican Progressives who, together with Sena- tor Shipstead, the Farmer-Labor Senator, constitute the hope of political progress today. Norris, La Follette, Nye, Frazer, and Shipstead are now reinforced by Brookhart of Iowa and Blaine of Wisconsin, with whom will stand at times, on varying issues, Borah, Couzens, and Howell, Re- publicans, and Wheeler and Dill, Democrats. It is with them that the President will have to reckon. In the hands of these men now lies the moral leader- ship of Congress. It is to them that we must look for aggressive action against the beneficiaries of corruption who will shortly be knocking at the portals of the Senate. Borah and Norris are already at work upon plans to prevent their being seated; in the face of this monstrous buying of primaries and elections the President has sat silent, or spoken mildly through the "Spokesman." It is Senator Nor- ris who, in a degree, has redeemed the reputation of his party by opposing Mr. Vare on the stump, and by calling attention to the fact that in 44 election districts in Phila- delphia not a single vote was counted for Mr. Vare's oppo- nent, William B. Wilson. These Progressives are the only Senators who dare to speak out against the rule of wealth in this country, who dare to believe that the United States merits a better fate than to be ruled by a super-government of big business, who are ready to uphold at all times the old Progressive standards which stirred and thrilled the voters from the accession of Mr. Roosevelt until this country en- tered the World War. Mr. Coolidge knows full well that he cannot buy or bribe by office these insurgents. He must also realize that they are now not only able to say what bills shall or shall not be passed; they will be in a position to challenge his every executive act with an authority they have hitherto lacked. What chance is there now for putting over a Muscle Shoals deal, save by the aid of Democratic votes? There is every prospect that the President's execu- tive acts will be more carefully studied and more freely criticized where criticism is needed than heretofore in his career. What use will the Progressive Senators make of their power? If we can appeal to them it is in the direction of urging them to unite upon a program and to map out a con- sistent policy for the next two years. They must them- selves be the opposition the country so sorely needs. It is they who must focus the spotlight of publicity upon the White House and reveal its pretenses and its shams. It is they who can now draw for the public, the public which has administered his first defeat to the President, the true por- trait of Calvin Coolidge. If they are wise they will do their utmost to prevent the President's renomination for a third term. This Massachusetts election, which has removed from the Senate one of the most harmful of our reaction- aries, should set men's tongues free in other camps also. The fear of the President's power and patronage may now pass. If so, that will be one of the greatest benefits of the election. We are, of course, not so optimistic or inexperi- enced as to believe that we shall make great progress dur- ing the next two years. But the removal of men like Butler, and Ernst, and Wadsworth, the militarist, from Washing- ton is clear gain, and the strategic position of the Progres- sives a promise of vigorous stirring in what would other- wise be an utterly arid political desert.

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 499 A Nation Gone Mad «< -r^ASCISM accepts the law and the judges only o\\ con- 1 dition that their sentence be death," announced Filipo Turati, secretary-general of the Fascist! when the new court-martial system for smashing anti-Fascism was an- nounced. This puppy-Mussolini was but remouthing the phrases which the big dog Mussolini had taught him; and all over Italy still smaller puppies are repeating the same phrases of contempt for the ordered processes of civiliza- tion. Italy today is a state whose rulers have, literally, out- lawed tl ?es, and the result is becoming plain. When a half-crazed boy fired a pistol at Mussolini in Bologna the crowd, like a mob of American lynchers, tore the lad's body i pieces; and the passionate followers revenged their leader by smashing two thousand houses and killing a hundred citizens in other towns of Italy. Thus Fascism asserted its devotion to Italy. That among the houses wrecked was the home and library of the philosopher Benedetto Ooce, per- haps the greatest living Italian, mattered not at all. Whether the hundred dead men were even members of anti- Fascist organizations no one knows ; it was enough for these bloodthirsty patriots that they killed somebody. They were following the battle-cry of their leader and treading "on the rotten corpse of liberty." Sometimes the Fascisti stop to formulate their an- archic code in so-called laws. Following the latest attempt upon the Duce's life the Cabinet Council approved a series of "emergency decrees" which, according to the Rome cor- respondent of the New York Times, included: The death penalty for anyone attempting the life of the sovereign or the head of the State, or guilty of treason, espionage, or armed rebellion; dissolution of all parties, associations, or organizations carrying on activity against the Fascist regime, with three to ten years' imprisonment for anyone attempting to reconstitute such organizations after their dissolution, and two to five years' imprisonment for anyone belonging to them or spreading their programs or doctrines; and five to fifteen years' imprisonment for anyone spreading abroad false or exaggerated news about conditions in Italy. Trials for such offenses will henceforth be conducted as courts martial. Anyone reported to have sent abroad any news of internal conditions which might "impair the credit or prestige of the State abroad" is to be turned over forth- with to a special court composed of five Fascist officers ranking as colonels or higher, with a general as presiding officer. Henceforth no news is to go out of Italy except good news; no criticism of administration, no hint of un- certainty. And, to facilitate matters still further, a new office of political investigation, free from any interference by trained police officials, is to be built up around the local offices of the Fascist militia and given a free hand to cope with the party's opponents. And, to make matters still surer, all opposition papers and periodicals are, quite sim- ply, suppressed. The old technique — which some Fascists have imported into America and used on opposition papers here — of smashing press machinery is deemed inadequate; henceforth there will be no opposition presses to smash. Now if Italy could keep her Fascists at home and con- fine their activity to killing each other, the rest of the world might stand by appalled but unconcerned for itself. But Mussolini's regime refuses to let the resl of the world alone, or to leave in peace those of Italy's citizens who have man- aged to escape abroad. Mussolini has repeatedly gone be- yond the normal limits of diplomatic courtesy in complain- ing that France gave asylum to political exiles faithful to the traditions of Mazzini and Cavour; recently we have had a hideous revelation of the machinations behind those pro- nouncements. Mussolini's agents have actually financed anti-Fascist plots in France in order to build up a case which might induce France to deliver to Fascist "justice" other opponents of the bloody regime. It was a sad mo- ment for Italian patriots when Ricciotti Garibaldi, a grand- son of the national hero, confessed that he had, with Mus- solini's gold, adopted the role of agent provocateur. Nom- inally a leader among the anti-Fascists, he was in constant consultation with Mussolini's police officials, and turned over to them the clues by which they could arrest and do to death the men whom he incited to their anti-Fascist acts. The French police believe that they have discovered worse than this: Garibaldi was in consultation with the Cata- lonian patriots who recently attempted, from French soil, to organize an armed uprising in Spain. Fascist officers took part in this affair, and the French police assert that the Fascist interest in this minor revolution was due to the hope that it would arouse France to eject all the political exiles who now find refuge in Paris. What Mr. Villard wrote of Mussolini six weeks ago, before his return from Europe (we print his What Cost Mussolini? much delayed, elsewhere in this issue) is even truer today than it was then. Wars have been fought in the past on lesser issues than this provocation of rebel- lion on the soil of friendly nations. Who can feel safe when such an unscrupulous gang reigns over one of the great nations of Europe? Such measure of practical success in administration as it may temporarily achieve only aggra- vates the danger, for it is twisted into an invitation to other nations to adopt the same methods of government by the despotic rule of an arbitrary clique. Mussolini's tech- nique in smashing opposition by ruthless decrees and ob- scene practices is borrowed in part from the worst days of medieval tyranny, but it is garnished with up-to-the- minute modernisms which appeal to the little dictators of the Balkans. For the moment the emotion seems in itself to have a splendid meaning; but the illusion fades, and the nation is left exhausted and disillusioned. After Mussolini Italy will have to go through a reconstruction more de- pressing than the black years through which Western Eu- rope has been recovering from its war-time debauch. Italians are still Italians. No nation in Europe has a richer history or more glorious traditions. But, for the moment, the nation seems to have gone mad. It tolerates the excesses of the homicidal maniacs who are Fascism's high priests, and millions of Italians today glory in them. France seems, happily, to have reacted from the threat of Fascism. But across the map of Europe Pilsudski is ap- parently attempting to reduce Poland to another one-man government — his new press laws rival Mussolini's in their severity toward men who dare to criticize their rulers. Will the recent orgy of murder in Italy, followed by the exposure of the dastardly use of Garibaldi's grandson as an agent provocateur, start a revulsion?

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500 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 Airplanes and Safety A WHOLE year of commercial flying without a single accident of any kind involving injury to passengers during the year for which he reported was the proud boast of Sir Eric Geddes at the second general meeting of the Imperial Airways, Limited, the company which has now control of all the English flying lines. To Americans who have read of three accidents in the cross-Channel flying during the past summer, Sir Eric Geddes's statement seems incredible, but it is the truth. Of the three planes that came to grief while flying between London and Paris, two were French; the third, an English one, dropped into the Channel, its passengers being rescued just in time by a trawler, so that Sir Eric Geddes can still maintain that no passenger on an Imperial Airways plane has lost his life or been injured during the last eighteen months of flying. When it is considered that the German lines comprised within the Lufthansa and its allies make a similar boast that no passenger has ever lost his life or been seriously injured while flying with them, it is obvious that aviation has made enormous strides in the direction which counts most, ex- cept for the French and Franco-Rumanian lines. The Ger- man records show that last year 142 German planes flew 3,125,000 miles, carrying more than 55,000 passengers with- out injury. During the last five months alone they have flown 2,500,000 miles and carried safely 56,000 passengers. During the last twenty-one months the British planes have flown 2,000,000 miles and carried 56,000 passe* gers. Sir Robert Donald has just commented in the Referee upon the almost complete absence of accidents in the German service, and reports that the Red Cross emergency station at the great Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin has never been called into service. Throughout his speech as chairman of the British com- pany, Sir Eric Geddes emphasized the factor of safety. The Airways standard of maintenance he declared to be the "highest in the world." lie even explained the com- pany's unfavorable financial statement, which showed an operating loss of $108,500, by the notation that it was in considerable part due to the company's voluntary with- drawal from service of one-engine airplanes and their re- placement by multi-engine machines, of greater power and capacity, which insure greater safety. Although the single- engine planes were excellent, he said, they have been taken off in order to "provide the public with a service established on the safety and reliability principles of British transport organizations, believing that the company will without doubt reap the reward of its policy." This is business wis- dom, for there can be no doubt that fear of accident still limits the use of the airplane service. There may be one series of accidents after another on the Continental rail- ways, as happened last summer, but people continue to travel by railway as a matter of course and without anxiety. Yet a single airplane accident sets everyone to gasping and injuriously affects travel on all of the airlines, not merely on the one which was responsible. Eventually, of course, every risk must be eliminated; the latest experiments undertaken by the British Air Ministry show that the day of the fool-proof airplane is not far off. Meanwhile, the Imperial Airways is steadily developing its service, believing that "the trial and adventure of air trayel are passing" — as proof of which they cite the fact that they safely transported $45,000,000 worth of bullion and precious metals. They are now making through-ticket arrangements with all connecting lines — the first aerial air- plane guide was issued last summer — since it is to the long- distance passengers that the company must look for the per- manent development of its business. It is also continuing to open up new lines, and in January, 1927, expects to begin what is in some ways the most important service it has yet undertaken — the line from Cairo to Karachi in India. To- ward this the British Government has granted an annual subsidy of $458,000. Each of the especially built airplanes will be fitted with three air-cooled motors and will be capa- ble of maintaining flight easily with two engines only. The journey will occupy at first three and a half days, but as night flying is developed it will be cut further. Sir Eric Geddes was particularly happy to announce that not only will Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for Air, be a passenger in the first Cairo-Karachi airplane, with his personal staff, but he will be accompanied by his wife. No more striking tribute, Sir Eric thought, could be given to his organization, for this will be by far the longest air jour- ney ever undertaken by any woman. Certainly public con- fidence in this form of travel is aided by such use of the lines by distinguished persons. It is this sort of support by his Government, although the subsidies it pays are only half or less than half of those paid in Germany and France, which emboldened Sir Eric Geddes to prophesy that the European services of the company will be entirely self-sup- porting during this fiscal year. Indeed he believes that if it had not been for the strike, his financial showing would have been far more satisfactory. While this marvelous development goes on abroad, America lags. There is not one established passenger line in the United States, and yet, because of its enormous dis- tances, this is the country, beyond all others, which could profit most by the new form of transportation. The small city of Halle in Germany has no less than fifteen airplane departures and arrivals in a single day. Any inhabitant of that city can leave in the morning and arrive in Paris or Zurich or Rotterdam or London or Stockholm or Copenha- gen or Hamburg or Cologne or Breslau or Warsaw on the same day. There are three direct flights to Berlin and three to Leipzig and Breslau. For the more distant points, such as Warsaw, Stockholm, and London, it is necessary, of course, to change airplanes, but they come and go with a regularity and a safety which no one can appreciate who has not trav- eled by these lines or personally examined the service they offer. Sir Robert Donald declares that the Lufthansa is tak- ing steps to obtain a monopoly of air transport toward the East and Asia. They have already, in cooperation with the Soviet Government, opened up lines to Kovno and Moscow and to Siberia, and are supplying machines to the Europa Union, which dominates Russia and Asia. They are now operating two sleepers, night planes specially built, which not only compare favorably in comfort with railroad sleep- ers, but are also equipped with moving pictures and radio sets. Why is it that American enterprise lags in this field? At least it is gratifying to read that two lines for carrying parcels are planned by the American Railway Express.

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 501 The Universe, Inc. By H. v. L. The Pilgrim "7 am sorry, sir, but I cannot show you a passport." "Mr. Debs, I hardly think it will be necessary." Bad Eggs The Cook of the Grand Hotel des League of Na- tions: "Look here, more than half of those eggs are no good. How can I make a decent omelet?" The Headwaiter: "Go ahead and try. The guests upstairs are doing the same thing." Excitement in Europe European astronomers claim to have discovered that the United States is on the planet earth. Frontiers Nightmare of the man who went to Europe for a fortnight's pleasure trip.

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502 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 The Outcome in Three States California's New Governor By GEORGE P. WEST San Francisco, November 5 FOR Governor, United States Senator, and other major offices the election in California merely confirmed the Republican primaries of August. The election of C. C. Young to succeed Friend Richardson as Governor and the reelection of Samuel M. Shortridge as United States Sena- tor were assured by the primary. Shortridge, of course, continued to be a caricature, a theatrically perfect embodi- ment of the buncombe, evasion, and subserviency which is the cynic's idea of the perfect Senator. California did it- self the honor of cutting down his normal Republican lead, although even here most of the credit goes to Dry support of his Democratic opponent rather than to any dissatisfac- tion with Shortridge's political and economic views. But part of the credit goes to John B. Elliott's stand in favor of public development of water-power and other liberal measures. The vote for Senator in 7,771 precincts out of 8,512 was 607,008 for Shortridge and 366,077 for Elliott. This is to be compared with a vote for Governor in 7,795 precincts of 755,482 for Young and 264,524 for Wardell, Democratic candidate for Governor on the same ticket with Elliott. Wardell, also a liberal, is a frank Wet. At least a hundred thousand voters in southern California regret- fully abandoned their Republican allegiance to swat Sam Shortridge for one of his few public virtues — his lack of hypocrisy on the prohibition question. In Young, California is getting what Robert L. Burgess of the San Jose Neivs aptly calls a representative of left- wing Babbittry. Mr. Young was born in New Hampshire, came to San Francisco as a child, and for fourteen years taught English there in the Lowell High School. The 1906 earthquake sent him into the real-estate business in Berke- ley, and he became an Assemblyman soon after, elected on the ticket of the Progressive and then militant Lincoln- Roosevelt League. He became Speaker of the Assembly and then Lieutenant Governor, an office he holds at the present time. As presiding officer of the House and later the Sen- ate he has been fair, intelligent, judicial, and always to be found with the Hiram W. Johnson faction in a pinch. His New England caution and conservatism are combined with a long-standing belief in humanitarian and ameliorative legislation. But he has never spoken out on the Criminal Syndicalism Act, and as presiding officer has honorably es- caped so many votes on important issues that in spite of his long public career his course is a matter of guesswork. Public interest centered largely in the initiative-and- referendum proposals, of which there were thirty on the ballot. Defeat of the Wright act providing for prohibition enforcement by local peace officers by a majority of 107,000, heralded with glee in San Francisco on Thursday, turned into a victory by something over 55,000 on Friday when returns from Los Angeles and the McPherson belt 1 to come in. Similarly Los Angeles defeated a moderate gas-tax proposal, which would have assured adequate high- way building. A measure authorizing the reading of the Bible in public schools was rejected by 70,000. California branches of the American Civil Liberties Union have already begun a campaign for repeal of the Criminal Syndicalism Act. Upton Sinclair polled 34,629 Socialist votes for Governor in 7,795 precincts. Progressive Wisconsin Wins and Loses By ROBERT S. ALLEN Madison, November U PROGRESSIVE Wisconsin emerged from its first gen- eral State election since the death of its great leader, Robert Marion La Follette, with what is on the whole an impressive victory. It sent to the United States Senate a second Progressive Senator, replacing a reactionary whom even the elder La Follette had been unable to defeat; re- turned to the House its ten Progressive Congressmen, and filled every State office, with the exception of the governor- ship, with Progressives, returning a legislature which will be controlled by liberal policies. Much ado has been made over the loss of the governorship. The reactionary press, particularly in Wisconsin, has had much to say about the disintegration of the Progressive Party. Yet with the old leader gone, with serious dissension and even desertion within the party ranks, the citizenship of the State remains steadfast in its liberalism. Even the reactionaries cannot deny that his claim of progressivism was what elected Fred R. Zimmerman to the office of governor. The defeated candidate of the Progressive leaders, Attorney General Herman L. Ekern, was defeated by 50,000 votes. Ekern polled 175,000 of the usual Progressive strength of 225,000. Some 50,000 Progressives preferred Zimmerman and voted with the conservatives, some of whom in the past had not hesitated to rate Zimmerman as a "Socialist." The question now arises, what effect will the victory of Zimmerman have on the 1928 campaign when Senator La Follette must stand for reelection? Zimmerman will undoubtedly try in the next two years to create a strong machine and there are those who believe that he will con- test for the Senatorial nomination two years hence. Should he not be the choice of the anti-La Follette wing it is under- stood that Congressman John Schafer, the only one of the Congressional delegation to support Zimmerman, will under- take the candidacy. While he did not in so many words urge Senator Lenroot's election in the campaign just ended, he did attack and denounce Governor Blaine and urge his de- feat and was crafty enough to conceal his position until after the date of filing candidacies had passed, so that it was impossible for the Progressives to oppose him with an- other candidate. If the throngs which attended Senator La Follette's meetings during the campaign can be taken as a gauge of his popularity it will not be possible to defeat him in 1928. Whenever he spoke, whether by day or by night, in cities or in the country, he was cheered by great crowds who rushed up to him after the meeting to greet him personally. Even the reactionary Milwaukee Journal spoke wonderingly of these manifestations of regard. As for Senator-elect Blaine, in view of the reports that he may follow in the footsteps of Lenroot and become con- servative in Washington, it is worth recording Senator La

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 503 Follette's opinion that "during his six years as Governor Mr. Blaine has never compromised with the reactionary forces of Wisconsin." By initiative and courage he has forced the tax-dodging corporations of this State to pay into the treasury $7,500,000 which they had endeavored to evade. He has thereby incurred the undying enmity of the powerful interests. Illinois Votes for Corruption By CHESTER C. NASH, JR. Evanston, November U ILLINOIS voted— but the net result of the election was merely an expression of opinion on four important issues. This State has proclaimed to the world that just now it does not care to purge itself of unclean politics and that the nation must act on the issue of honesty and honest government raised by the primary-campaign funds. At least this State has wearied of Volsteadism and it appears to approve the action of the church triumphant in descend- ing into petty politics. First and foremost in this sad tale is the election of Colonel Frank L. Smith, the recipient of more than $150,000 of public utility funds while a candidate and while chair- man of the Illinois Commerce Commission, to the post of United States Senator from Illinois. The electors had two alternatives, George E. Brennan, a former ward-heeler, sud- denly become Democratic king of the West, who promised to go to Washington and remove or ignore — he was never quite definite — the Eighteenth Amendment, and Hugh S. Magill, an honest independent Republican, untainted by cor- poration funds, experienced in statesmanship, and of un- questioned integrity. Colonel Smith won, the former ward- heeler was a close second, and the honest citizen a very, very bad third. The farm vote was a deciding factor. The Wi -tern Democratic boss carried Chicago and Cook County, but the out-State vote elected Colonel Smith. He polled 773,000. Brennan 717,000, and Magill only 147,000 votes. This does not, however, end the story. There are many who believe that Colonel Smith will never take his seat. Even in Republican circles they are speculating as to whether if the Colonel should be refused entrance into the Senate his successor will be Governor Len Small or Fred Lundin, the old Republican power behind the polluted Re- publican throne, who will receive this honor. Decent Re- publicans everywhere are hoping that the report of Senator Reed's investigating committee and the determination of Senator Norris to prevent Colonel Smith's taking his seat will retire Senator-elect Smith to private life. It must be pointed out in this connection that many Republicans who do not approve of Smith's action voted for him in the fear that if they voted for Magill, Brennan, whom they consider a worse type, would be swept into office. The referendum on prohibition was overwhelmingly carried by those in favor of the modification of Volsteadism. That the Wets would carry Chicago was a foregone con- clusion, but what is surprising is the fact that the country vote put its stamp of approval on modification while de- feating Brennan, the wet Senatorial candidate. Finally, the election was graphic evidence of the church's adoption of petty politics. The organized church, represented by the Anti-Saloon League, backed the corpora- tion-fed, "dry" Republican; the unorganized church, in the persons of a few isolated, conscientious leaders, backed honesty, integrity, and public service. The dollar won. It has thrown the church openly and unqualifiedly into an unsavory brand of politics and the future career of this new "bloc" may be watched with interest. What Cost Mussolini? By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD Paris, September 27 SAID an important American diplomat the other day: "I am little interested in what returning Americans tell me about the great improvement in outward condi- tions in Italy — that the trains are running on time, that the country has been cleaned up, that people are work- ing, that there are law and order. Any tyrant can ac- complish that. What I should like to know is what price Italy will pay for Mussolini about twenty-five or thirty years from now." The truth is, of course, that one can pay far too high a price for outward efficiency and order. Yesterday I met a tourist just in from Rome who is en- thusiastic in his praise of the new Italian regime. He re- cited with the greatest satisfaction that the friend with whom he is traveling was fined twenty lire on a train near Milan because an official came through the car and found that the American had his shoes on the seat opposite. "And the streets! You should see how clean they are and how dirty they used to be!" So it goes on every hand here in Paris. American worshipers of efficiency, of the god of getting things done, as well as our captains of finance and industry, make the air resound with paeans of praise for the man who "has put everybody to work and saved Italy from Bolshevism." It never occurs to them to ask the price that is paid for these things. These adulators of Mussolini never look below the sur- face. Is it true that Mussolini saved Italy from Bolshe- vism? There are many to dispute it. It is a slogan, a trade-mark, a catchword, and so it is eagerly snapped up. Ask people for particulars and they tell you of the attempt of the automobile workers and others to control their fac- tories in Turin, and speak of the bomb explosion in the Diana Theater in Milan. Do they inquire whether every- body is really at work in Italy, and if so, how many days a year and at what rates of pay? No, indeed. The mere statement suffices. Does it ever occur to them to ask how many men are in prison as a result of Fascist activities, with or without charges being filed against them? Do they stop to inquire into Mussolini's personal record? Of course they don't do any of these things. If they did they would find that it is only six years since Mussolini was openly preaching anarchy and the destruction of all gov- ernment; on the 6th of April, 1920, twelve months and eighteen days after the founding of Fascism, he wrote in his own paper, II Popolo a" Italia: "Down with the state in all its forms and incarnations. ... To us there remains

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504 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 only the consoling religion of anarchy." Probably 10,000 persons are in jail for having offended Fascism in one way or another, among them an Englishman who got eight months for saying in a restaurant, among other things, that he was tired of seeing Mussolini's "mug" on every wall. Do they ever stop to inquire, these enthusiastic Americans, as to the sources of their news about what Mussolini is doing and saying? Are they aware that the strictest kind of censorship exists in Italy, and that any man who criticizes the Dictator can be sent to jail for thirty months? Are they aware that Mussolini's speech or utterance, before being printed, has usually been revised and edited by the official press bureau? If they have heard that the entire opposition press has been suppressed in Italy, they have forgotten it. They do not trouble to ascertain that no Italian daily dares to print an account of such a thing as the recent alleged attempt* upon the life of Mussolini until the story has been written precisely as Mussolini desires it to be told. They assume that Italy is content and happy because they hear no pro- tests against what is going on, and they are not aware that he who criticizes the Dictator can immediately be sent to jail for months — jailed immediately with no possibility of rescue by a habeas corpus proceeding, or any other. In their laudation of Mussolini's law and order they remain in ignorance of the fact that the whole Italian judicial system smacks of the Middle Ages and is utilized by the Dictator to crush anyone who opposes his will. If they read of Italians of the highest standing, like Professor Salvemini, being deprived of their citizenship and all their property merely because of daring to criticize the des- pot, these Americans are not interested — no more than are our great financiers who rise at public luncheons and "bow down before the solemn and majestic and lonely figure of Mussolini." They do not look into the actual conditions of Italian finance and inquire, among many other things, why it is that the Government is having millions advanced to itself by the treasury with the distinct statement that, by virtue of a royal decree of June last, it shall not account for these millions. Finally, these Americans never take the time to inquire why it is that the Vatican is openly turning its guns upon Fascism, or to ascertain just what is the condition of the agricultural workers under the Mussolini regime. The indisputable facts as to the murder of Matteotti they do not care to know, or they pass the incident over as a trifling peccadillo of friends of the and lonely and majestic figure. The diplomat I quoted is right. The interesting thing is not what Mussolini may achieve in the six months or six years that may yet be his, but what is the price for this horrible strangling of liberty, this destruction of every vestige of democratic government, this brutal en- slaving of a people for the exaltation of a megalomaniac who, in his speeches at least, is full brother to the ex- Kaiser. All Europe today is anxious as to what he may do tomorrow in international relations. He nearly wrecked the League of Nations three years ago by his assault on Corfu. His attacks upon Germany in regard to the agita- tion over the Tyrol and upon France for granting the right of political asylum to Italian refugees are samples of the way he keeps the chancelleries of Europe in turmoil. No one knows where he will break out next, or how. He is as adept in rattling the saber in its scabbard as was the • This refers to the fifth attempt of September 11. Kaiser. Fascist leaders talk recklessly of war with Turkey or even with France. The danger is that in order to save himself he may resort to arms like other pinchbeck Napo- leons. Meanwhile, he is the enfant terrible of Europe and all Europe is paying for him in increased nervous tension and uncertainty lest it pay also a fearful price in blood. Why has France placed three more divisions on the Italian boundary? Whenever Mussolini falls, Italy will have to pay the piper. It will be lucky if it does not find its finances com- pletely wrecked and its future heavily mortgaged. It will have laboriously to reconstruct the whole financial and economic structure of the state and the institutions of democracy which Mussolini has pulled down. It will have to revive the faith of the people in the processes of democracy. It will have to end government by fiat, gov- ernment by passion, government by prejudice, government by corruption, government by brute force. It will find a people disappointed, disillusioned, and with much less cour- age for undertaking the remodeling of the state. At least the thousands of imprisoned political victims of the great and lonely and majestic figure will be released. The miseries and sufferings caused by the tyrant can never be undone or compensated for. But there can be a return to normal and civilized government even though it be less efficient on the surface. The alternative of such a people living for generations under the domination of a dictator and his successors is simply unthinkable. The world has its cycles of reaction, but it has also its cycles of revolution and evolution. For Americans Mussolini is serving an extraordi- narily useful purpose. You can measure a man's devotion to the democratic ideal and his belief in America's prin- ciples of government by the attitude that he takes toward Mussolini. If with some knowledge of what is actually hap- pening in Italy an American still prefers the Mussolini type of government, he is plainly disloyal to our American po- litical principles. Curiously enough, the adorers of Musso- lini include primarily those who shouted loudest for war in order to make the world safe for democracy. They are the ones who cry most loudly against the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks in Russia at the moment they laud to the skies the dictatorship of a handful of Fascists. If the Bol- sheviks should prove as successful outwardly as Mussolini, we may yet have our captains of industry and our casual tourists singing the praise of the men who may then have brought "order out of chaos" in Russia. Incidentally these American adorers of Mussolini have no time to waste on such happenings as the indictment of two of the Hard- ing Cabinet for corruption in office. Why should they? Many of them subscribed to the eight-hundred-thousand- dollar memorial to the man who gave America the crook- edest Cabinet in the history of the American Presidency. And they see nothing inharmonious in their ostentatious worship of the American Constitution and form of govern- ment and their loud-mouthed admiration for the majestic figure in Rome. They support public-school contests in oratory upon the subject of our Constitution and the ad- vantages of our Congress over all others, while they whoop for joy when they hear that Mussolini has driven another nail into the coffin of Italian representative government. Let us hope that when the inevitable crash comes in Italy they will recognize the folly of their present position in supporting what a Fascist friend of mine, with uninten- tional humor, calls the "superdemocracy of Mussolini."

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Nov. 17, 192G] The Nation 505 Three Black Women By REBECCA HOURWICII Christina WITH careless arrogance, a swish of running tires, and a swirl of car that scattered all the naked children, the Chief Magistrate of Zululand and his party stopped at the Mahashini kraal, the royal kraal of Solomon Dinizulu, King of the Zulus. Solemn awe, respect bordering on sus- picion and fear, curiosity, and delight at strange visitors Stamped all visible faces. One unruffled woman leaned against a fence, did not alter her position, watched all pro- ceedings dispassionately, and registered a cynical amuse- ment. Her attitude was more than sophisticated; it was regally poised. "That," said Chief Magistrate Fynney, without waiting to be asked, "is Christina!" If Christina's bearing had failed to impress the tone of the Chief Magistrate was conclusive. Christina was a personage! At close range she was charming, gracious, the perfect hostess in her blue Mother Hubbard and black shrouded head. For Christina garbed her body and soul in Christianity; but her spirit remained indomitable Zulu. That was her tragedy. Christina learned at the mission church that Chris- tians marry the men of their choice. Perhaps that was why she smiled and looked with favor on John, and loved John, a common sweep of the kraal. Meanwhile, Christina, sixteen, comely and shapely, was the subject of wily specula- tion among the elders of the tribe. Many a day they de- liberated to which house they would affiance Christina, the prize of the tribe. After considerable negotiation a suit- ably important and well-placed groom was found, and the marriage arranged. Cetewayo, King of the mighty Zulus, whose word was law in the tribe, sent for his daughter Christina and informed her of the forthcoming marriage. Christina announced she was a Christian and would marry only the man of her choice, John the common sweep. Cetewayo laughed at even the suggestion of such an alliance. John or no one was Christina's final word. But as days went by, and Christina remained obdurate despite the progress of arrangements for the marriage, Cetewayo, grim and threatening, endeavored to explain that a daughter of the royal house of Zulu can only marry a man of noble blood, a man of her own or approximate rank. When Christina pined and sighed as do all lovesick maidens regardless of the color of their skins, Christina's malady and the reason for it came to the attention of the local missionary. "What nonsense is this, Christina?" he asked. "You and John are fine young people, sturdy, honorable, and faithful members of the church. You will make a fine young couple. Leave the kraal; I will find work for you. Let me marry you." "You don't understand," Christina assured him. "A Zulu cannot marry without the consent of the Zulu king. Win my father's consent, and John and I will be able to marry." Promptly the local missionary visited Cetewayo and urged the marriage of Christina and John, but with no UCCess. Other missionaries heard of Christina's and John's romance, and went of their own accord to visit Cetewayo to win his consent to the marriage, but to one and all Cetewayo gave the same answer: "A daughter and sister of Zulu kings cannot marry a commoner." Finally the Bishop heard of Christina and John and of their obstacle to happiness. "This is silly business and must end," said the Bishop, and forthwith ordered the marriage of Christina and John. Again Christina ex- plained. "I want to marry John, and John wants to marry me, but I cannot marry without the consent of my king. Don't order me to marry; win the consent of my king." So the Bishop journeyed to call upon the King of the Zulus. And the King of the Zulus, who is always a man well versed in the niceties of rank, appreciated the position of a dictator respected in the land of the ruling whites. He bowed before the Bishop, thanked him humbly for the honor conferred by the visit, showed him every courtesy of the kraal, and showered him with beadwork and skins. Grace- fully and tactfully he expressed his regrets not to be able to grant the Bishop's request, but surely the Bishop would understand that laxity in the case of the King's daughter would be subservient of discipline to all the sons and daughters of the tribe? The Bishop's visit closed the church's active interest in the affairs of Christina and John. Cetewayo died, and his son Dinizulu ruled in his stead. Christina appealed in vain to her brother. Dinizulu, too, died, while Christina and John remained unmarried. Solo- mon, Christina's nephew, many years her junior, now reigned. Solomon wears trig gabardine uniforms and a cocked military cap, and drives about in high-powered auto- mobiles. It is rumored that Solomon does not take ancient tribal laws without a trace of humor. Christina appealed to him. Solomon assured Christina that his sympathy was with her; that he would like to see her happy, but it could not be done at the sacrifice of respect for law and order: certain traditions had to be maintained. Did he not have forty wives, a strain on his time and attention, because the tribe expected it of him? Members of the royal family must bow to custom and put the interests of the tribe first. Christina had made a mistake, but it was not too late, for though she was getting old a good husband would be found for her; she had better forget .John. Christina ceased ask- ing permission to marry. When I saw Christina she was nearly fifty. A few weeks before John had died. Neither one of them had ever married. Christina, a daughter of the ancient house of Zulu, whose basic creed is be fruitful and multiply, had foregone the pleasure and prestige of family life. She had remained true to her lover, for she had loved no one else; she had remained faithful to her church, for she had refused to marry except at the dictates of her heart; she had re- mained loyal to her people, for she had refused to marry without the consent of her King.

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506 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 But not even Christina realized that her loyalty paled in significance beside her supreme independence, that she had pitted her own sense of right, and stood out alone against the most highly organized institutions of the country in which she had been born, the Christian church and the Zulu state. Mrs. Tanga Jabavu "TT must be a little difficult to be the wife of the only A native professor in Africa," I ventured. "Oh, Mrs. Jabavu makes life difficult for herself. She has many queer ideas, curious whims and notions. She is very eccentric, and I fear will ruin Jabavu's career. She is spoiled, ruined by undigested education in England. She got a lot of notions over there about what she calls the emancipation of women. Last year, when her child was i nly a baby, she left it and went to study in England. A married woman ! She does not even see the absurdity of it." The heavy, perspiring missionary paused, permitted himself a covert glance from my ankle to my knee, and continued with malignant assurance, poorly disguised by assumed hesitation. "You will pardon me, but I feel that women of Mrs. Tanga Jabavu's age, of your age, ought to be giving the flower of their youth to insuring the progress of the race, to future generations. I do not think those are the years that a woman can afford to be away from her husband." The missionary was only one of many who complained to me about the ridiculous Mrs. Tanga Jabavu. Mrs. Jabavu was at home when I came to sec her. Her home was a little larger than the average rondovel occupied by natives, but it was one nevertheless: a one-room, round, whitewashed, mud-and-plaster, thatch-roof hut, nestled among the well-built roomy homes of other professors. The stone floor and window casings were features unknown to most native huts; nor did the difference end there. There were iron cots, curtains, a kitchenette, a desk with drawers at either end, a typewriter, and a general air of ascetic neatness. On a crude wooden chair, the light from the window streaming in on her eager, mobile face, Mrs. Jabavu sat leaning toward me. Tensely, apprehensively, she waited for me to speak. When I told her I wanted to hear about native women she brightened, but it was only after I had told her a little about myself, that 1, too, was married and had a little girl, that I won her confidence. "You are traveling here lor your work, alone, and you left your little girl and husband at home? Maybe, then, you will understand about me." I urged her to talk about herself, which she did, simply and factually. "1 was teaching here at Lovedale Institute, where I had once been a pupil, when 1 became engaged to Pro- fessor Jabavu. We both felt I could be more useful if I spent a year studying abroad. So I went to Birmingham to a Quaker settlement and specialized in religious work and music. Religious work was familiar to me because my father is a Presbyterian minister, due to Lovedale inlluence. In 191G I returned and Professor Jabavu and I were married. In 1922, though I was married and had a child, 1 went back to Birmingham and spent two years there. I have only recently come back. "You see I needed so much more studying. I needed bookkeeping, typing, practical subjects, and English, to learn to write; and ever so much more music. I want to record our music, for it is through music that we can reach our people. And it is also through music that we can teach them self-respect, that they have a culture of their own. "My husband edits a Xosa-English weekly which has a woman's supplement. I wanted that supplement to mean something to native women as well as native men. All the months that I studied it was fitness to conduct that depart- ment that I had in mind. "Our population must prepare themselves for wider political life. If our women remain unprepared they will drag the men and the race to their level, for no race is higher than its women. And our women! Yrou cannot imagine, you cannot conceive the subjection of our women. It is not that even the most educated are all held down to housekeeping. It is not that they have no financial inde- pendence. These are ills common enough among Euro- peans. It is that our women are slaves, with no control over their children, their homes, or their bodies. They must bow absolutely to the will of the men. "The mines, the increase of industrial life, greater educational opportunities have widened the natives' sphere, taken them out of the kraal. Our women have not kept pace with the change, but they shall. We women must help each other rise." Time passed and Mrs. Jabavu held me in a spell; behind her hovered the ghosts of millions of Bantu women ; she was their spokesman. Mrs. Jabavu had no traditions of individual thought, activity, or independence for the women of her own race. There are no black women in history. Rather, she could look back upon centuries of unbroken bondage. She had neither cooperation nor encouragement from members of her own race, or other races, for the blazing of a trail is lonesome work. Yet she holds to her the vision of free black women. Mrs. Jabavu is that rare thing among women, a brave and consistent feminist. Sanni IT was Sunday morning at St. Matthew's Mission in the hills of the Ciskei. The little red brick chapel tolled its bell, and stood beckoningly open to the natives of the countryside. Specks of black and white moved toward the organ strains from every direction. Closer and closer they came, stiff and awkward, clumsily aware of shoes donned but once a week at the nearest bend before the church boundary. In staid black suits, starched white blouses, limp black skirts, thick black kerchief hoods, English prayer-books perched precariously atop heads, sedately they filed by. Gradually we left them behind, as a Xosa priest and 1 pressed on to a distant kraal for outdoor services. Our congregation waited for us under a low spreading tree, the closely huddled thatched huts in the background. Seated in a semi-circle the men took one side of the tree, the women the other. Clothes determined the progress of con- version in the community: half-nakedness, beads, and color- ful trappings — heathens living in darkness; partially clothed in European clothes — a self-conscious groping toward Chris- tianity; absence of all ornaments, in complete European ait ire of drab tone — complete devotion to Christianity.

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 507 There were present men, women, and children in all stages of darkness and light, but self-conscious Christians predominated, judging by the gleam of shiny white collars in the sharp sunlight. Only the old chief, grizzly and gray, crouched in the attitude of Rodin's thinker on the edge of the group, appeared wary of the white man's God, The women were for the most part absorbed in cuddling and nursing roly-poly brown lumps. Ponderously and pompously the young priest con ' his service. After him other pompous youths offered up prayer in holy self-righteousness and dispelled the charm of hot drowsy hills at mid morning. Even the petted babies grew bored and restless. Then, when everyone was tired, and all the men were finished, a woman asked permission to lead in prayer. Suddenly, on that gentle shaded hill, five miles from a mission station, forty miles from a railroad station, in the heart of a primitive country, a woman's voice pealed forth in prayer. There was nothing dramatic about her attitude. A simple figure in the conventional mark of native Chris- tianity, a blue Mother Hubbard wrapper hung loose from the shoulders hiding the lines of the form, a tight black ker- chief binding the head. Neither swaying nor chanting nor moaning, nor assuming excessive dignity to show her rise above her previous heathen state, on bent knee, in the accepted and familiar attitude of Christian prayer, she prayed in Xosa. And never before or since have I heard such a prayer, such real prayer. It was as if everything grew still and shrank before the passion and fervor of one racked but hopeful human being. She was no longer a lone woman in prayer, but a symbol of something fine and beautiful, some- thing out of human grasp. Later that morning as the Xosa priest and I were re- turning I asked him: "What did the woman pray about?" The priest looked a little abstracted, as if he were re- calling a trivial incident hard to remember, and briefly replied: "Oh! That woman? Oh, she. Oh, Sanni. Oh, she was praying for her sons and other mothers' sons at the mines in Johannesburg." mistakes. What could be more enjoyably modern than the old rendering of Genesis 3:21, "And the Lord God made Adam and his wife some breeches"? There ai r in- stances. THE Drifter recalls a good story to] 1 Sandburg in a public lecture, one of his ".■ Two Sena- tors, said the tousle-headed Swede, were j about for- words and their ability to understand them. The more confident of the two laid a wager of ten dollars that he would translate any poser put by the other. T :er was accepted. After a minute's hesitation the problem was stated: "What is the meaning of 'Vox populi, vox dei' "? A smile of triumph spread over the challenger's face. " 'Vox populi, vox dei' — you want to know what that means? Well, sir, know then that 'Vox populi, vox dei,' being inter- preted, means 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' " And he took the money he had won, which the other, being an honest if unlearned loser, relinquished with- out protest. EVEN lawyers may at times contribute to the treasury of translations. Not many years back a mighty Goliath of an attorney, armed with the poisoned sword of war hysteria, was trying to slay a valiant David, a pacifist friend of the Drifter. In keeping with the times, some Ger- man letters were purloined from the friend's files and pre- sented at the trial. Like a jumping-jack popping from his box, the lawyer dramatically demanded: "Who is Mr. Gruss?" Confusion. "Yes, Mr. Gruss. You have many letters from him." "I have not. I know no such person." "Don't know him? Why here are a dozen letters from him — from Germany — all signed H. Gruss." Confusion worse confounded. Finally the defendant asked to see the letters and sure enough there it was at the end of every one, "Herzlichen Gruss," with no further signature. With a smile he passed a German dictionary to the attorney, who had, at least, vindicated his solid Americanism. The Drifter In the Driftway THE way of the translator is hard. He may be a most meticulous philologist who talks glibly about Grimm's law and Verner's law. Or he may be like the old school- master, a wounded soldier retired to teaching, who would strike a snag in every second line and decide "to skip that devil." One language is quite sufficient. In fact, it may be too much. The Drifter remembers an evening in Colorado when a handsome sign by the roadside invited him to come in and eat some "tender stakes." And again, he recalls an advertisement announcing that "an errant girl" was wanted. The Drifter blames no one. What with tacks and tax, die and dye, beer and bier, and a thousand similar puzzlers, he has never wondered at those who found themselves lost in the labyrinthian mazes of one language. And there are 3,424 languages. THERE have been in all ages ingenious translators who have wrestled with this host of tongues. Nor does the Drifter berate them too severely for any oddities or even Correspondence Delayed News From Arizona (By Telegram) To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: George Hunt, your faithful subscriber, was elected Governor of Arizona for his sixth term, defeating E. S. Clark, Republican, by about three hundred votes. Carl Hayden, Demo- crat, beat Cameron for United States Senator by a large majority. Cameron's eleventh-hour slush-fund charge was a ghastly flare-back. It has made Cameron ridiculous. Senator King, now in Los Angeles conducting the investigation, finds no evidence that money was sent from California to Arizona to influence the election. Lewis Douglas, Democrat, the able and progressive son of James Douglas, Arizona's chief millionah-e and an antagonist of both Hunt and Cameron, was elected by a large majority over Judge Baughn, Republican. This made it a sweeping Democratic victory throughout the State. Hunt was opposed most bitterly by the reactionaries of both parties and was almost fatally handicapped because Van Dyke, editor of the Miami Silver Belt, the only Hunt daily in the State, was the ardent and chief supporter of Cameron. Pasadena, Cat, November 9 Frank C. Lockwood

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508 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 Passaic Wants Help! To the Editor of The Nation: Sib: The stirring article called Disaster Loves Workers, by Hollace Ransdell, in your issue of November 3 brings dra- matically to the public's attention the plight of the Passaic tex- tile strikers who were arrested on a most obvious frame-up. Since this committee was organized at the commencement of the strike we have had information of countless cases where the Passaic police have attacked and jailed strikers and their sympathizers at the behest of the mill-owners. Women mem- bers of the committee were attacked and beaten by the police blocks away from any mill. While the police have been cautious in their treatment of those who have come into Passaic from out of town they have been merciless to the strikers, as the recent arrests for so-called "bomb outrages" indicate. Lovers of freedom must not forget Passaic and the glorious ten-months' struggle that the workers have been waging there. There is still desperate need for food and clothing for the • -omen and children. Gifts of money or clothes made to this committee are distributed at no overhead cost to the neediest cases. Readers of The Nation have responded generously in the past to our appeals. We know that they will not permit hunger or suffering to break this strike. Send clothing or checks to me at Room 638, 799 Broadway, New York City. New York, November 3 Clarina Miciielson, Secretary, Emergency Committee for Strikers' Relief Juflt^e Bausman Judges To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Though a Democrat all my life I can see no reason for upbraiding President Coolidge for his stand in respect to the war debts, and I am very sorry to hear the genial editor of The Nation using the language of an ill-humored English- man that we are "exacting the last penny" from our former Allies. This is a gross exaggeration, the English having ad- justed on the basis of about three-quarters, the Italians on the basis of one-fourth, and the French refusing to settle on any basis at all. As to the latter country, our exasperation is increased by the fact that what we are asking her to repay is merely what we advanced after the armistice, plus an almost incredible quantity of food and munitions which she could turn into cash. "\cs, you are right in saying that our country is singularly united on this question. I have seldom seen the mass of the people rmined, and he must be a strange man who will say that we are not a generous people. We are practically united on this question of getting not "the last penny" but as much as our ungrateful debtors can pay. The reasons are plain to all exce] who sojourn in Europe and fall under the spell of Americans and American bankers abroad. We asked nothing as spoils of war and the Allies got everything they could lay their hands on, though they charged us for every- thing and paid us for nothing. They deceived us in ever;, conceivable way by incredible propaganda to get us into the war, and this has added gradually to the popular resentment. As to the spoils of war, Mesopotamia alone will reimburse Greai Britain. Mesopotamia is indeed a prize, gloriously fitted for agriculture and apparently abounding in petroleum. Tan- ganyika, enormously rich in minerals and tropical products and five times the size of Pennsylvania, will never be released from mandate, but must be considered forever the property of the English, who received the mandate. Great Britain comes out of the war mistress of the seas, having completely outwitted us at the Washington Disarmament Conference, where again we showed an astounding liberality in ttie face of the best pro- fessional military advice. The common sense of the people I have always believed in. Common sense told us to stay out of the war, but the people were lashed into it by a fury of propaganda from those who now refuse to pay what they borrowed. Common sense tells us today to lift from the backs of our own taxpayers a sub- stantial part of what was deliberately borrowed from us. Nor are Americans altogether stupid. They are not insensible to the fact that every dollar we release to the Europeans will go to armaments to increase their power over us, and that the real origin of all this controversy is not the repayment of the debts but the envy aroused by our sudden expansion into foreign trade. We may have to pay a price for our standing up at last for some of our rights, but at any rate we will not be bullied. The sudden volley of abuse against us in Great Britain was wholly unprovoked. Their government had made no pro- posal for a reduction of the debt. It is not possible for them to say that they have made a new proposal to our country that has been rejected. They prefer, apparently, a campaign of propaganda. The Allies, and principally Great Britain, got by the war an enormous proportion of the remaining raw materials of the earth, and for these, as in the case of rubber, we shall have to pay a good round price, some of them in the event of war being cut off from us entirely by the powerful fleets of Britain. Seattle, Washington, October 25 Frederick Bausman The Cardinals on Sunday To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your editorial paragraph on the St. Louis "Cardi- nals" makes us Catholics laugh. Does any one suppose we cared a tinker's curse whether the Philadelphia Ledger called them "Cardinals" or not? Nor would the composite picture of the St. Louis team wearing a cardinal's hat shock even a sister of charity. Thank heaven, we have a sense of humor. To illustrate our attitude on such matters, here is a little gag that went the rounds among us (referring to the Sunday game of the series) : "Say, Mac, I hear the Pope is trying to stop the game today." "Stop the game, Mike — but what has the Pope got to do with it?" "Shure, he don't want the Cardinals to be playing on Sunday." Sun Diego, California, Octobi E. H. Whelan Contributors to This Issue George P. West has contributed several articles to The Nation on events in California. ROBERT S. Ai.LEN of the Christian Science Monitor spent the weeks preceding the election in Wisconsin. Chester C. Nash, Jr., who writes from Evanston, Illinois, is associate editor of the National Underwriter. OSWALD Garrison Villard has just returned from Europe. REBECCA HOURWICH gathered the material for Three Black Women in Africa. ROBERT GRAVES is an English poet, and the author of "Country Sentiment," "Whipperginny," and other volumes. Allen Tate is a poet and critic of New York. ROBERT Wolf is the author of the novel "Springboard," published this fall. PAUL Weiss is a contributor of philosophical articles to the current magazines. H. E. Buciiholz is the author of "U. S.," recently re- viewed in The Nation. Henrietta Straus, for several years a writer on music for The Nation, is preparing a book for publication.

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Books, Music, Plays — .— Pure Death By ROBERT GRAVES This I concealed, Death is terrible to me, To no man more so, naturally, And, at last, I have rid my natural terror Of every comfortable philosopher Or tall dark doctor of Divinity: Death stands again in his true rank and order. Therefore it was, when between you and me Giving presents became a malady, The exchange increasing surplus on each side Till there was nothing but ungivable pride That was not forgiven; and this degree Called a conclusion not to be denied, That we at last bethought ourselves, made shift And simultaneously the final gift Gave: each with shaking hands unlocks The sinister long brass-bound coffin-box, Unwraps pure Death, with that astonishment Which greeted our first love-abandonment. Tiresias Transition. By Edwin Muir. The Viking Press. $2. MR. MUIR is now the author of three volumes of interests ing and important criticism. His purpose in the first two books, "We Moderns" and "Latitudes," was to organize a system of personal attitudes into a coherent Weltansclmuung, an ordered vision of the chaotic contemporary situation. The result was interesting because it emerged through the terms of the chaos itself — the decadent philosophy of idealism. In the present volume Mr. Muir proves that his version of con- temporary thought was not only philosophically interesting but important for literary criticism. The attitudes of the amateur metaphysician become the principles of judgment of the critic; these principles are important because they enable Mr. Muir to interpret modern writers with taste, depth, and perspective. He supports the validity of his earlier statement of the con- temporary problem with the act of criticism itself, with a com- prehensive, if somewhat personally interpretative, discussion of nine of the most significant writers of our time: Joyce, Law- rence, Huxley, Mrs. Woolf, Stephen Hudson, Strachey, Eliot, Miss Sitwell, and Graves. Mr. Muir's literary competence is enormous, but the comprehensiveness of his treatment is never- theless to be wondered at in an age of dissociated intelligences. As a philosophical critic Mr. Muir sees that the present age is crucial for literature. It is an age of transition. The traditional mythology of European culture has been discredited by practitioners of the historical method, like Frazer and Rivers, and by the encroaching world of scientific hypothesis. We stand, as Mr. Eliot's Tiresias stands, "throbbing between two lives"; our mythology is dead and we have not yet achieved a substitute for it out of the world-picture of modern science. For the pre-condition of all literature is a body of mythology to which the life-attitudes can respond freely as wholes. The traditional mythologies supported the spiritual equilibrium of man by rendering his origins sublime; but this is obviously no longer possible. The task of poets, then, in the present des- peration, which became acute about the time of Ibsen and Baudelaire, is not the impossible resurrection of the myth but the constraction of new myths which "idealize man's goal." The optimism is derivative of Nietzsche. The intellectual in- tegrity of the optimism doesn't exist. This conclusion appeared in Mr. Muir's first volume, but it is still his solution of the contemporary problem. He quotes with approval Wordsworth's belief that as soon as the world cience becomes somehow as "familiar" as the primitive world of religious myth, our cultural integrity and our litera- ture will be restored. There has always been a certain mean- ness of intellect in this belief, for it ignores the hopeless breach between the abstractionism of science, however familiar this may become, and the object itself, for which the abstraction stands and to which it is the business of poets to return. There is enough truth in Mr. Muir's romantic solution to make it look plausible; that is, it registers dissatisfaction with science as it is as the material of poetry; it hopes in some obscure way to submit science to a mysterious change and transfigure it. This is philosophical insight overreaching itself — the defect in rationality of romanticism. For Arnold's judgment that the romantic poets "did not know enough" comes to this: that their rational equipment, their "ideas," was not adequate to the materials of the age; the scientific spirit, which they resisted, was the spirit into whose hands they played by failing to under- stand it. It was in this spirit that the post-Kantians generally and Coleridge in English criticism made idealism the official philosophy of romanticism. From this philosophical move- ment most of the merely literary intelligences up to the present time derive their terms, and hence their confusion. The idealistic antithesis necessity versus freedom and its bedfellow, appearance versus reality, run all through Mr. Muir's thought. For although on occasion he laughs at the philosophers (which is neither one thing nor another), he yet proceeds, often perhaps without knowing it, with many of their assumptions. These seem to him to possess the finality of categories. Some of Mr. Muir's most interesting judgments inhere in a distinction between struggling with the spirit of the age and escaping from it: a writer struggles through appear- ance to reality or attempts to reject appearance altogether. The distinction yields illuminating results in the discussions of Eliot, Lawrence, and Graves; but it is capable of misleading Mr. Muir on his own ground. A case in point is his account of the brothel scene in "Ulysses." The remarks appear to be strictly analytical; they are actually the extension and support of a personal viewpoint. The brothel scene, says Mr. Muir, fails to release us from our oppressions; "it is rather a gigantic attempt to attain release." Thus Mr. Muir converts the brothel scene into a commentary on his own metaphysic. He sets up the straw man of "release," then proves that Joyce is not the straw man. Valuable as nearly all of Mr. Muir's judgments are, it must be pointed out that they are philosophical, not literary criticism; they interpret a given work to Mr. Muir him- self; they do not isolate and expose its properties. Mr. Muir further articulates his philosophical requirements of literature by means of Arnold's criterion, "the criticism of life." He has a shrewdness not unlike Arnold's, and he has more than Arnold's sensitiveness to writing which philosophic- ally perplexes him; for example, Virginia Woolf 's classicism. However profoundly we may dissent from his main assump- tions, he is the only critic who has succeeded in grasping the modern situation as a whole. Allen Tate Chiefly Debits Debits and Credits. By Rudyard Kipling. Doubleday, Page and Company. $2. /"~\NE never gets over any of one's loves, and this is no less ^S true in literature than it is in life. Unless, through a mistaken impulse of romance, one returns years later to re- visit the beloved. That is a very different thing from dwelling

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510 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 on the beloved's early photographs. Eudyard Kipling was to me, during the years from sixteen to twenty-one, one of three or four major literary enthusiasms, and to this day, when I re- read "Kim" or "The Day's Work" or certain of the stories in "Puck of Pook's Hill," he seems to me the leading Edwardian writer of rhythmic English prose, and the greatest master of the cooked short story. I say the cooked short story with intention. Joyce's "Ivy Day in the Committee Koom" or "The Dead," Hemingway's "Cat in the Kain," Bunin's "The Gentleman from San Fran- cisco," Tchekhov's "The Darling" belong to an entirely different genre. Kipling's short stories are as artificially constructed as an Elizabethan play — there is a beginning, a middle, and an ending, quite in the classic manner, an introduction, a cli- max, and all that, just as we were taught to analyze in school. Modern short stories, the best of them, are bits of crystallized moods — they can no more be analyzed than can a lyric poem. But Kipling is dramatic rather than lyric, even when, as in "They" or "Steam Tactics" or the priceless "My Sunday at Home," his purpose is primarily a simple job of landscape painting. In this form of the short story that is so much less closely related to the novel than to the play — a narrow and exagger- ated situation, dragged out of its context, and given a finality that exists nowhere in life — I think Kipling has never been excelled. For a certain kind of material, a certain type of healthy objective art, the manner which he created and brought to perfection seems to have a peculiar and ultimate fitness. Curiously enough this tight little Anglo-Indian provincial, this idolater of the stool-pigeon and the spy (in "Kim"), this hater of the organized worker (in "A Walking Delegate" and "The Mother Hive"), this worshiper of the militarist and the profiteer (in almost everything he ever wrote — it is superfluous to quote chapter and verse) finds his closest present resemblance in the Communist writers of the Soviet. This is a sight to make the gods laugh. But if you doubt it, compare "The Lawbreakers" in "Flying Osip" with that other boy-scout story, "The Army of a Dream." Compare "A Mere Trifle" with "His Chance in Life." I am not maintaining that Seifulina and Zozulya have ever read Kipling — probably they have not — but Com- munist art is active, extrovert, concerned with externals, and finds its natural parallel in the work of the man who admired Cecil Rhodes. Possibly all types of patriotic art tend to run in the same channels, regardless of the particular content of the patriotic creed. Certain it is that the Communist writers have turned toward a form that is essentially Kipling's, in aban- doning the psychological tradition of their past. It is because Kipling was such an admirable interpreter of his age, the age of imperialism which held within its womb the seeds of this one, that lie achieved both his past vitality and his present extinction. There is no truth in the doctrine that good art must embody valid social theories. Great art is art that is written with conviction, regardless of how prepos- terous may be the lies the artist tells. But it. is difiicult to write with conviction if one is isolated from the currents of one's day. It is difficult, but not impossible. Blake did it., Stendhal did it, Emily Dickinson did it — all of them were out of harmony with the spirit of their time. To be sure their re- moteness from their age lay in the fact that they were ahead of it. When one is passed by one's age and left behind it, one is in a different case. Like Shaw, like Gorki, like so many of our young moderns, Kipling no longer believes in what he writes, and this is the one essential for third-rate work. It is better in such a case to be too stupid to realize one's obsolescence, but it is difficult to be a first-rate artist and be stupid enough. The lack of assurance in the present volume sticks out on every page. "The United Idolaters" is a piece of inept self- plagiarism whose only genuine line is its footnote: "See Stalky and Co." "The Prophet and the Country" reads like a parody on "The Captive" of the triumphant past. For the rest, the stories are attempts to scale down the World War into a com- pass that was not inappropriate for the taking of Lungtungpen, but that shows up rather sadly in comparison with most modern war fiction. "Debits and Credits" is not an additional achievement for Kipling — it is not even a conclusion to his literary career — it is simply a faint echo out of that past, swashbuckling but Arca- dian, to which neither he nor we will return again. Robert Wolf The Minds of Yesterday The Making of the Modern Mind. By J. H. Randall. Houghton Mifflin Company. $5. 'T^HAT strange medley of illusions, truths, and nonsense, that A union of conflicting ideals and ideas which is part of man's cosmorama is much more and much less than a mere accretion of past beliefs. There is some originality and individuality in every one, no matter how trite the answers; while, on the other hand, the past that is constitutive of the present is far from pure, being refracted and colored by misunderstanding, faulty and arbitrary interpretations, and a priori notions. A history of the work of the past may clarify the present; it can never disclose it. Mr. Randall begins with the Middle Ages. He delineates with fidelity and sympathy the major currents in religious and social beliefs, paying special attention to the Renaissance, the rationalistic seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the ro- mantic progressive concepts of the last hundred years. The reactions of different men at different times to the problems of government, society, life, and the future and the influence of science and religion on them, are clearly shown, the analysis being illuminated by judicious and representative selections from the original works. Unfortunately art, literature, poetry, and philosophy are neglected except in so far as they re- late to "tendencies" or fall within conventional rubrics; while the restriction to recent times and the Western civilization — though justified by the size of the work — permits a description of but a fragment of our intellectual background. Tlie somewhat comprehensive bibliographies affixed to each chapter enhance the value of the work as a source- and text- book for those who wish to dip into the immediate past in order to discover the answers of others to the ever-present riddles of life. As a contribution to the understanding of some typical and significant figures the book is at once accurate and interesting. As an attempt to catch the modern mind in the making it is sadly inadequate. Paul Weiss Peace in the Schools The Menace of Nationalism in Education. By Jonathan French Scott. The Macmillan Company. $1.60. npiIAT many elementary school histories reek inaccuracies * and prejudices is true, of course, but not especially sur- prising in view of the fact, that, in large measure, the more ad- vanced works on which they are based also are heavy-laden with bunk. Such inaccuracies as characterize the elementary texts give a youngster going through the grades a lopsided con- ception of the past, its heroes, its villains, and the roles these essayed. A writer trespasses upon debatable ground when he jumps at the conclusion that such misconceptions, imparted to the masses during youth, have ever made any considerable contribution to an international strife. Nevertheless, today it is both meet and holy that advocates of peace should turn a searchlight on school texts. Here is an alluring field for the proponents of world peace, and already they are exploring it. In Edinburgh a year ago the World Federation of Education Associations set itself the task of making a critical view of all the histories, geographies, and readers taught in public schools in the principal countries

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 511 of the world, with the purpose of offering constructive criticism. The preparation of this report will take some years, and mean- time a forerunner appears in Mr. Scott's book — which, un- fortunately, does not make much of a contribution. The volume seems to have grown out of a very superficial investigation, while the material gathered has in many instances been handled stupidly. Mr. Scott examined, apparently with great haste, some of the histories and geographies now used in France, Ger many, and England. His chief accomplishment seems to have been the culling from these books of hundreds of sentences and paragraphs that reveal either what the author is pleased to label narrow nationalism or else what he accepts as broad internationalism. Evidently no large survey was made of all the textbooks of any one country; no endeavor was put forth to ascertain the relative popularity of each book reported on; no need was felt of evaluating any book in its entirety. The consequence is that the author in instances summons the same textbook to take the stand, first to testify for the prosecution and later to be a witness for the defense. Mr. Scott concludes with a series of suggestions that, to the American point of view, hardly point toward world peace. He recommends that the Committee on Intellectual Coopera- tion of the League of Nations pass upon all elementary texts. Then he grows a bit bolder: "Suppose the League went farther. Suppose that, instead of merely recommending schoolbooks, it extended its supervision to the preparation of courses of study and even of textbooks for the use of schools in various coun- tries." Also, he thinks it would be a good thing to adopt a universal language, such as Esperanto, in all elementary schools. If the League of Nations wants to awaken Mars, it can turn the trick by adopting in its entirety Mr. Scott's pro- gram for warless internationalism. H. E. Buchholz The Nation's Poetry Prize rjlHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for __/ the best poem submitted by an American poet in a contest conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. This year in addition a second prize of $50 and a third prize of $25 will be offered. The rules for 1926 are as follows: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. 3. No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- cumstances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent from this office. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. 6. The winning poems will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation, to appear February 9, 1927. 7. Besides the winning poems, The Nation reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted in the contest. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. Poems should in no case be sent to them personally. Children's Books in Brief Magic Flight: Jewish Talcs and Legends. By Yossef Gaer. Frank Maurice, Inc. $2. The Foundling Prince and Other Talcs from the Rumanian of I'd re Ispirescu. Translated and Adapted by Julia Col- lier Harris and Rea Ipcar. Houghton .Milllin Company. $2. The Donegal Wonder Book. By Seumas MacManus. Frederick A. Stokes and Company. $2. The Japanese Fairy Hoc!,-. Translated by Yei Theodora Ozaki. E. P. Dutton and Company. $2.50. Skazki. Tales and Legends of Old Russia. Told by Ida Zeitlin. Illustrated by Theodore Nadejen. George H. Doran and Company. $5. Fillmore Folk Talcs. Selected by Wilhelmina Harper. Har- court, Brace and Company. $1.50. A group of fairy and folk tales from various countries which carry the young reader across oceans and mountains and many times bring him up at the same place. For it is aston- ishing how persistent certain stories are, bobbing up indis- criminately in Rumania, Ireland, and Japan. Of the group, Miss Zeitlin's book, with gorgeously gilded illustrations and bright end papers, is the handsomest and Mr. MacManus's, with a reckless Irish tune to it, has perhaps the most originality and freshness. The King of the Golden River. By John Ruskin. The Light Princess. By George MacDonald. The Little Library. The Macmillan Company. $1 each. Two worthy additions to a series excellent for its sub- ject matter, its size, its firm binding, and — sometimes — its illustrations. The Hunter. By Ernest Glanville. Harcourt, Brace and Com- pany. $2.50. A story of Bushman life minus most of the romantic touch that so often mars a book of this kind. The Bushmen because they would not organize against the Zulus and other enemies were destined to extinction. Here they are shown giving ground, hunting, trapping, consulting the bones of destiny, meeting and conquering the animals of the forest, meeting and being conquered by the other men. A picture of a life that to most children will be both strange and exciting, and that will come to them here with not too many distortions. Valery Garrick's Picture Folk-Tales. Illustrated by the author. Frederick A. Stokes and Company. $1.50. A book of merry tales for very little children, with thor- oughly ingratiating illustrations. Winnie-the-Pooh. By A. A. Milne. Drawings by E. H. Shepard. E. P. Dutton and Company. $2. Mr. Milne has this time taken to prose and with Mr. Shepard's and Christopher Robin's help has turned out another book full of delight for all children under seventy. Except that it has not the advantage of demanding that it be learned by heart, as "When We Were Very Young" does, one sees no reason why this story of Mr. Edward Bear, otherwise known as Yv^innie-the-Pooh, and his friends should not gain quite as many firm and unshakable admirers. Pantomimes for the Children's Theater. By M. Jagendorf. Brentano's. $3.50. Five pantomimes with the story, a description of the char- acters and the action, and the music given with all necessary details for production. The Boy's Life of Barnum. By Harvey W. Root. Harper and Brothers. $1.75. The life of the founder of modern publicity, told for boys — but a thrilling enough story for their elders, who have re- cently been regaled by a longer account.

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512 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 Further Nonsense, Verse and Prose. By Lewis Carroll. Edited by Langford Reed. Illustrated by H. M. Bateman. D. Appleton and Company. $2. These scraps, collected from magazines and the less-known books of Lewis Carroll, would none of them have made him the immortal author that he is. They have all of his faults, few those may be, together with only a fair share of his supreme virtue. Music Mrs. Coolidge LISTENING to such ensembles as the Pro Arte Quartet of Belgium and the English Singers, one is apt to forget, in the quiet beauty and high perfection of their art, the even loftier beauty of the purpose to which we owe their acquain- tance. This purpose — to plant and spread the love for chamber music in this country — has indeed been carried out so gener- ously and so regularly ever since its first manifestation, the Berkshire Festival in 1918, that we have come to take more or less for granted the gifts and achievements of its sponsor, Mrs. Frederick S. Coolidge. It is only when, the music ended, one files out past the bookshelves of a public library that one real- izes to what extent this purpose has reached. If one, moreover, has had any experience with the educators of the preceding generation, one even realizes with a shock that one has heard, for instance, a world-famous quartet, like the Pro Arte, in the Music Division of the New York Public Library; and even quivers to think that there is a music division at all. The shock deepens as one tries to grasp the fact that not only the Pro Arte Quartet but also the English Singers — the latter the most perfect exponents of Tudor vocal music this country has ever known — made their initial bow to American audiences in a concert hall in the Library of Congress at a Chamber Music Festival given under the auspices of Congress. Those who have long known the attitude of the American people toward music as an art may well wonder that their representatives should have given it official sanction. Those who have known the attitude of American educators may won- der even more, for it was a musician, again Mrs. Frederick S. Coolidge, and not an educator who put this through. If there are any, however, who do not know this attitude, let them go down to the Juilliard Musical Foundation. The secretary of tnis foundation is an educator. And as the ostensible pur- pose of this foundation is also, like that of Mrs. Coolidge's, to develop and spread musical culture in this country, it might be illuminating to compare their respective methods for attaining this purpose. The Juilliard Foundation, as was perhaps to be expected from the educational training of its secretary, began along the line of least resistance by dispensing free tuition. With American artists and composers all over the country hard pressed by competition brought about through economic condi- tions in Europe, the Juilliard found no other use for its ten- million-dollar trust fund than to give thousand-dollar scholar- ships to students — many of doubtful talent — for study with private teachers who were well able themselves to succor talent, and at musical institutions already endowed and backed by multi-millionaires who were not only able but willing to succor talent. Next, the Juilliard decided to concentrate its activities. And so, with a crying need all over the country for training schools for conductors, the foundation built a costly music school in a city already amply supplied. Again, with an even greater need for orchestral readings of original compositions, so that composers may have a chance to hear what they have written and therefrom learn their faults, the Juilliard has been giving fabulous salaries to teachers already established in this city. On the other hand we see Mrs. Coolidge starting a cham- NEW BOOKS FROM The BRICK HOUSE EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON By Ben Ray Redman A profound, yet entertaining study of the most considerable living American poet. $1.00 net EUGENE O'NEILL By Barrett H. Clark This first book that has ever dealt entirely with O'Neill is a complete appraisal of the work of the foremost American dramatist. "An excellent book which criticizes, describes and maintains a point of view." Harry Hansen in the N. Y. World. $1.00 net B A C K Y ARD By Gloria Goddard A first novel of extraordinary distinction, Backyard bears rich promise of becoming another Main Street. It is a story of small town life — but never dull, never prosy, never redundant. Clement Wood calls it "The finest first novel I have ever read." "It is a novel small in detail but large in significance." N. Y. Post. "Its and fresh imagery are delightful. N. Y. Times. $2.00 net TRANSFIGURATION By Sergeev Tzensky No mine typical story of modern peasant life has come out of Russia. This is the third of a series of Russian masterpieces, not previously translated, edited and in- troduced by Maxim Gorky. $2.50 net THE FIDDLER IN BARLY By Robert Nathan The most mature work that has come from Mr. Nathan's pen, this story of a whimsical old fiddler and his dancing dog is finding a wide and enthusiastic public. $2.00 net DRAWINGS OF THE GREAT MASTERS Edited by A. E. Popham and K.T.Parker, Ph. D. I. Florentine Drawings of the Quattro Cento by H. S. Ede. II. Drawings of the Early German Schools by K. T. Parker. III. Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth Century- .■ n > e little quartos form exactly riRht medium through which appreciation of old drawings may be stimulated." N. Y. Herald Tribune. $5.00 each volume. With 70 full-page plates. EARLY AMERICAN INNS AND TAVERNS By Elsie Lathrop on the subject that covers the country from Atlantic from Mexico to Canada. It is entertaining, inclusive, md definitive. Illustrated with photographs and activity ■ drawing. $5.00 net THE SILVER By James 1 STALLION Branch Cabell The last of the romances of Poictesme and Mr. Cabell's greatest novel. "A book which I hold fine and dear." Heywood Broun. '"As good as •Jurgen' if not better." N. Y. World. "The uasive account James Branch Cabell has yet given us of that pleasantly impossible intry of 'Poictesme.' " .V. V. Times. ROBERT M.McBRIDE & COMPANY, Publishers 7 West 16th Street New York Whi n writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 513 ber-music festival of her own because, being a musician as well as a musical philanthropist, she finds that American festivals, unlike those of Europe, omit chamber music from their pro- grams. The fact that the world is at war does not daunt her. With civilization tottering, she sets up its beacon in the Berk- shire Hills; with most of the world's musical nations at war, Bhe invites the musicians of these nations to participate in this light; and with building almost at a standstill, owing to scarcity of material and labor, she erects a Temple of Music to house her festival, and four cottages to house the members of her Festival Quartet. Again, being a musician, she was aware of the non- commercial value of chamber music; and so, to encourage com- posers to enrich its literature, she offered a thousand-dollar prize for a specified type of work every other year, and a com- missioned work from a specified composer on the alternating years. The manuscripts of these works she has donated to the Musical Library of Congress. Moreover, to insure a fair ver- dict for the prize composition, she selected her judicial commit- tee from musicians representing every phase of musical opinion from the conservative to the radical, and from the critic to the composer and performer. This committee is changed completely in personnel every prize-giving year. And finally, to perpetu- ate the festival after her death, she established a trust fund, which she offered to Congress and which the latter accepted, sufficient to build a concert hall in the Congressional Library — there to be held a chamber-music festival and chamber-music concerts every year. Under this fund both the New York and Boston public libraries also benefit. Six concerts were held in the former last year by the Lennox String Quartet. This year was opened by the Pro Arte Quartet, to be followed by the Flonzaleys. Chamber-music concerts have also been established in various big colleges through her generosity. And the great- est organizations and artists have been engaged to give this music. Besides the Belgian and English artists are the London String and the Wendling Quartets, Harold Samuel, Lionel Ter- tis, Selim Palmgren, and Myra Hess. There has been no finer quartet playing heard here in years than that of the Pro Arte; no ensemble singing ever heard here so intimate and exquisite as that of the English Singers. One turns indeed with relief from the futile extravagances of the Juilliard Foundation to the selfless standards which this woman has set above nation, race, creed, or even friendship. Henrietta Straus Drama Ibsen Restated A S one watches Eva Le Gallienne's admirable production of -**• "The Master Builder" enrol itself upon the stage of the Civic Repertory Theater one is struck again by the fact that the interest of Ibsen's plays, far from fading, like that of lesser works, in the light of a different day, renews itself again and again, constantly shifting its center, but remaining always keen and fresh. It is not merely that the later plays, once thought too "difficult," take precedence over the simple socio- logical preachments of his earlier period but that these more complex works provoke new discussion in new terms. Armed though one may be with the latest handbook of official interpre- tation and hence prepared to tag each symbol with its literal meaning, there is a tantalizing something which eludes the grasp and stirs the mind. These plays refuse to stay explained, to give up all their secret. Issuing as they did from a mind less definitely circumscribed by its own logic than is sometimes supposed, from a mind that groped after even more things than it grasped, they are full of intuitions not fully stated, and so, like most great art, they hold a latent significance, have aspects which wait patiently for new tempers in new times to discover them. The problems of the richest demand, like the problem of "Hamlet," continual restatement. ^^^^^^^^^€^^m^^m^ "Such is the price that we pay for the • i oi democracy: the nun of native integrity is either barred from the public service alto- gether or subjected to almost irresistible temp- tations alter he gets in." Says H. L. MENCKEN In His Most Important Book NOTES ON DEMOCRACY A devastating polemic on democratic government and an illuminating analysis of its practice in America. Second large printing $1.50 at all bookstores Just Out: PRE J UDICES: Fifth Series By H. L. MENCKEN Essays on Birth Control, Comstockery, Capital Punishment, and War: Conrad, Hergesheimer, Lardner, and Masters, William Jennings Bryan, Beethoven, The Last New Englander, Edgar Saltus, etc. $1.50 Prejudices, Gift Edition, $ vols, boxed, $11.50 ALFRED A. KNOPF 750 Fifth Avenue New York In Canada from The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd., St. Martin's House, Toronto 1 i I I 1 1 1 I J* I I ft When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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514 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 The subject of such plays as "A Doll's House" and "Ghosts" is practical morality. With that Ibsen began, and he ac- rted both himself and his students to think in its terms. But after the manner of reflective men he soon soared up- ward, and like one of his own heroes he left off "building homo? for men" to concern himself with the more intimate problems of the individual soul. And so though a play like "The Master Builder" still has its moral implications, though . for example, upon the relation of the genius to the lesser men whom he crushes, its primary concern is with ms of a different order, its aim is to comprehend the soul of a man whose solitary brooding has carried him, as it had carried his creator, to a lonely height from which the world of feminism and syphilis seemed no longer very significant. And it is this comprehension that offers continu- ally a fresh challenge, for it is only begun, not ended, when its fable is explained upon the basis of allegory. In such plays as "The Master Builder" and "The Wild Duck" Ibsen, though perhaps himself not wholly conscious of the fact, was concerned with something more than the veiled expression of a philosophy of life. His symbols have become, as symbols, clear enough, but there is stated by implication at least a problem which is, perhaps, the most acute now facing the contemporary intelligence — the problem, that is to say, of the relation of psychology and metaphysics. Every phenomenon here dramatized is subject to two interpretations. It is either a phenomenon of abnormal psychology or one of those symbols through which the world of eternal reality establishes a contact with the world of appearance. To the psychologist it is one thing, to the metaphysician another, and Ibsen, true even here to his dramatic credo "My business is to ask questions, not answer them," is content only to provoke the mind into activity. To the builder, for whom architecture has become a religion and height an expression of his aspiration, the dizziness which over- comes him when he mounts to the top of one of his own towers is the unfathomed secret which either holds the meaning or hides the meaninglessness of his life. Is it, as we should say, "a complex," an oblique expression of the sense of guilt which his ruthless methods have generated and his will suppressed, or is it rather the force of some higher power, of something outside himself, which tells him thus that he has failed some- how to adjust his aspiration to its meaning? Spurred onward, he mounts at last to the summit of his new home, for a moment he seems to triumph, then topples and falls to his death, leaving the question unanswered for him, for Ibsen, and for us. )no might, if one cared to do so, proceed to show how the same fundamental question underlies the other later dramas of Ibsen, but it is sufficient to say that here, in this conflict rather than in any other, lies their profoundest significance for us. Nor is this significance small, for it involves the whole question of the meaning of life anil of where it is to be sought. Do those phenomena whose meaning eludes us have a transcen- dental significance, or is their complete explanation to be found always in the tricks of the mind? Are we, that is to say, im- prisoned forever in that world of seeming where psychology is the ultimate science, or does the world of eternal reality some- times break through in symbols? With "Caponsacchi" (Hampden Theater) Mr. Walter Hampden continues his policy of pre: modern poetic drama. The present play, made from "The Ring and the Book," is infinitely superior to "The Immortal Thief," hut it does not escape both a heaviness of pace and a certain melodramatic ob- viousness of content. The vast Century Theater is now given over to a sumptuously produced and incredibly naive all called "The Pearl of Great Price." Like "Experience," which some may remember from seasons past, it is one of the illegiti- mate offspring begot by "Everyman" upon musical comedy. The theme is chastity, but times do and it must be re- corded that the entrance of an abstract person called Wanton drew the first applause of the evening. Joseph Wood Krutcii THEATER D —The Neighborhood Playhouse,46^/^^! '%?■— November 11-12-13-14-15-16-17. Mat. Sat. THE LION TAMER By ALFRED S AVOIR "An extremely saucy comedy of the French Circus/1 —Alexander Woolcott. Theatre. 4Sth St., West of Broadway. Evening* 8 :30 Matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2:30 THEODORE DREISER'S ERICAN TRAGEDY "A PLAY WHICH IS BOUND TO WRENCH A MILLION HEARTS." — Journal. DRAMATIZED BY PATRICK KEARNEY. Longacre A N I ! LECTURES ! i SPECIAL LECTURE Adjustments in the Family and Beyond Dr. 5. Ferenczi of Vienna AUSPICES Child Study Association of America, Inc. Empire Room, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Thursday Evening, Dec. 2d, 8:30. Admission $1.00 LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL 5 Lectures on "The Human Body" by Dk. a. Stone Nov. 19: The General Structure of the Body. Nov. 2f, : The Blood and Circulation. Dec. '( : Food and Nutrition. Dec. 10: The Mechanism of Secretion and Excretion. Dec. 17: The Reproductive System. At 8.30 p. m., 244 East 14th St. Admission 25c. NORMAN ANGELL American Lecture Tour Subjects: 1926-1927 Now Booking The Crisis in Democracy and tiik Main St. Mind. Illusions ok Curhent Political Thought. Tub Teach ek and the Public Mind. Europe, America and the Colored Would. Sole Agent: VV. 15. I'KAKINN. Inc.. Times KldR., New York Send fur particulars Real Estate [f you have ;i house or property to sell or lease, try The Nation classified ad- vertising section. -If the experience of other advertisers of real estate is a guide, your advertise- ment in The Nation will pay. -Write for rates to Dept. 1?., The Nation. ■■i to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 515 H. G. WELLS' MASTERPIECE /// a New, Elaborately Illustrated Rd'itio n The New Pictorial Outline of History K'altrr I.ippman said in I'anity Fair: "If you start at the first page and read slowly and sym- pathetically to the last, yon will not only fill in vast Raps in your ignorance, but will also place whatever you do happen to know in some relation to the rest of human life." The Nation said- "To read this book is in itself a liberal education." NEW TEXT: Not simply the original "Outline" brought up to date, but a complete revision. The rewriting of large sections and addition of much new material make it the one complete story of man. NEW ILLUSTRATIONS: More than 800 pictures, maps and color plates illustrate in a matchless man- ner the evolution of all civilizations. The world has been searched for materials to make the pictorial story complete. NEW PRINTING: The litho offset process used in this edition makes the text easy to read and gives extraordinary fidelity to the illustrations. This edition must be seen to be appreciated. At your bookdealer's — 2 vols. $15.00. THE MACM1LLAN COMPANY New York Boston Chicago Atlanta Dallas NEW SIZE AND BINDING: The page size per- mits an admirable proportion between type and pic- tures; the book is easy to hold and read. San Francisco THE IMAGE AND THE MAN by W. E. Woodward i i "The most stimulating study of Washington in relation to his times that has yet been written." — N. Y. Times Book Review. "Much the best biography of Washington I have ever read." — Baltimore Sun. "Mr. Woodward's book is not a mere idol-smasher of the vulgar sort. It is a genuine ef- fort at interpretation and, in a high degree, a successful one." — James Trusloui Adams, N. Y. Heruhl Tribune. "It is, I think, the most inter- esting and provocative life of Washington yet written." — Henry Hazlitt, N. Y. Sun. "The most brilliant portrait." — Claude G. Bowers, The Nation. "W. E. Woodward has carved :i little nearo'" to the skin of Washington than any man who has yet attempted the task." — John G. N eihardt, Kansas City JoumaLPost. "The most '•■iVrt^ininc- biogra- phy of the season." — Keith Preston, Chicago Daily News. "Will appeal to tough-minded people."— C. Hartley Grattan, The Book Review. Hygiene, Medicine, Surgery WHICH? WHY INFECTIONS? In Teeth, 'Tonsils, and Other Organs By NICHOLAS KOPELOFF This book discusses the increasing preva- lence of surgical operations. Convinced by a wealth of fascinating facts, the reader is brought to the conclusion that "surgery is the last resort." The daily battle you wage against dis- ease-producing germs and how to decide upon the best course toward health is explained in interesting lay language and clear style. $2.00 at all bookstores Alfred A. Knopf, 730 Fifth Ave., N. Y. In Canada from The Macmillan Co. of Canada,Ltd.TSt, Martin's House ..Toronto 1 1 I I When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section New Zealand's Family Dole By T. WALSH THE Government, a Conservative one so far as politics go in this South Pacific country, has put forward a bill to help the family man by allowing him to draw from the consolidated fund the sum of two shillings weekly for every child in the family over two in number. The limit that may be drawn is eighteen shillings per week, the amount that a man with eleven children, none of whom are of an age to earn, may draw. New Zealand, down in the warm Southern seas, was peopled by political and economic refugees from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The number of its inhabitants that claim descent from Continental people is negligible. The first comers, smarting under the injustice of the conditions that drove them from the land of their birth, had liberal ideas, but the necessity of scratching out an existence in a new land under strange conditions left little opportunity for remodeling state constitutions, even if inherited ideas had permitted thinking along such lines. The second gen- eration had more leisure, however, and a remarkable wave of liberal thought swept the country in the end of the last century; political franchise based on land ownership was abolished in favor of universal suffrage; women were given a vote; ownership of land by the state with regulations for long leases, in case of all unalienated land, was estab- lished; money advances by the state to workers and farmers for building homes wore legislated for; state insurance (fire, accident, and life) was set up to compete with private companies and actually lowered fire-insurance premiums by one-third in the first year of operation; accident insurance to rover all workers was made compulsory and an arbitra- tion court to handle industrial disputes was established. The Industrial Arbitration Court consists of a judge and one assessor nominated by the combined employers and ombined trade unions. Its functions at first nebulous, rather a sort of referee body to act in strikes when an impasse seemed inevitable. By degrees the court was granted mandatory powers to fix wages in most ■ for periods not exceeding three years; the net effect was that from being merely a nominal body helping to ar- rive at settlements in strikes it became all powerful in deciding rates of wages and standardizing conditions of labor; a factor not without benefit to employers. Owing to the manner in which the court was established and the fact that the successive governments were representative of the financial and commercial classes there was no prin- ciple fixed by law on which the court could base wages; in every application for variations of wage conditions the court had to endeavor to ascertain just how little the em- ployees would take rather than strike and just how far the employers would go rather than lock out their men and tie up their plants. The sequel was that price-fixing of commodities was established and the general opinion of all classes was that no matter what the prices of goods were in other lands, the sellers of articles in New Zealand were entitled to get a price that was based on the figure needed to repay the New Zealand manufacturer for the wage scale fixed by law of the court. During the war prices rose and wages did not follow. Moreover, the court dealing with wages propounded the view that in addition to furnishing cannon fodder (conscription was enforced) the workers ought to submit to lowered wages as a result of soaring prices of food, etc., in order to bear a just share of the burden of war — that at a time when buyers of war bonds were exempted from income tax. In the midst of the developments in 1917 certain amendments were made to the law governing the arbitra- tion court. Apparently without anyone being aware of the fact one of the amendments gave the court power to use the actual cost of living as the basis for computing wages. Under this power the state statistician was authorized to collect the necessary data as to size of families, prices of food consumed, and the other factors related to the cost of living; no actual standard of living was expressly set up. But in the ordinary course of events that would have had to follow. Meantime the court fixed a basic wage, to which was to be added a varying amount to represent the value needed to give the wage earner a living wage based on the data being collected by the statistic office. The first appli- cation by the court of its policy gave the employees, in 1920, an increase of about 16 shillings weekly; the Govern- ment, scared out of its wits, promptly interfered in the award of the court, though the law expressly forbade such action, and suspended the application of the award, later compelling an amended and reduced rate to be gazetted as the award. Out of the controversy that arose around this action emerged the idea of giving the family man some special treatment, as any average wage inevitably left him short of the money that was needed to provide for all his dependents. In New Zealand the proposal put forward by the trade unions was for a subsidy out of the consolidated fund on wages fixed by the arbitration court, of an amount of 5s. or 7s. 6d. per week per child; the employers urged reducing single men's wages by making them contribute to a fund to subsidize the wages of married men. The census taken in April last called for information as to earning powers of all breadwinners and the number of dependents. Naturally the information could only be ob- tained on the basis of average classes and is not so detailed as close study of the problem would produce. It showed, however, that out of all grades of people in the community, there were 52,423 children in families where the number of children exceeded two; and that of this total there were 49,125 of such children dependent on men who earned four pounds per week or less. As the arbitration court in fixing its basic wage took the average family as two adults and two children it appears that about 49,000 children exist for whose sustenance the wage law made no provision. As £4 is a low weekly wage in New Zealand, it is quite evident that the widest interests of the state require that some means be found to allow of a considerable percentage of the juvenile population being given the food and other things necessary for rearing as human beings. The employers are opposing the measure, contending that "it is not British; that it is charity; that no such scheme has been adopted in Britain or any British-speaking country." Such argument is meaningless; the British wage system is no model for any country. The government party has a huge majority in both houses of Parliament and if it desires it can make the bill into law.

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Nov. 17, 1926] The Nation 517 GABRIEL WELLS The Bonchurch Edition of The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne Twenty Volumes Edited by SIR EDMUND GOSSE and THOMAS J. WISE Limited to 375 sets for America By the author of "Beatrice D'Este," etc. Sacharissa By Julia Cartwright Scholars and statesmen, soldiers and poets, fashionable ladies and solemn churchmen alike were charmed by the beauty and wit of "Sacharissa" — Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland, the immortal inspiration of Waller's lyrics. One of the most delight- ful biographies of recent years. Price $5.00 E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., New York ADAM and EVE BY OSCAR T. CROSBY, F. R. G. S. AUTHOR OF Thibet and Turkestan - International War A study of the Garden of Eden Story, inspired by travel in Mesopotamia and in other Oriental Lands. Cloth $1.25 THE STRATFORD COMPANY - Boston, Mass. FIFTH AVENUE RESTAURANT 200 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK A LUNCHEON RESORT FOR THE DISCRIMINATING CLIENTELE — THOSE APPRECIATING UNEX- CELLED CUISINE AND SERVICE.

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518 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3202 An Editor's Farewell 'R. H. N. BRAILSFORD, in resigning from the editor- ship of the Neiv Leader, published the following fare- well to his readers in the issue for October 22: This is the last number of the New Leader which I shall edit. I tendered my resignation in June, and at Margate it was accepted by the governing body of the Independent Labor Party. Its resolution states the reason for the change in plain but friendly words. A majority of the Administrative Council desires "a more popular type of paper." ■: manent choice is mack", the paper will be edited by A. Fenner Bro> The council has asked mo to con- fticle to the Netv Leader. I hope (after I liday) that this may be possible. ip the circulation of the New Leader has stood at a level between two and three times higher than that of the Labor Leader when I took it over. It has had its financial ups and downs, but I have the satisfaction of handing it over with a weekly budget which now meets expenses. My aim during these four years has been to provide for thoughtfui readers in the Socialist movement a paper which might raid-;, so far as the handicap of its small si/.e permitted, with the older political reviews. A weekly paper devoted to news ceased to be necessary since the Daily Herald was founded. For popular reading there are in London and the provinces many Socialist weeklies. The chief need of our move- ment seemed to be a review which could discuss from week to week what I described in an early issue as "the constructive problems of the foreground." It is, therefore, with the measures which should serve to make the actual transition from capitalism to socialism that the New Leader has been chiefly concerned. It may claim that in this short time it has influenced the thinking and the policy of the Labor Party. The agricultural program which was adopted last week at Margate was outlined and gradually shaped by articles and discussions in our pages. The view of credit and currency which is now widely accepted throughout the party was discussed more fully and earlier in our columns than elsewhere. The ideas which center around the living wage and family allowances, after winning the assent of the I.L.P., were at Margate accepted by the Labor Party as subjects for inquiry. Often, 1 fear, at the risk of offending the older leaders of the movement, the X< w Leader has kept its independence and its cr It lias stressed the duty of opposing im- perialism. It has refused (as on the issue of birth control) to fetter itself by party calculations. Nor has it forgotten the duty of a human nt to the animals, in its conduct it has itself by three rules: to avoid hate; to be loyal t o scientific truth; to remember at every turn, as the paramount issue, the struggle in which we are engaged to abol- rien •<' and from criticism I learned in many ways to modify my first conception of the paper. On one point never willing to yield. A sane life must be a whole life. A political nm, vcv resolute it may bo, impoverishes nd oars to the intellectual and aesthetic •ound it. "Beauty," I wrote in an early defense of this de, "may seem an irrelevance amid our struggles, yet by beauty we form ourselves, as surely as by struggle, and only in so far as we possess it and allow it to mold us, shall we, by our struggli a twisted world to shapelier lines." And so, week by week, an annoyance to some, a satisfaction to many, the wood-engravings, the poems, the essays, and the scientific articles have appeared. The last of my many pl( as editor is to thank the friends who have worked with me. . . . And then, if the paper has done something to shape our political thinking, it is to its band of contributors that we owe it. . . . The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers & fifteen months' course of graduate study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Centers. For further information, address the Director, THE TRAINING SCHOOL for JEWISH SOCIAL WORK i initiated by the National Conference of Jewish Social S< 210 WEST 91st STREET NEW YORK CITY C^AoV GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New York True food is the foundation of Good health Fresh Vegetables JrufbotiL Whole Wheat Products Satisfying Diet for Diabetics No animal fat used 153 W. 44th St., East of Broadway AURORA HEALTH FARM M^wS1 (Not a tanitarium; not a boarding -houte) NEW JERSEY Beautiful country: elevation 700 ft.: only one hour from New York. Open all year. Suitable for those requiring diet, electro- and hydro- therapy. Ideal for rest and convalescence. Personal medical »uper- vision. Homelike atmosphere. No bed-ridden, contagious or mental case*. Rodeut Schulman. M. D., Medical Director. Adoi.ih Wbizbnhoffer, M. !)., Associate Physician, hone— MORRISTOWN 18 2 0. MOSCOW DIARY A graphic human-interest story of the A l\l\JJ\^VJ\V Ult\SS. I ]ife of the people in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth, $1.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. OHAIUiES 31. KRKR & CO. 847 Ea«t Ohio Street, Chicago CHILD STUDY GROUPS for Fathers and Mothers of Young Children Fathers and Mothers of Adolescent Boys and Girls Grandmothers, guardians, teachers, social workers, camp directors, etc. Whatever your interest and needs, you will find this group work helpful and stimulating. WRITE FOR INFORMATION TO CHILD STUDY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC. 54 WEST 74TH STREET NEW YORK CITY When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 186 Vol. CXXIII NKW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1926 No. 3203 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 519 EDITORIALS: B2l Joseph Cannon gjj Shako Hands ! p.^., China Talks in Her Sleep ".'" Are Teachers Muzuled 1 TOURIST SEASON. 1926. Hy Hendrik van Loon 624 DOHENY AND FALL FACE .ITS IKK By Raymond Clapper 526 THE KIH'.K OF CHINA. Hy Lewis S Gannett 526 PROSPECTING FOR BURIED WORLDS. By Ida Treat 628 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 629 CORRESPONDENCE 6S0 FOREIGN BOOK SECTIOX WHO READS AMERICAN BOOKS ? By Joseph Wood Krutch B31 THE NORTHERN LITERARY WORLD. By B. W. Huebsch 632 NEW BOOKS IN FRANCE. By Rene Lalou 633 A German View of the Kaiser. By Oswald Garrison Villard 634 Scraps of Paper. By Baron Baudran 635 A New Look at Cervantes. By Eliseo Vivas 636 The Simple Sax a-,-. By Carroll Lime Fenton . 536 Heavens Above and Earth Beneath. By Joseph Wood Krutch 636 The Last Napoleon. By Ernest F. Henderson 537 The Nations Poetry Prize 538 Books in Brief °38 International Books in Brief 6.i« Drama: Spiders. By Joseph Wood Krutch »3J INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Foreign Rule in Shanghai. By James H. Dolsen 512 Japan's Alien Land Law 644 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subscription Rates : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50 : and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising : Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England. EXCELLENT NEWS comes out of France to delight all who love that country and wish to see Europe progress toward peace and stability. The army is to be cut at once from 650,000 to 400,000 and compulsory train- ing reduced from eighteen months to one year, real steps toward disarmament, the more welcome because of the dis- couraging role played by the French delegates to the inter- national disarmament conference. Not only will this help France financially, it is further proof of that change of French spirit which marked Locarno, Geneva last Septem- ber, and Thoiry. Meanwhile the franc has gone on improv- ing, until it is now quoted at 3.30 cents — indeed, the prog- ress is so great as to make some fear that it is almost too rapid. Again, we have the news of still another rap- prochement between industrial Germany and industrial France by which real advantages are obtained for the metallurgical industries in the Sarre and in Lorraine, by assuring to them a free market for a large quantity of their products. No less than 1,700,000 tons of raw and finished steel will enter Germany free of duty. Thus the leveling of tariff barriers, demanded by the bankers' free-trade manifesto, has begun, and the close industrial cooperation of the two former enemies is hailed in both countries as a new bond for peace. HOW MUCH LONGER art- Americans going to stomach such weasel-worded sentiments as President Coolidge voiced in his Kansas City address on Armistice Day? It would seem as if the day of balanced periods and contrasted sentiments, of the on-the-one-hand and on-the-other type of oratory, might soon be past. Just as in his Omaha ad- dress, Mr. Coolidge was for preparedness and yet against a rivalry in armaments; he was for peace, but he rejoiced that we had been at war to protect our honor and our rights. He was first sniffingly humble and then dis- gustingly proud and conceited. Europe, he said, is re- ported to hate us, and he adds, childishly, "this means our interests have come within the European circle, where dis- trust and suspicion, if nothing more, have been altogether too common. To turn such attention to us indicates at least that we are not ignored!" To this gem the President added a few minutes later: "If the American spirit fails, what hope has the world?" — a question that will be very candidly answered from Europe. Throughout, the address is sophomoric and muddled to a degree, full of almost in- credible banalities, and notable only for its announcement that capital is to be conscripted in the next war to end war and that he will move no further toward putting us into the World Court. IT IS HIGH TIME for a new agitation for a federal anti- lynching law. The South met the movement in 1922-23 with the argument that it would take care of its own lynch- ers. And for a time it seemed to do so. The number of lynchings which had averaged more than thirty a year, fell to 16 in 1924 and to 18 in 1925. But now the country seems to be conspiring to make a new record for this pecu- liar American form of bestiality. Already the total for 1926 is almost twice that for 1925 and in the last month crime has followed crime. On October 1 three nameless Negroes were burned by a mob near Miami, suspected of having stolen goods from storm victims. The sheriff states that he believes the charge untrue; but the men are dead. The Governor of South Carolina has sent an investigator to Aiken to study the lynching of the three Lowmans there, but there is no hint of real action, despite the fact that the New York World has bravely exposed data to justify sev- eral jail sentences, in one of the finest campaigns in Ameri- can newspaper history. October's record also includes the lynching of a Negro charged with murder in Tennessee, and the hairbreadth escape of a Mississippi Negro whose friends motored him out of the State ; November began with a combination of white and redman's methods in Montana, where a Negro was burned to death in his barn by Indians who set the barn aflame with fire arrows. In Texas on November 10 brave white men crushed the head of one Ne- gro after wounding him with gunshot, and burned two others in their log cabin. If the doctrine of State rights permits such crimes it needs revision. South Carolina's is a test case. The Governor knows who is guilty; they are

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520 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 his friends; will he dare bring them to justice — or will he prove that federal legislation is the only solution? ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN Congregational min- isters in England, after partaking of the communion from a chalice made in prison by a conscientious objector, recently signed this pledge: Believing that we are called by our understanding of Christ to unreserved abstention from war, and to a com- plete dedication to peace as the only true defense of our most treasured loyalties and loves, we covenant together before God, praying that in the day of calm we may win others and that in the time of storm we may stand firm to our witness. The World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches, meeting in Philadelphia, has just called upon America to take the lead in calling a conference to outlaw war, and voiced its opposition to military training in public and high schools. Harry Emerson Fosdick in his Armistice Day speech denounced the War Department for its attempt to "turn our high schools into military academies and our universities into West Points." Are the churches at last awakening? HENRIETTA PERKINS, the managing editor of the Beanpot, Boston University's humorous weekly, was forced to resign her position a year and a half ago because she had published an issue ridiculing compulsory military training and the local R.O.T.C. Last spring compulsory military training was abolished by the new president of the university, and in his annual report, recently made public, he explains why. Briefly summarized, President Marsh's reasons were as follows: First, he is a true American and as such is opposed to militarism ; second, he believes that preparedness is no guaranty of peace; third he holds that Boston University was founded "to promote virtue and piety and learning" and not to train men to fight; fourth, he is a Christian and believes that Christi- anity is opposed to war and hence to militarism. President Marsh's statement is vigorous and courageous; with more dignity, it is as vigorous and courageous as were the earlier utterances of Henrietta Perkins. We hope — with some confidence — that the president of the university will not meet her fate. HARVARD MEN may well hang their heads with shame over the ending of the athletic relations of their university and Princeton. This is not because the Harvard Lampoon issued an incredibly ungentlemanly and ill-tempered number on the eve of the Harvard-Princeton game. President Lowell is right in saying in his apology for this bit of undergraduate folly and bad manners that freedom of utterance of these publications is to be adhered to even if there are occasional lapses from the standards which any group of well-bred college men might be ex- pected to uphold. The trouble is that the initiative came from the Harvard athletic authorities in their sudden and unexpected move this fall to alter the relations with Prince- ton, apparently for the purpose of creating the opportunity, by dropping Princeton, for a mid-Western football game. For that the only excuse would seem to be a desire to cater to the mid-Western graduates and to advertise the college in the Middle West. Whatever the motive, the action was stupid and thoroughly deserved the rebuke so swiftly and effectively administered by Princeton. To a wrong policy has been added not only a disgusting exhibition of bad manners but a reception in Cambridge of the news of the break with a superciliousness that can only add to the great unpopularity of Harvard University throughout the coun- try. All of which is another argument for the abolition of all of these hippodrome intercollegiate contests and the limitation of undergraduate activity to intramural sports. IT IS WITH A START that one reads that Louis Brandeis has passed his seventieth birthday, so young and resilient is the quality of his mind. Ten years on the Supreme Court have not dimmed the zest for thinking which has made him an inspiration to successive genera- tions of young men and women. Much of the credit for the first Wilson Administration belongs to this man who so deepened the President's thinking. In the Supreme Court he has stood again and again in a minority with that other valiant justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, now eighty- five years old; but as Justice Learned Hand points out in the Jewish Tribune, he has profoundly molded the American conception of the law, chiefly in the doctrine, often repeated, that the law can be successful only when founded upon patient inquiry into the economic and political facts from which alone safe generalization is possible. He will not admit the pretensions to universal- ity of doctrines drawn from another social order, axiom- atic, like most axioms, because they respond to prejudices too deep to tolerate question. In their stead he has insisted upon detailed research into the daily working of large industry and of the Great Society. This may seem an obvious approach; in fact, it represents a diametrical departure from the last five decades of American law. BERNARD SHAW'S reported quip upon hearing that he had been awarded the Nobel prize in literature for 1925— "It must be because I published nothing in 1925" — suggests, we fear, that he is not the scandal he used to be or ought still to be. Mr. Shaw has thrived on nothing so much as his unpopularity; his temperament in its prime felt itself chiefly when it was opposed. Does the universal vogue of his dramas, followed now and sealed by the award of a literary prize, indicate that he has become a prophet not without honor in all countries? If it does we are sorry —for it is far from being true that the world, as some say, has caught up with Shaw. It has been pointed out that the Nobel prize in literature frequently if not always goes to an author who sums up in his works the national genius which he represents. Is it the implication, then, that the Irish people are one with the author of "Back to Methu- selah"? They are not that, nor are the people of any other country we know anything about. To be sure, Mr. Shaw has recently spoken well of his people because of all that they have endured from his critical tongue; but he would be the last to agree that nothing remained to be remarked. As to his deserving the Nobel prize there can, of course, be no doubt. We only hope that no one will suppose his claws to have been thereby rendered harmless. A GUSTO TURATI is secretary-general of the Fascist! in Italy. By a cruel slip we named Filipo Turati last week as holding that position. Filipo Turati is, of course, the veteran leader of the • Italian Socialists, resolutely opposed to all dictatorship, Fascist or Bolshevik.

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 521 Joseph Cannon THERE was much of the roughness of the soil about Speaker Cannon— to give him the title by which ho will best be remembered. He dated back to the pioneer days of Illinois, and the men who first tilled those prairie fields were coarsened by hardship and, often enough, by privation. Rabelaisian Mr. Cannon could be and frequently was. Like Lincoln, his stories were not always intended for polite society, and the pungent oaths with which he permeated his conversation accounted for some of its natural color and force. He constantly suggested Lincoln in other ways — in the native shrewdness of his comments, in his thorough- going knowledge of the homespun Americans of whom he was one, in the lankiness of his person. If ever a Con- gressman was typical of his community it was Cannon, and his constituents recognized it by returning him to Congress for forty-six years, when he was in good and when he was in ill repute. They loved and revered him, and no charge that he was a parliamentary czar or that he tyrannized over the House by rules which had to be altered over his protest affected their loyalty to him. He could do no wrong in their eyes; he might have pecadilloes, he might go too far at times, but Joe Cannon was rural Illinois in Washington. There experience and native ability made him a remarkably able and useful legislator along technical governmental lines. There can be no doubt that he was that too rare thing, a rugged personality. One might like or dislike him — his was a character unafraid, unashamed, and downright. Even the men who fought him hardest respected him; they always know whore he stood and where he was to be found. They knew him, too, as a hard fighter, but on the whole a pretty fair one, and they knew that he recognized but one master and that the Republican Party. To him his own party was perfect and its every policy ideal, especially the protective tariff. If ever a man sincerely believed that abolition of protection meant complete disaster and the reduction of the American workingman to the status of the despised foreigner it was Cannon. More than that, the span of his active political life measured not only the rise but the transformation of his party from the idealism which gave birth to it and made it the home of all who cherished human liberty into a sordid organization which repeatedly bought its Presidential victories by tariff favors auctioned off to the highest bidder or by downright cash paid out for voters in "blocks of five" or by the only slightly subtler purchase of "watchers" today. Mr. Cannon helped to make the party the tool of big business, and he helped to enthrone the swollen capitalism of today in the seats of the mighty in Washington. An idealist? Never in his later years, whatever he may have been in his youth. He was a Simon Legree with the party whip; he was Napoleonic in riding roughshod to party ends. For "mugwumps" or independents, he had only contempt; such were traitors. His party had saved the nation; the nation was its to spoil — or rather to weld according to its wish, and, of course, its wish was the highest form of wisdom. So it was idle to appeal to him for freedom for the Filipinos or to make any appeal based upon the belief that men rank higher than property or upon the brotherhood of man. Like his party, he became entirely cynical; unlike it he was not corrupt. Dethroned as Speaker, he could take defeat philosophically and live to see a greater triumph for party control of the House and for the crass materialism of the hour than he had ever dared to hope. Shake Hands ! IT is hard to say who takes more of the joy out of life, the moralists or the hygienists. It seems to be nip and tuck between them. The moralists have already forbidden us to lake a nip and now the hygienists — the joke doesn't quite work out, but the hygienists, in the person of Dr. Louis I. Harris, Health Commissioner of New York City, are out against the habit of shaking hands, something we always regarded as so innocent a pastime as to be almost innocuous. In fact, we felt the handshake to be so inno- cent that its disuse on that account by the younger genera- tion was imminent. By classifying the handshake among dangerous, if not wicked, occupations, Dr. Harris has per- haps given it a new lease of life. He says: For instance, a person whose hands have perspired and are moist shakes hands with a friend. The friend, whose hands may or may not have been soiled, contracts any disease germs on the other fellow's hands. Uncon- sciously, one puts one's hand up to ward off a sneeze and the germs are blown onto the hand. In hand-shaking, these germs are transmitted. So the common handshake must pass into the discard along with the common towel, the common drinking cup, the common kiss, and other customs of our boyhood. There was a time when one could wash his hands and face in a restaurant or elsewhere on the day's route. Now one has to put on a wash before breakfast that will last until dinner. The paper towel fails to preserve either the temper or that schoolgirl complexion. The common drinking cup, too, was a comforting institution. It used to be possible to quench one's thirst in a public park, library, museum, or street without turning on a geyser and taking a shower bath as well as a drink. Then there is — or was — the common kiss. In our boyhood it was all right except when inflicted by a severe and unpopular aunt. People never rescued us then by suggesting that kissing was unhygienic. But the doctors decided a good many years ago that the practice was a means of transmitting germs, and we understand that it has gone out in our most hygienic society. It takes a good while, of course, to kill the custom entirely, and one who walks in the parks, travels on excursion steamers, rides on top of Fifth Avenue buses, or peeps into parked automobiles gets the painful impression that in unre- generate and rather extended circles the kiss is still both common and preferred. Well, Dr. Harris, what do you prescribe in place of hand-shaking? The Maoris of New Zealand greet each other by rubbing noses, but that must be unhygienic too. Kissing the hand seems to have a mild boom in consequence of the visit of Queen Marie. But the New York World pronounces against it (Broun, J., dissenting) on the ground that American men do it so badly. Besides it is not likely that Senator Borah would permit anything so suggestive of entangling European alliances. If we may no longer shake the hands of our friends in greeting, perhaps the only thing left is for us to shake our friends.

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522 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 China Talks in Her Sleep BIG things are happening in China — epoch-making events. Paying no attention whatever to our Mr. Silas Strawn, who returned from his sojourn in Peking's Lega- tion Quarter disgusted with chaos and civil war, China is calmly resuming her status as one of the great nations of the world. It is true that she has no central government; it is true that politically she is in the hands of a dozen petty military potentates who are engaged in constant war and are ruining her 7,000 miles of railroads; it is all the more impressive that in the midst of this apparent chaos she has been moving against the foreigner without division and, step by step, regaining her lost "rights." The Government at Peking has no power to enforce its domestic edicts even within the red walls of the ancient city, but when it announces abrogation of one of the 'unequal treaties" with a foreign Power, its edict is ac- cepted even by the provincial governments which count themselves at war with Peking. Toward the foreigners China is impressively unanimous. There is no dissent; all China thinks and feels as one. Mr. Strawn and Mr. Balfour may complain that, much as they would like to take steps for China's relief, there is no government in China with which they can deal; the Chinese recall that when there was a strong central government the Powers shilly-shallied, and now, in the moment of their apparent weakness, they intend to free themselves — and they will. Belgium has no gunboats in Chinese waters and no garrison in the Legation Quarter of Peking. The Great Powers are right in thinking that China has begun with Belgium in order to set a precedent where precedents will be most easily established; and that she intends to proceed from the particular case to the general application. The Chinese Government abrogated the old treaty with Belgium and announced its willingness to negotiate a new treaty on a reciprocal basis, but not to repeat the humiliating lessons of the past. And while the Powers have been mumbling and grumbling, and Belgium has been suggesting reference of the question to the World Court at the Hague, the plain fact remains that Belgian citizens in China today are without extraterritorial privileges. The Western Powers have hitherto exercised the ex- traordinary "right" not only of collecting China's customs and duties for her, but also of fixing the customs at a uni- form low rate. They have, at various conferences and in various treaties, suggested their readiness to improve the status, but when the time came for action they have been unable to agree. They have even insisted that China had no right under the treaties to add to the customs taxes a sales or consumption tax upon foreign-imported articles. Upon this point at least two of the provinces, Kwangtung and Chekiang, long ago broke away from the foreign leading-strings; their policy is now general. The salt taxes, nominally collected under foreign supervision and pledged to the payment of foreign loans, have also slipped from foreign control; but the customs hitherto have remained secure in foreign hands. Now Canton has formally notified the Powers that she intends to raise the duty-rate at Can- ton, and to apply the surplus rec Mpts to recompense of the workers who have suffered in the sixteen-month-long strike and boycott against British Hongkong. This action has its amusing sidelights. When the con- sular body at Canton protested, in the name of the foreign governments, against the decision, Canton's Foreign Min- ister replied that since the Powers did not recognize his Government he could not accept their protest. When they recognized Canton, he said, Canton would be glad to discuss with them. British government interests are reputed to have favored suggesting to British merchants that they refuse to ship goods to Canton as long as this tax was im- posed. But British commercial interests in the Far East had a contrary view. Famished by the sixteen months of boycott, they demanded the right to ship their goods to Canton, however high a tax Canton might impose upon them. And their point of view won the day: British merchants are shipping British goods to Canton ; and the Canton Government, under the noses of the silent British gunboats, is collecting the "illegal" tax. Shantung is following Canton's lead. General Chang Chung-chang is imposing a 2 per cent ad valorem goods tax on all goods passing through his territory, and although the foreign merchants have held meetings of unanimous protest the tax is being collected. Of course the example will be followed elsewhere. This may be chaotic; it may be irregular; it may even defy the text of the old treaties; but the situation in which foreign Powers drew up the customs schedules and bound China to them, then collected the duties for China and applied them to payment of in- terest on foreign loans is too ridiculous to continue. The Powers have themselves to blame. They failed to correct this unjust situation while they yet had time. There are other injustices which the Chinese have not yet attempted to remedy. The national customs administration remains under British control, despite the facts that a treaty which Britain forced upon China assigned control to the nation which does the largest business with China, and that Britain's position in China is no longer first. And every cent of the customs revenue is deposited in the (British) Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, which uses these Chinese government funds not as the interests of China but as the interests of foreign business suggest. From North to South the same Nationalist passion shows itself. It is significant that the Cantonese army, advancing in the name of nationalism, has been sweeping across province after province. Meanwhile, in this process of civil war, the Chinese factions are learning how to fight. Canton's victories were not won by vast masses of coolies fighting as listlessly as chess men. Canton fights with small bodies of well-trained and well-armed men — and wins. China now has at least three first-class arsenals, and others of smaller caliber. The end of the "chaos" which appalled Mr. Strawn may be a first-class military Power in a nation of 400,000,000 souls, animated and united by a dislike of Westerners. Our State Department and the other foreign offices would do well to rouse themselves and look for opportunities to prove that friendship for China which all politicians profess. Japan has reversed her role in recent years; she is the one foreign Power reported sympathetic to China's action upon the Belgian treaty, She knows China. If the time has not yet come it may soon arrive when talk of a pan-Asiatic bloc will be real.

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Nov. 24, 19261 The Nation 523 Are Teachers Muzzled? THIS question has come up anew because of a decision of the Board of Superintendents of the Now York City school system in the case of Abraham Lefkowitz, a teacher who has been denied promotion to head of a department. The Board of Superintendents does not like some of Mr. Lefkowitz's utterances and declares that he voiced his views with "insolence," "intemperance," and "vulgarity." Without mincing matters they declare that A teacher may not have one set of opinions for the classroom and another for the public platform. As a school- teacher, he has not the same rights as other citizens to print, publish, or declare his thoughts and opinions. He is no longer at liberty to "freely write, speak, or publish." This is not an interference with his rights as a citizen. His rights are as "free and untrammeled as they ever were."( !) He may at any time "emancipate himself from the shackles of the department and exercise his full rights as an Ameri- can citizen" by resigning his position. As was said in the Clifford case: "It is, therefore, erroneous to say that his right of citizenship is abridged in any particular, and the courts have so held." In determining whether or not a teacher shall be promoted, the Board of Superintendents is obligated to take into account the history of the teacher, his public opinions, the persons with whom he associates, and his attitude toward governmental questions. In other words, the teacher is placed in the position of a soldier or sailor, denied the right of freedom of speech, and compelled to keep silence if his convictions do not happen to coincide with those of the temporary set of officials who happen to be his employers. William J. O'Shea, the superintendent of schools, is even more specific. In an interview in the New York ing Sun Mr. O'Shea was quoted as saying: We do not wish to restrain the freedom of thought of any teacher so long as that freedom is kept within reason- able limits. We expect the teacher to differentiate between liberty and license. How could the teacher teach children under his care to love American institutions and principles, if, after school hours, he went out and berated American institutions and principles? We find that many of those who have done so are considered by medical men of some eminence as psychopathic. Thus they are more to be sym- pathized with than criticized. But as employees of the Board of Education it makes no difference to what societies they belong so long as they do not take advantage of their position to teach un-American doctrines. Mr. O'Shea did not have Mr. Lefkowitz in mind when he said this, and, indeed, voted for Mr. Lefkowitz's promotion, but he reserves the right not only to deny promotion to teachers thoroughly satisfactory in the classroom if he does not like what they say or how they say it when they are off duty, but also to insinuate that they are pathological cases if it suits his purpose to do so — a blackguardly and cowardly act. He uses the language of every tyrant, every Pilsudski, every Mussolini. Of course, men of this type always pro- test that they want freedom of speech, but within what they themselves consider "reasonable limits" and "liberty, not license." Like the judges of the inquisition of every period and age of intolerance, they propose to decide what is rea- sonable and where liberty ends. What a dangerous precedent to set if the "outs" of today become the "ins" of tomorrow. With all respect to the judicial decision cited, we deny that the Bill of Rights is ever forfeited by any Ameri- can citizen, and that there is anything in the position of the teacher which distinguishes him from any other civil servant to the extent of requiring that he shall be muzzled and his utterances censored outside of his working hours. If the superintendents understood American traditions they would never join the attempt to deprive teachers of their civic rights. If they had that understanding they would know among other things, that there can be no drawing of the line in such matters by mere administrative officials. Who is wise enough to define what is the true Americanism of the day? The authorities of schools, cities, and States in the days of slavery frequently undertook to say that it was un-American to denounce slave-holders and that those who did so abused free speech and degenerated into license. Pro- fessor Charles Follen was dropped from Harvard University because of his anti-slavery views. Miss Prudence Crandall, who dared to instruct colored children in a private school, was forbidden to do so by the legislature and the officials of the State of Connecticut. Public opinion was at that time on the side of the officials, but history proved hers the true Americanism and that of the authorities base and spurious. Whether the views to which the superintendents object are defensible or indefensible has nothing to do with the case. The teacher has a right to his own views and has a right to express them. If he advocates views or conduct which are contrary to the law, there are plenty of statutes to take care of the offender. But for petty officials to tell our teachers what to think and how to speak when outside of the classrooms is to dig the grave of the free-school system and to deal a most dangerous blow to the American republic. The superintendents aver that the offense of these teachers, one of them so fine a woman as Jessie Wal- lace H'ughan, is not that they belong to certain societies, or hold certain views, but that they avow what is in their hearts. John Stuart Mill in his essay on liberty had a good deal to say about that social intolerance which would compel men to conceal their thoughts. He declared that "The price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind . . . the sort of men who can be looked for under it are either mere con- formers to the commonplace or time-servers for truth." If one believes that muzzled, conforming, and time-serving teachers can educate American boys and girls in the Amer- ican spirit, one must stand with Mr. O'Shea. But if one thinks that the best teacher is he who is freest, then there must be the most vigorous dissent. Thomas Jefferson in his second Presidential inaugural proclaimed the right of any American in any place at any time to denounce this govern- ment, or to demand its dissolution or the substitution of something else for this republic. He wanted free and hon- est Americans; Mr. O'Shea demands servile, cowardly, grov- eling teachers who dare not say that their souls are their own. If there is anything of the good American spirit of revolt against governmental outrage left in the teachers of New York City they will unite to make life miserable for Mr. O'Shea and the Board of Superintendents until these officials realize the enormity of their offense against the American spirit.

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iz^^ & i. ^ /ti^ Tourist Season, 1926 Pccliculus Vorax — A recently discovered insecl which is causing great destruction in Europe. It feeds exclusively on countries with a low rate of exchange. When looked at under the microscope it shows a certain distant resemblance to the human ■- ^ ^ ^

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 525 Doheny and Fall Face Justice By RAYMOND CLAPPER EVEN when they have the best of lawyers defendants are sometimes confronted with the unpleasant neces- sity of going to trial. So on November 22 Albert B. Fall, former Secretary of the Interior, and Edward L. Doheny, beneficiary of government oil leases, finally are to face a jury on charges of conspiracy to defraud the Government. The case which comes before the District of Columbia Supreme Court is intricate, yet simple. Most of the major facts already have been , stablished through the remarkable investigation led by Senator Thomas J. Walsh three years ago and in the civil suit to cancel the Doheny lease which the Government won in both lower courts and which is now before the Supreme Court of the United States on appeal. The present trial is the criminal phase of the affair to determine if there is any personal guilt. All of the facts hitherto established will have to be technically reestablished in the criminal trial. But that will be routine. Just one question confronts the jury— whether there was any con- nection between these two sets of circumstances : On November 30, 1921, E. L. Doheny, Jr., arrived in Washington carrying a small black satchel given to him by his father in New York the night before. It contained $100,000 in bills. He was met by a tall, lean man of Western appearance, ragged mustache, hair fringed down around his coat collar in restrained Buffalo Bill style, a pair of small, shoe-button eyes with lids narrowed as if they had often looked down the cold steel of a gun-barrel— the Hon. Albert Bacon Fall, erstwhile prospector, miner, ranchman, lawyer, associate justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, United States Senator from that State, Harding's private personal preference for Secretary of State but, by the grace of political influences, actually at the moment of this meeting the Secretary of the Interior in charge, by recent executive order, of all naval oil lands. The brisk young man handed the Cabinet officer the con- tents of the small black bag. Possibly a slip of paper was handed back in exchange; the young man's father insists that there was, though he only produced a torn scrap of what purports to be Fall's note for the money, with the signature missing. The young man returned to his father in New York; the Cabinet officer perhaps to the White House for the semi-weekly Cabinet meeting. Simple, quiet, smooth performance. Two years later snooping Senators heard rumors. Fall denied he received any money from Doheny. Senators asked how about that $100,000 spent on Fall's run-down ranch and ten years of back taxes paid up about the time the young man made the trip to Washington? Fall insisted he received nothing from Doheny, but did borrow $100,000 from E. B. McLean, publisher of the Washington Post. McLean denied it. Then Doheny admitted he had been the Secretary's financial angel. "We had been old-time friends," Doheny told the Sen- ate committee. "We both worked in the same mining district. I was fortunate. Senator Fall was unfortunate. The amount of money I was loaning him was a mere baga- telle to me ; it was no more than $25 or perhaps $50 to the ordinary individual. A loan of $100,000 from me to Mr. Fall is no more extraordinary. I am just an ordinary, old- time, impulsive, irresponsible, improvident sort of a prospector." Shortly before the episode of the little black bag Fall and Doheny had been living in the same hotel at Wash- ington. They had discussed in a general way a project for the construction of storage tanks in Hawaii to provide an oil-supply base for the navy. Two days before the black bag incident Doheny had written a memorandum to Fall outlining some features of a tentative deal. Passing over a long, intricate story, the result was that on April 25, 1922, five months after the incident related above, Doheny was given a contract, through his Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, to construct tanks at Honolulu to hold 1,500,000 barrels of oil for the navy. Do- heny was to be paid for this with oil which the navy re- ceived as royalty from drillers on Teapot Dome and other government oil reserves. But soon it was found that the Government was not receiving enough oil to pay Doheny, so, on December 11, 1922, the big contract giving Doheny drilling rights in the 32,000-acre Elk Hills naval oil reserva- tion in California was signed. These contracts and leases were all negotiated under the general direction of Fall with only technical assistance from the navy, as Harding, by executive order, had in May, 1921, transferred jurisdiction to Fall's Interior Department. It was this second contract which gave Doheny access to the 250,000,000 barrels of oil in the Elk Hills reserve. This is the contract which he admitted to the Senate com- mittee probably would return him a profit of $100,000,000. The earlier contract, in April, was undertaken, Doheny insisted, purely as a patriotic matter without thought of profit. The little ruddy-faced, blue-eyed oil king told about it in an interview published in the New York Times of July 1, 1925. Doheny said that Rear Admiral J. K. Robison, chief of the navy bureau of engineering, and now retired, under whom young Doheny had served during the war, came to his New York home to tell him of the grave mili- tary situation. That was in 1921 during the Washington Arms Conference. In my mind's eye I can now picture the Admiral stand- ing in front of the open-hearth fire gesticulating excitedly as he discussed the grave situation which confidential naval reports indicated confronted this country. This situation was, as the Admiral outlined it, that a Pacific Power — Japan was obviously meant — had huge oil supplies ready for war and that the United States must concentrate oil at Hawaii to protect its navy fuel supply. He said that, though the public did not know it, war actually hung over the United States when President Hard- ing called his arms conference; he called my attention to the fact that my home, the home of my son and of my grandchildren, of all that I hold dear, were out here on the Pacific coast, and he asked me to consider the rest of

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526 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 the people on this coast and their position much as I would consider that of those near and dear to me. The Admiral urged Doheny to undertake construction of oil storage tanks at the Hawaiian naval base. Further development of the naval base there hung upon the assur- ance that adequate storage tanks would be built. He appealed to me, not as a man in the oil business, but as a citizen of this country, to give to our Navy De- partment that assurance. And I gave it ! On that December night, nearly four years ago, I pledged my word not only to Admiral Robison that my com- and I would, when and if requested by the Govern- ment, formally offer to build and provision with oil its fuel reserve station at Hawaii, in < ^change merely for crude oil from the naval reserves, and that this would be done at cost and without profit. I intended then, and nothing ever shook this intention, that this would be done, in so far as I could do it, even if it took the last penny of my resources. The improvident old prospector again! But fortunately for him, the navy was so hard pressed for royalty oil with which to pay Doheny's expenditures in this patriotic project that it had to turn over to him the 32,000-acre Elk Hills reserve to pay for the job. And the Lord, as usual taking care of the improvident, shaped it all so that Doheny was in line for a $100,000,000 profit on this second deal. The Government's prosecutors, being no doubt mean old cynics, insist that if this be patriotism, it is of the sort that Dr. Samuel Johnson so conclusively defined. The Edge of China By LEWIS S. GANNETT I THE Christian General's army had just evacuated Tientsin, and troops were pouring inland across the mud flats toward Peking. The railroad to the sea had ceased ting. A few British-American tobacco trucks carried opulent passengers through the lines to the seaport, but the route was uncertain and I decided to leave Peking by the back door — to take the train 120 miles to Kalgan and cross the Gobi I and the mountains by motor- car, striking the Trans- Siberian Railway, 1,100 miles beyond, at Verkhne-Udinsk. Looters were at work in the suburbs, so the huge red city gates closed at five. The train was due to leave at seven; it did not leave until after midnight. All evening I sat on my bags in the Shichimen Station outside Peking's walls, while troop- trains poured through, carrying soldiers, horses, mules, coal, tents, automobiles, everything they could salvage, including engines from every railroad north of the Yangtze, and first- class cars full of officers. Suddenly in the midst of the alien turmoil I heard unmistakable American whoops, and there, leaping from a freight train, were six incongruous American marines on guard over four carloads of coal in- tended for the Legation. The cars had been sitting in that station or near it for three days; and after reciting their lives and loves the boys set up their army cots and went to sleep on top of the coal. About me on the cold floor, some smoking long pipes, some munching hunks of bread, some asleep, some just squatting, were Mongols in gorgeous fleece-lined robes of turkey-red, or fire-orange, or water-blue, knotted at the waist with vividly contrasting sa;.hes; with long boots of green or red-stitched leather that turned up and out at the tips like the corners of a Chinese roof, and on their heads This is the first of I line articles in which Lewis Gannett describes his motor trip across Mongolia from tin Chi/use to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In the second article, Mongolia a Nomad Republic, he gives his impressions of Urga, the capital, and of the "Red" man nl which has ruled Mongolia since 1921 — its customs and. schools and sheep-taxes on-! pit-sound. The third article, Toward the Arctic Ocean, describes the trip across tin mountains into Siberia- the route over which Russia is said to have sent aid to Feng Yu- hsiang, (he "Christian general" in North China. spiked helmets of basketwork lined with fur, simple turbans of flaming color, or structures of rich brocade and cloth of gold. Outwardly the women were utterly indistinguish- able from the men— though with headgear removed they revealed their wealth in strange ornaments of beads and semi-precious stones. Weaving in and out about us was an Oriental parade — more Mon- gols; Chinese boys, men, women; my coolie — a lad of perhaps 15, naked to the waist except for a buttonless coat; Marshal Feng's gray- clad soldiers with their weird fur caps; girls in long silk robes of exquisite pat- tern, and girls in cotton trousers; men in Chinese skull-caps, Western stock- ing-caps, Western felt hats; policemen in black uniforms — not a white face among them, and no one in a hurry — all moving with the infinite patience of the Orient. . . . Did the Chinese in pre-foreign days wear such gay colors as these Mongols? Royalty, to the end, dared color in stone and tile, but the masses today are a dull army in blue-cotton overalls. My train pulled in at ten, and departed some time after midnight. To my surprise the berth promised at Army Headquarters was real. In the midst of a retreating army I slept in peace. I woke up at the Great Wall and scrambled into my clothes too late to snap a picture before the engine began snorting for departure. But I could see it from the train — the only monument of man that is visible from the moon. It is an incredible thing, a sort of human attempt to rival the volcanic energy that tossed up the mountains. Over the boldest of the jagged rock-peaks this enormous creature streaks its way like a flash of lightning — soaring, leaping, stopping at nothing, losing in its infinite length the awe of mass and becoming a delicate thing of grace.

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 527 And it leaps from the sea to the Tibet borderland— as far as from New York to Chicago — and was built two thousand years ago. All morning we rode through Asia — brown mountains behind a brown plain of frozen mud; mud walled villages indistinguishable from the grave-dotted plain— graves lure are mere heaps of earth in the midst of tilled fields; now and then a city of castellated walls, built of bricks made from the same brown mud. The eternal Chinese, in their eternal blue cotton, leaned, arms muffed in the opposite tuffs, against the station walls or against their homes, watching with passionless attention the daily spectacle of life. Only the putteed soldiers of the "Christian" army had a trace of the energy of the West. We passed one large city with walls that must have been forty or fifty feet high; in places the sand of this grassless country, •where the wind drives the dust all winter, had swept up and drifted first against and finally clear over the ancient bricks and was sifting down inside the city. The past still lived, but the desert present was engulfing it. In Kalgan China and Mongolia meet. The streets straggle up and down the bare hills, and every other shop sells furs. Soldiers and camels were everywhere; the ricksha tries to support itself in Kalgan, but the frozen ruts make it a miserable conveyance. A ricksha boy with wisps of English led me to the deserted site of the "Pioneer Inn"; we climbed the gate and knocked at doors that swung desolate in the wind. Across the fields I spied an American flag flying over a brown compound; it was the Consulate, and there I learned the whereabouts of the new inn. Williams, its American proprietor, was some- where in Mongolia; his Dutch wife was in Peking; their children spoke only Chinese; but a Chinese "boy" knew some English and, after I had tried in vain with all the languages I could muster, bought for me a sheepskin sleep- ing-bag, a tall fur hat, beefsteak, eggs, bread, and cheese. At the Russian transport agency I managed, with the aid of three Russians each of whom knew a few words of German, to discover that one of the famous desert Dodges was leaving next day for Urga, and to convey the informa- tion that I wanted passage. It cost me $30 gold — for a five-day, seven-hundred-mile trip. Our car — like all the desert cars — was a marvelously rigged Detroit Dodge with a heavy iron superframe built around a touring-car body, so that the running-boards could hold several hundred pounds each. Two tons of freight — mostly cigarettes and tea, apart from water and gasoline for the long journey — were loaded in; the two Chinese passengers climbed on top of the boxes; I, privi- leged, sat beside the driver. Our passenger list was un- wontedly short; we passed Williams returning from Urga carrying nineteen Chinese, wadded with furs and roped in. The Chinese know how to dress for that climate — felt boots, skin trousers, fur hats, and long lamb's-wool-lined tsubas that reach the ground and go once and a half around them. The car wound its way through the camel-crowded streets, stopped to present credentials at the heavily armed gate outside the city, and then headed straight into the mountains. Always we went up. We lurched and stumbled up a rocky river-bed; slipped through dirt canyons worn in the soft loess; passed villages dug out of these soft hillsides, with paper-covered windows cut in the earth, and other villages huddling against rock cliffs; cities with crumbling high walls, and tiny mud villages with towering brick-kilns. Each pass seemed only to open new ond. But gradually the peaks softened. The jagged rocks gave way to brown, tilled fields. Sheep and cows appeared. The villages were sparser; this was bandit country en the edge of China, where the robbers find es- cape into the desert easy. A caravan had been robbed the k before, and a car reachd Urga with its passengers but minus its freight two days after us. This, too, is the frontier country of Inner Mongolia into which the Chinese pioneers drag their plows and oxen each year a little fur- ther, gnawing away the no man's land that was once the proud domain of Mongol princes. We made only thirty miles the first day, but the next morning the plowed land disappeared; the country flattened out and became still more barren — we entered the Gobi Desert. Long caravans of camels passed us plodding steadily southward; we swept through camps where the burdens had been dropped in neat rows and the camels set free to graze or rest, while their Mongol drivers pitched lovely low turquoise-blue tents beside the packs. For miles and miles there was no sign of life — then a little group of yurts. The Mongol yurt is a round hut covered with camel-skin or felt. A lattice-work frame makes the shell — three or four feet high; then poles radiate hub-like to the top, which can be partly thrown open to let out the smoke. The low door may be of ornamental leather — or, more usual on this route, of Pratt's motor spirit tins and boxes. ("Pratt's motor spirit" is the pseudonym under wrhich Socony "gas" travels in those parts, and the discarded packing-boxes and tins are revolutionizing Mongol life along the auto-routes.) Camel-dung is heaped around the base of the yurt to keep out the cold. Camel-dung, indeed, is the sole fuel in that country — it blazes up quickly and the huts warm easily. I felt very grateful to it on those cold Gobi nights. In summer the yurts are demounted and packed — a whole hour's job — and moved to greener fields. For the whole seven hundred miles we played hide and seek with a ,ine of telegraph poles, which is, I suppose, the modern equivalent of the old Great Wall and probably a better defense. Sometimes the desert was utterly bare, mere sand or bedrock; sometimes it was fairly grassy, sometimes wild and rocky. It was exhilarating to know that there were such great open spaces still untamed and uncombed. Against the level sunset sky, speeding faster than our car, long lines of racing antelopes — Gobi gazelles — would often silhouette themselves. The ponies roamed everywhere — sometimes in herds of a thousand. Some- times the car stuck in the sand and we had to shovel out ruts; sometimes, near the water-holes, it was bogged and we had to push. One day I counted for thirty miles and reckoned an average of five and half dead camels or camel skeletons per mile. t ! 1 I Si i r I c ■1 Name and date-line and decorative heading of Urga's only Mongolian newspaper, the Truth

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528 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 Prospecting for Buried Worlds By IDA TREAT "CJ PEAKING of the reposefulness of pure science JO . . . ." The Deputy-on-a-Vacation wiped a perspir- ing forehead that steamed copiously in the flare of the acetylene lamp and leaned his bobtailed excavating pick against the rock wall of the cavern. Between his spread the bed of the trench he was digging showed a smooth layer of moist yellow clay. On either side squatted a fellow- prospector wearing the classic costume — hobnailed boots, mechanic's overalls, and tight Basque caps, the latter a prudent protection against jagged stalactites. The three of us were grouped at the bottom of a deep, natural well, worn by water in one of the limestone foot- .lills of the French Pyrenees— a well that plunged down at a sharp angle for nearly a hundred feet from the opening, but which a series of convenient landings rendered access- ible without the assistance of a rope. Yards overhead, day- light filtered dim and blue through a fringe of stalactites. At the bottom, the pit widened into a star-shaped chamber out of which several low passages, none wide enough to admit a man's body, radiated like tentacles. We had vainly examined the smootn rock walls for prehistoric engravings, though these were scarcely to be expected so near the cave- opening. The next step was to search for traces of a hearth. "This looks to me like another case of wasted effort." Bending over, the digger lowered the miner's lamp into the trench. "Small chance that human beings ever inhabited this hole. This is probably bear clay." As if in proof of that last statement, his fingers detached a white something from the bed of the trench. It was the canine of a bear, lour inches long from the base of the root to the tip. "What did I tell you? No beast of this size ever shared his den with men!" Reaching for a slender poker-like tool, the speaker grubbed cautiously in the yellow clay. A few strokes brought up a second fragment — the lower jaw of a bear cub. its canines still imbedded in the bone. But cling- ing to the under side of the specimen, showed several lumps of soft black charcoal. There was a hearth after all! Working with tools and fingers, we laid bare the "culture layer": more coals, splinters of bone, the humerus of a reindeer, fragments of horn — ox or bison? But no flints. Only one archaeological specimen — the broken end of a bone dart deeply grooved along the middle — typical of the Mag- dalenian industry of the region, and proof positive that men of the Old Stone Age had built their fires in the Tuto de la Mandro — (the Fox's Hole). That sufficed. Gathering our tools we clambered up the steep passage toward the opening of the cave. Out of doors we masked the narrow en- trance with brush and rocks. We had staked another claim. Luck of that order, it may be added, is not often dupli- cated in weeks of prospecting. For buried civilizations like our buried treasures are not to be found down every fox's burrow, even in a country where the humblest rabbit-hole may lead to a mine for archaeologists. Though the en- thusiastic searcher bears constantly in his mind's eye the vision of the Cave-Absolute, there are several hundred chances to one that he will never find it. The perfect cave — he knows in advance its every detail: the smooth curving walls and vault, ideal canvas for the cave:man ai'tist; the long succession of galleries that end at the final "sanctuary" where a frieze of painted bison or mammoths stands out in sharp relief against the limestone ground. There will be hearths of course, on the surface, with bones that admit of identification, flint tools of classic cut, and weapons and ornaments of horn and ivory. . . . The ambition of the ex- plorer has no limit. In spite of a long series of disap- pointments, he never penetrates a new cavern without the supreme confidence that this time surely he is going to "strike it rich." Reality, however, wears a different aspect. The smooth white tunnel ends generally in a landslide, is choked with earth and stalagmite, or gigantic blocks of limestone fallen from the vault which nothing short of TNT would budge. The gallery that "must lead somewhere" dwindles to a crack in which the eager explorer, after wriggling for rods on his stomach, often wedges himself so firmly that only by vigorous tugging from the rear is he at last extri- cated. Then there are "unpleasant" passages, where a st latum of clay partially washed away between two rocky layers is cut by the fissures of many earthquakes. Under- foot, an unreliable crust of stalagmite; overhead, boulders protruding from a cheesy mass of breccia whose solidity is a matter for conjecture. Too chaotic to be of prehistoric interest, such passages must nevertheless be visited; the painted gallery may lie beyond. But the prospector ad- vances gingerly, treads lightly on the uncertain stalagmite, avoids brushing against projecting rocks, and rarely fails to proclaim with suspicious firmness that floor and vault will undoubtedly last longer than the explorer. It is a curious fact, however, that whatever apprehensions he may experi- ence generally disappear after the first visit. A cave re- visited is like a house of a friend; no one thinks of ques- tioning the solidity of the beams. A blocked passage always represents a problem for the prospector. For a curtain of stalagmite masked the inner galleries of Niaux and shut off the chamber of the clay bisons at Tuc d'Audoubert. Stalagmite, if the layer is not too thick, breaks easily. A few hours' work with mallet and chisel will generally show whether the gallery con- tinues. Earth, however, is another matter; every shovelful must be carried and deposited somewhere; and tons of it may be banked behind the first shovelful. The rock wall that bars so mysteriously an underground stream may prove a lesser obstacle. For that rock wall may represent a siphon; if you have the courage to dive through, you may come out — as we did at Montespan — in a gallery rich with prehistoric treasures. A clay-coated gallery often re- serves surprises. There was one like a tunnel through the mud at the time of our first visit. A year later, whole slabs of the clay coating had dried and fallen, revealing the white rock-walls and rows of red Magdalenian dots. Even in a country like the French Pyrenees where every clump of scrub oak may conceal the entrance to a prehistoric habitation, the scientific prospector finds few competitors. The natives keep prudently away from caves, which are currently supposed to be haunted by demons.

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 529 Caverns of any size have generally been exorcised or sanctified by the presence of pious images, to the ultimate despair of prehistorians, as in the case of Lourdes. The openings of smaller caves, which threaten the welfare of domestic animals or hunting dogs, are prudently blocked with stones. Fortunately for the explorer, the custom of throwing dead animals into convenient holes is no longer a current practice; during the war the thrifty peasant learned by experience that a siek cow may represent as much profit as a well one, provided he disposes of it in time. The countryside follows the activity of the explorer of caves with attentive suspicion. He is generally credited with hunting for treasures other than archaeole Would any sane man risk breaking his neck down dark holes infested with evil spirits, if he didn't hope for concrete returns? "I've got an — an object to show you." The Manchot waited until the last group of stragglers from the fair were well out of earshot before continuing, while he plunged a hand deep into the pocket of his alpaca blouse: "We found it in the potato-field. Le roila." With an air of mystery, he produced a small bronze ax, curiously flattened. "It's very heavy," he hazarded, watching us narrowly. "Naturally, a bronze tool — " "We know of course that it contains gold," the Man- chot pursued conversationally. "Bronze," we repeated, "an alloy of copper, tin. . . ." ". . . . And platinum," he concluded, as if he had not heard. "You see, it's very solid. Neither hammer nor file leave any mark." Unfortunately for the specimen, the traces of his enerjry were only too apparent. "In case you find another, don't repeat the experiment," we counseled. "That is, if you expect to sell it for ten francs to a collector." Ten francs ! the Manchot pocketed his treasure with indignation and went away grumbling. He at least was no fool and no city folk, however clever, were going to put anything over on him! The incident is typical. Not in- frequently the discoverer of a promising site finds his plans for its excavation hopelessly blocked by the peasant pro- prietor and his hopes of lucre. Fellow-archaeologists in France have a tacit agreement concerning territory rights. A given district is considered the legitimate hunting ground of the scientist who first began digging in the region. No colleague would think of "trespassing" within the imaginary boundaries. The foreigner however is less delicate. Today the dollar repre- sents the principal bugbear of the French prehistorians. For how can French science, in these days tremendously handicapped for funds, hope to compete with the moneyed American who has been known to offer the peasant-owner of a prehistoric site as much as twenty thousand francs for the privilege of a single summer's digging? "If Americans are interested in prehistory, it would be more generous to help us find the means to continue our research, rather than fight us with the one weapon which today we are powerless to wield," is the expression one hears constantly. There is much talk of pushing a law to prevent foreigners from excavating prehistoric sites. But the French Government will doubtless not care to risk offending even scientific America in these days of debts and agreements. In the meantime the dollar looms large as a potential enemy. "You have found a site in the Pyrenees?" we were asked by a French prehistorian. "Then for God's sake hurry and get a hard and fast bail before the Americans :•<•{ wind of it!" The current Americano-phobia has pene- trated even the domain of pure science. In the Driftway AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER, celebrated French chef, who is said to know 10,000 recipes — eighty-nine for prepar- ing eggs! — has been talking. Most cooks guard their secrets jealously, saying with a wave of the hand "Oh, sometimes I do it one way and sometimes another," or "Well, I take a pinch of salt, not too much butter, just enough milk, cinnamon according to taste — " As a rule a cook is a man of few words. He says it with flours. MONSIEUR ESCOFFIER, having arrived close to his eighty-third birthday, has been letting a little wisdom ooze out. Even so, he says less about cooking than about eating — but that's a great art too. He does not condemn American cooking; presumably he is wise enough to know that it has its surpassing virtues. But in restaurants nowadays these are usually obliterated in a pitiable effort to imitate the methods of Monsieur Escoffier's own France, or at least to make one think so from the barrage of the menu card. Otherwise it is generally sunk without trace on the Athens-New York-Chicago route in favor of a cook- ing which is merely Americanized — with, oh, what unhappy consequences! The Drifter would prohibit naturalization to all cooks. As long as they remain foreign they are usually excellent, but once they begin to salute the flag between every stir of the soup, they are ruined. What's worse, the soup is too. The Drifter has often heard doc- tors condemn the frying-pan. But it doesn't wreck half so many digestions as the melting-pot. ***** IN America, Monsieur Escoffier suggests, there is many a slip 'twixt the stove and the stomach. He names three: the cocktail, ice water, and the steam table. "You Americans," he says, "begin the meal with the cocktail, and those who do not take the cocktail in America take ice water; and I have seen many take the both. How can the palate, insulted with the cocktail and stunned by the cold, cold water, appreciate a delicate plat?" How, indeed! The cocktail, of course, does not concern us moderns. Monsieur Escoffier is French and may be pardoned for overlooking the fact that the cocktail was eliminated by the Volstead law. Ice water was not prohibited by the Volstead law — yet it is drunk in as great quantities as ever! As Monsieur Escoffier says, it stuns the palate. That, with some cooking, is not altogether a misfortune. But the prevailing practice in our restaurants of stuffing a glass with ice has made it impossible to get fresh water at all. And since the use of cracked ict became general no water bottle on a restaurant table is filled except when it gets completely empty. In some cases that would seem to be about once a week. # * * * * AND then the steam table — a device for spoiling cooked foods, especially vegetables, by letting them stand. But the steam table is not, as Monsieur Escoffier thinks, the

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530 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 fault of American hurry. Rather is it the result of our insistence upon "meals at all hours." The French do not attempt anything so ridiculous, as every American knows who has tried to get anything substantial to eat in Paris except between eleven and two or six and nine o'clock. Along with the steam table, Monsieur Escoffier ought to have condemned the general ice-box, in which ice takes the place of cleaning just as in water it takes the place of freshening. The steam table takes the flavor out of everything; the common ice-box gives the flavor of the strongest, say onions, to the weakest, maybe custard. It's democratic, but it's also what Sherman said of war. •:■:- * * * THE Drifter would like to go on; but it's dinner time. He must make his way toward a steam table, toward a water bottle that has not been refilled since last Satur- day. The cocktail, of course, has been eliminated by the ad law. The Drifter Correspondence Coolid^e for Mayor! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Now that President Coolidge approaches unemploy- ment, do you not think steps should appropriately be taken cure his election as Mayor of Northampton? What, other- wise, shall we do with him? I trust The Nation will lend this movement its serious sup- port. Many of us will gladly contribute to his campaign fund. , , Massachusetts, Novembi L. II. J. County -Jail System To the Editor ok The Nation: Sir: I have read with interest the article in The Nation entitled Barbarism to Convicts. To my mind it does not strike at the real root of the trouble, the county-jail system itself. A study of the county jails in New York State by a joint committee, headed by George W. Wickersham, former United StaUs Attorney General, points to the necessity for committing sentenced prisoners to the custody of the State authorities and establishing a series of industrial farms under State control, similar to the farm colony of the District of Columbia established by Congress at Occoquan, Virginia. The National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor in cooperation with the General and State Eede rations of Women's Clubs is guid- ing a nation-wide movement for the abolition of the county-jail system. This is the one and only way to correct the abuses. The county-jail system was carried over to this country from England, but England has long since discarded it and placed all prisoners under control of the central government. Alabama is not "the only State in the Union that tolerates the exploitation of its convicts for profit." It is the only State which turns its State prisoners over to private interests; but in some fourteen of the other States the exploitation con- tinues under the prison-contract system. The "State and States' use" system will solve the prison-labor problem, but it is a process of evolution not revolution and it will require money, time, and brains to carry it in forty-eight States. The Governor of Alabama cannot solve the Alabama problem alone. All the States must cooperate if this century- old scandal is to give place to a system of prison labor which will insure proper industrial training to the prisoner, support for his family, and fair play to the free worker. New York, November 3 Julia K. Jaffray, Secretary, National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor Saintly St. Louis To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: "The Constitution of the United States makes every man equal regardless of color or race. They can buy property anywhere, but a body of men can bind themselves together by making a contract not to sell to a Negro or any Mongolian races. This is the only way to get around the problem." This is a quotation from a statement by a St. Louis home protective association. Before the bar of justice this protective associa- tion stands alongside those who violate the Volstead, Harris, and Mann acts, and should suffer the penalty. An investigation shows that those Negroes who live in restricted districts are law-abiding, industrious people who ask merely to be let alone — to live their lives in their own way. In many instances they are business and professional people seek- ing small, modern homes, not the barnlike structures most often offered to Negroes in so-called Negro neighborhoods. The Ne- groes attend strictly to their own business. The "invasion" of such people is feared, however, for they are black, and to be black in St. Louis is hell. Why not let them live as and where they want to live, not as the Home Protective Association wants them to live? The annual membership fee of this association is two dol- lars, but the association will pay the fee for anyone who can- not afford to pay this princely sum. Just think, a man who cannot afford two dollars a year dictating the living of some others — many of whom have spent years and fortunes prepar- ing for their careers. Democracy! Christianity! St. Louis, Mo., November 3 Carl Kizkage How Old Is Will? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: A phrase in my review of "Potemkin" [Nation 12.'! :252] has brought me the following testimonial from the office of Mr. Will Hays: Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America will H. hays, President Mr. Ernestine Evans, c/o The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York City. My dear Mr. Evans: In your comment of September 15 appears this paragraph: "Will Hays, who seems never to forget that the aver- age mental age of the American public is fourteen years, and is so very careful lest the movies help to mature us." Let me quote the following from many of Mr. Hays's addresses to set you straight on this subject: "No one can reasonably demand that all motion pictures he constructed to fit the psychology of the 12-year-old boy or Kii'l. The primary purpose of motion pictures is enter- tainment for the mature, and certain of life's problems and situations — perhaps not just the things for juvenile observation — must be picturized, if we are to have any drama in our photoplays. The general run of motion pictures are not now and never will be intended especially for the 12-year-olds. If all pictures were made suitable for the adolescent mind, the grown-ups would not pa- tronize the motion-picture theaters, and if the theaters had to rely for their maintenance upon the patronage of children they would soon pass out of existence. Every thoughtful person — parents and guardians included — will accept that situation." New York, October 22 H. L. Russell, Editor Mr. Hays is the Czar of the Movies. Presumably he knows what goes on in his realm. That he should find it "entertain- ment for the mature" is evidence of the irrepressible youthful- ness of the monarch. Besides, I said "fourteen years," not "twelve." New York, October 26 (Miss) Ernestine Evans

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Foreign Book Section Who Reads American Books? By JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH IN books at least the balance of trade has stood steadily against us. Abroad our label has been conspicuously displayed upon gramophones and cameras, sewing-machines and safety razors, but the European publisher so rash as to issue an American book has been more likely to conceal than to advertise the country of its origin. Since Emerson proclaimed, somewhat prematurely perhaps, our cultural in- dependence, a whole line of patriots has echoed his theme. but their utterances have rung more convincingly in Ameri- can than in foreign ears. Baudelaire described our coun- try as "a gas-lighted barbarism"; Ibsen, notwithstanding the American reception of his work, dismissed us compre- hensively as "hugs"; and Anatole France, even while he ad- dressed some of us as comrades, did not always trouble to conceal his contempt for "these gaints with a child's brain." And yet there are signs to indicate that certain of our contemporary writers may accomplish in Europe a task at which even Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Whit- man failed. Theodore Dreiser received his first recognition from England. The American publisher who undertook "Sister Carrie" lost his courage when the wife of one of his officials declared herself offended by the proofsheets and he wriggled out of his contract by printing the book without offering it for sale. It was not until an English edition had received high praise abroad that it was issued here by an accredited publisher, and it is therefore not surprising that "An American Tragedy" should be hailed by Brit- ish critics. Yet even in view of this fact those Americans who have felt, not without reason, that critics across the sea displayed a marked disinclination to praising American work will learn wTith unexpected pleasure of the glowing enthusiasm with which it is being received. In the Nation and Athenaeum Edwin Muir gives it superlative praise; one of the most distinguished London publishers has ex- pressed to us in a private letter his warm admiration; and even the conservative Spectator is unreserved in its approval, incidentally rebuking those tender Americans who feel it necessary to qualify their praise with some refer- ence to Dreiser's "atrocious style." Almost everyone in England [it says] had heard of Mr. Dreiser's great novel, considered to be the finest work of fiction yet produced in the United States. . . . Many had heard, too, that while "An American Tragedy" was im- pressive, it was full of faults, clumsiness, and stodgy pas- sages. Examination proved a surprise, consequently. A novel stands or falls no more by the prettiness or ease of its phrases than it does by the number of copies it sells. To be great a novelist needs neither sweetness nor grace. The essential properties — wholeness, breadth, penetration, truth, vitality — are here. "An American Tragedy" is a very great and very portentous novel indeed. It is a sud- den and even staggering vision of man in the grip of in- dustrial civilization. It expresses a distress which every thinking person must have harbored secretly and which lesser, though doubtlessly equally sincere, prophets have expressed. . . . And if Mr. Dreiser tells this simple, plain story with so great a wealth of detail, in so many hundreds of pages, it is because he has seen why crimes of this sort happen, why smutched little hoys like Clyde exist. . . . The rustic lias a function in life, can feel some dumb satisfaction arise from his labors. . . . Far darker the lot of the average town youth, lie has no skill with his hands, no joy of his strength, no concrete object for his ambitions. Other mi n sec in him only one more rival in a race with no end and no rewards. Swift never indicted society half ireibly as does Mr. Dreiser, since Swift did not belir that each of us is responsible. Swift believed in a Supreme Being; but there is a cold abyss as God of the great cities of America as Mr. Dreiser shows them to us. The Russian novelists, the Irish playwrights are optimists com- pared to Mr. Dreiser; yet his despondency arises not from a grievance but from clear-sightedness. Absurd to speak of his style when the construction of the novel is so inevi- table, so grandiose, and so complete. Idle to carp at long or awkward sentences when the authentic tones of truth ring through every page. Here, indeed, are pity and terror; darkness hangs over the universe. There is something al- most painfully real about the minute descriptions of the apparently insignificant actions of the hero as they are given here. Each has a tragic significance. . . . These things are happening, one says, everywhere. We call it an enlightened age. . . . Theodore Dreiser's voice cries start- lingly "Quo vadimus?" The whole of this vast, sad book is shot with a rare appreciation of the essential beauty of man's innermost spirit; and if the millions of Clydes in the world are being swept into an abyss, the appalled reader of the menacing work of fiction closes it with the conviction that they are utterly and urgently worth salvation. To Dreiser, unquestionably, belongs the distinction of having initiated the contemporary movement in American literature, and to that will perhaps be added the credit of marking a definite turn in the history of the attitude of Europe toward American books. To be sure, signs of such a turn have already appeared. England reads us; Germany is busy translating our works (though not always with great discrimination in its choice) ; Russia has established rela- tions through a special committee for the publication in Russian of our best books; and even France, for centuries the most provincial of all European countries in its atti- tude toward literatures not its own, has begun to take cognizance of us. Cooper, Poe, and, for some strange rea- son, Harriet Beecher Stowe she has always read, but with- out thereby acknowledging our national literature, since she read Cooper for his salvages and she maintained that Poe was a freak, unaccountable except upon the hypo- thesis that his genius was developed as the result of "French influences" received in the South. Now, however, she is becoming aware of our collective existence and is revealing, by such works as the sympathetic and informed survey of contemporary American literature recently pub- lished as a preface to a translation of Sherwood Anderson, that she is eager to understand our spirit as a whole. In view of such facts observable in all Europe some ob- viously outstanding work upon whose merits all can agree is of supreme importance and .it looks now as if "An American Tragedy" were such a work. Who reads an American book? Perhaps the time is not far off when that question will be as pointless as it would be now if "English" or "Russian" or "French" were substituted for "American." Already Sydney Smith's famous gibe, which, though it may originally have been innocent of offense, we have never been able to forget, has lost much of its sting.

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532 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 The Northern Literary World By B. W. HUEBSCH THERE is no heir, apparent or presumptive, to Brandes's laurels in Scandinavia. Indeed, it is a mistake to think of a successor in terms of nationality, for it is noth- ing more than chance that Brandes is a Dane. If a figure comparable to his should appear it is as likely to bob up in Salzburg or Seville as in Copenhagen. The accident of being born a Scandinavian has certain definite con- sequences. Geography and language, factors that tend toward isolation, are responsible for the twofold aspect of Scandinavian culture. The three lands are off the com- monly traveled routes, their society has been thrown back on itself, and their manners and customs bear distinct marks of difference from those of other European nations. This isolation has developed a passion for travel, and thus tne Scandinavian has seen and learned much of East and West and has freely taken and adapted to his own purposes whatever seemed desirable in the large world outside of his peninsula. Similarly in the matter of language. It is not extraor- dinary that three countries with such a history as that of Scandinavia should have developed a notable literature; the English-reading world is becoming aware of the quan- tity and quality of books by Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes since the Saga period. A significant fact of their culture is that the economic obstacles to translating the literature of the world into languages read by only a few millions drive them to the study of languages. Thus, to the Scandinavian, a liability becomes an asset; the limitations of his own lan- guage have forced him to a greater altitude and a con- sequently wider vista. Being without political world ambitions, and with fewer congenital prejudices than exist elsewhere in Europe, the North has bred critics who see clearly and assess with in- telligence and impartiality. Brandes is, of course, the one who is universally known. The one other of recent years who might have stamped himself on the wider realm of lette.s was Oscar Levertin, a critic greatly admired and revered, who was cut off in his prime. The acknowledged leader of the Scandinavian literary republic is Henrik Schiick, a Swede whose monumental general history of literature is now done, a great work in two senses. His history of Swedish literature, already a generation old, is without a peer. As a young man he published a study of Shakespeare's works, and some thirty years later he brought out, not a new edition but an entirely new book, in the preface to which he makes humorous apology for the pre- sumption of his youth. But although Schuck's works alone would make him the outstanding man of letters among those functioning actively, his commanding position is due to the qualities of intellectual leadership that have caused a school to grow up about him. It is not a controversial school but a life of which he is the center. His philo- sophical outlook, his consideration of social forces as factors in literature, his geniality, power, and style have attracted the best disciples, who, in turn, are the potential leaders of the younger generation. The most dynamic figure in ■ reative criticism in the North today is Fredrik Book, also a Swede. He has un- bounded energy, writes books, writes in magazines and news- papers, and lectures. His admirers are legion and it matters little to them that Book often lets his first en- thusiasm run away with him. He may not be a critic of the first rank, but he is charged with life, he inspires controversy, he is radio-active. Quite naturally such a man has detractors and enemies who turn his weaknesses to their account, and so there are camps from which sharp words are hurled. Book's latest book, by the way, is not one of criticism but describes a journey to Jerusalem; it was one of the most popular volumes of the last Christmas season. One of the best of the younger scholars, one generally looked upon as Schuck's legate, is Martin Lamm, whose in- terests and versatility prompt him to write of Swedenborg as well as Strindberg. And he is popular as a lecturer, not only in his university classes but in extension courses. Particularly interesting to Americans should be Ruben G:son Berg, an essayist and critic whose new "Modern Americans" is a just and sober estimate of our living literati. It may be gathered from the foregoing — a mere finger- ing of the surface — that Swedish literary life is not wanting in critics. They are truly critics and not merely reviewers, although none of them scorns journalism. Fogelqvist writes much in a daily newspaper. They vitalize the public mind, they train thousands of readers to understand and demand true evaluations. The fact that Sweden, like every other country, produces a great deal of trash may not be con- cealed, but the reading public is never left in doubt; who- ever buys Nick Carter does so with his eyes open. Publishers everywhere are almost feverishly anxious to find in the literature of other lands the talent which is wanting in their own. Few will dispute the statement that there are only half a dozen men and women under sixty, the world over, who are first-rate story writers. On the whole it is an age of little people in imaginative prose. The book-trade suspects that there is something sterile, if not rotten, in the state of literature, and publishers in their naivete (yes, publishers are naive, as are bankers and politicians and all people generally counted as clever) turn to other lands, believing that "Dort wo du nicht bist, Dort ist das Gliick." The Scandinavians, as well as other Euro- peans (the Latins in a smaller degree), translate a great deal. To an American their choice seems just about as in- discriminate as does our selection of Scandinavian books to them. The books that sell well in the country of origin are the most likely to be translated, but Europeans apply their own taste to our product, or allow their own conception of the American character to govern them, and sometimes issue translations of works which have enjoyed no com- mercial success at home. All of Europe regards America as a phenomenon to be studied, hence those of our books which explore the American soul find the most eager re- sponse. Most Europeans who have looked into our lit- erature are respectful, and often worshipful, before the name of Whitman. Many of them make a great leap from Whitman to Upton Sinclair. However critics may disagree on his merits, his books seem to have impressed Europe — or at least the Central Empires and Scandinavia — more deeply than have any other contemporary American social studies. Sinclair Lewis is the best known of today's American novelists; in certain advanced circles the word "Babbitt" is applied in its American significance. Sherwood Ander- son is beginning to be translated. Berg devotes a chapter

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 533 of his "Modern Americans" to Dreiser and Anderson. There is talk of a Swedish translation of "Spoon Rivor," in consequence of the importance assigned to it by Berg. On the whole it is safe to say that Scandinavians prefer English fiction to American, but that is not to be wondered at, since English life and manners are close to the Scan- dinavian heart. To those who believe that all Scandinavians are blondes, that all their women are cooks or chambermaids, that they all say "Ay Bane" when in America, and that Ibsen was a Swede or something, it may mean little that the lines be- tween the three nations are hardening rather than melting. The political relations are friendly enough, but there is a distinct recognition of the pronounced differences that exist between Dane, Norwegian, and Swede. They have a healthy desire to maintain their separate identities, culturally as well as politically; identity does not mean narrowness, for it has been demonstrated that these small-nation people are per- haps to be taken more seriously as internationalists than are imperialists who do lip service to hollow Leagues and Courts. The Norwegians, long cultural vassals of the Danes, are furthering their ambition to revive the peasant speech, the landsmaal, although there are few present indications that this will be adopted as a literary language. Norway is publishing more books at home and depending less on Denmark, it is said. Nothing illustrates better the inde- pendence of the respective languages than the fact that a book by a popular Scandinavian author — Selma Lagerlof's latest, for example — is issued simultaneously in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. Sweden does cross-word puzzles and has an all-fiction magazine and in other ways does doubtful homage to our leadership. Just now the system of selling books on the instalment plan is being pushed to the utmost, not only by publishers who send their agents throughout the land but by retail booksellers who find their relations with their old customers threatened by the publishers' invasion of the re- tail field. An interesting feature of this new method of selling is that practically all of the books thus marketed are in de luxe bindings. The word "de luxe" usually connotes pinchbeck in American "sets," but these Swedish bindings are really representative of good bookmaking. And the literature is not like that which is associated with the terrible word "book-agent" in the United States. It con- sists of the tried works, classics and sound modern books, that deserve to be in good libraries. In one case, however, a work for sale on instalment payments has been specially prepared; it is an encyclopedia in about a dozen volumes, less exhaustive than the standard Swedish encyclopedia (which, by the way, is about to be issued in a new edition) but more popular. The advance sale of the new work was 65,000 copies; this in a country of only six millions! An- other publishing project, already partly executed, is a series of fifty classics, mostly fiction. Its literary standing is attested by the names of the editors: Fredrik Book, Martin Lamm, and Peter Hallstrom. Many of the books are from foreign languages, and where the existing trans- lations are inadequate new ones are being made. This earnest interest in the literature of other lands is con- stantly in evidence; for instance, new editions of Goethe's "Conversations with Eckermann" and Mill's "Autobiog- raphy" (with an introduction by Heckscher, the distin- guished economist) have just appeared in Sweden. And there are others. New Rooks in France By RENE LALOU Paris, October 10 ONCE more pessimism proves wrong; there is to be no abatement in the activity of French publishers this winter, .lust look at the program of that one-year-old firm, les Arts et le Livre; you will find there several beautiful art books, new children's books by Rachilde and Mac Orlan, an anthology of literary prizes, the first three volumes of "The Nineteenth Century Studied Through Its Texts" (an under- taking which ought to appeal to foreign readers), and that collection called l'lntelligence in which such writers as Valery, Gide, Curel, and Bergson will be represented by their most significant work. Material difficulties seem to have increased the national taste for the highest spiritual activities; no publishing season has been more promising as regards poetry. The Nouvelle Revue Francaise will offer Jouve's "Nouvelles Noces," two reprints of Valery's "Charmes," and Thibaudet's matchless study on Mallarme; Grasset will publish a book of poems by Mme de Noailles as well as two essays by the abbe Bremond on "Pure Poetry" and "Poetry and Prayer" — a much-discussed problem to which Kra will add a contribution by Maurice Martin du Gard, director of the Nouvelles Litteraires, called "Religion and Poetry." The mighty dead will not be forgotten. Plon promises the diary of Maine de Biran, the philosopher, as well as "le Mystere en pleine Lumiere," a posthumous work by Maurice Barres. From Grasset we are to expect Mistral's collected essays and Pierre Champion's big study on Marcel Schwob, whose "Moeurs des Diurnales," a Rabelaisian, Swift-like pamphlet on journalism, was the first number of l'lntelligence. The N. R. F. will give both Debussy's "Mon- sieur Croche," the perfect anti-Wagnerite, and the letters that passed between Riviere and his friend Alain Fournier; with "le Temps Retrouve" they will bring to a close the publication of Proust's prose epic, to which will be added a volume of his chronicles. Robert Dreyfus will edit with interesting commentaries the letters he received from Proust (Grasset), while his biographer, Leon Pierre-Quint, announces an essay on "The Comic Spirit in Proust" (Kra). The last-named firm is also to reveal three hitherto unpub- lished pamphlets by Stendhal, Benjamin Constant, and Go- bineau and some of Rimbaud's letters to one of his teachers. Let us now come to the protagonists of the French novel — I mean those from whom we are still to expect a novel every year for a quarter of a century onward. Gras- set declares that in "Eglantine" Giraudoux has written a fascinating sequel to "Bella," that "le Bouddah Vivant" will be Paul Morand's masterpiece and a revelation of Asia, that Therive's "Souffrances perdues" will keep a fine balance between romance and realism, that Mauriac's "Locuste" will probe deeply into the inmost secrets of family life. At Rieder Jolinon will publish a humorous study of provincial life, "la Paroissienne," and Panait Istrati will complete the cycle of his "Haidouc stories" with "Codine," a description of his childhood in Rumania. Life in the sanatoriums is the subject of Kessel's "Captifs" (N. R. F.), and the go- fever will be illustrated in "Partir," a novel by Dorgeles (Michel). These authors are still young and the firm of Cres has no room for them as yet in the Musee du Livre; but all of them are welcome in the collection Maitres et

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534 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 Jeunes d'Aujourd'hui, a comfortable anteroom to universal glory. As for the true "young," Arland, Beucler, Crevel, Bove, Prevost, Eluard, Vitrac, Honnert, Kra and the N. R. F. extend to them the warmest hospitality; their poems and confessions will appear in the Cornets Litterai- res and Une Oeuvre, un portrait; for such works are usually short and the sympathy of their readers is much increased by a portrait of the author facing his first page with a ro- mantic look. Among their leaders Aragon will publish his kaleidoscopic "Paysan de Paris" (N. R. F.) and Soupault his intense "Corps Perdu" (Grasset), while one of their critics, Andre Lamande, will bring out in Les Enfants du Siecle (Grasset) what ought to be a panoramic description of up-to-date romanticism. As for the theater, Cres will publish a fifth volume of Lenormand and the seventh and last volume of Becque's complete works. Thanks to the N. R. F. we shall soon read Bloch's "Dernier Empereur," two plays by Jean Cocteau which have received qualified applause, and Romains's "Dic- *ateur," recently staged after many difficulties and amid much passion, both literary and political; the same firm will also publish the "Theatre de Maurice Boissard" — Ro- mains's personal enemy and a cynical critic of the stage. Last season Maurice Genevoix was awarded the Gon- court prize and Gilbert de Voisins the prize of the French Academy for literature; so Grasset has asked them to write the memories of their ante-laureate career and will publish Genevoix's "Boite a Peche" and do Voisins's ".Les Miens." He will also give a "Racine politique" by Dubech, stating the French royalist point of view on that great poet. The influence of Maurras will be felt throughout the book, but it will he strongly opposed in an essay by the Thomist leader Maritain on Maurras and the Roman Catholics. Plon will publish that pamphlet, together with Jacques Boulenger's apology for the poetess Desbordes-Valmore, and a curious study by Arbelel of Stendhal's experiences as a grocer. Novelized lives have met with such success that the number of announcements in that line is increasing daily: Horatius and Propertius (Grasset), Descartes and Baudelaire (Plon), Henry IV, Montaigne, Law, and Stendhal (N. R. F.) are thus to he called hack to life. The reason for those choices is not very clear, except i of Law, the father of modern financiers, who has unfortunately become what we call a "figure d'actualite." The interest in Asiatic things is somewhat lagging; will the travel-hooks of Claude Anet (Grasset) and Henry Bordeaux (Plon) revive last year's enthusiasm? Anyhow, Kra will score two cosmopolitan suc- 3 with a life of Mussolini and a biography of Suzanne Lenglen. "La porte du Sauveur" (Rieder) by Etienne Bur- net is given as an impressive testimony on Bolshevism; two novels on the Jewish problem are to be expected from Andre Billy (Ed. de France), and Edmond Fleg at the N. R. F., which will also be responsible for Groethuysen's thesis on "l'esprit bourgeois." Les Arts et le Livre represents Africa with a competent study by Andre Berthelot. As for America, "Serafina" (Cres) will tell the tribulations of a young French girl who followed an American soldier, while Jacques Dyssord in "Joe" (Grasset) will publish the note- hooks of an American citizen who discovers the Old World. Will it read like a translation? Of translations I have not spoken here; it is enough to say that they promise to be more numerous than ever, with a praiseworthy attempt at being less unfaithful both to the original text and to the French language. Books A German View of the Kaiser Wilhelm der Ziveite. Von Emil Ludwig. Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt Verlag.* TT would be difficult in the annals of biography to find a book •"■ more destructive to its subject than this extraordinary volume on the ex-Kaiser. What makes it the more devastating is the fact that, as he promises in his preface, Herr Ludwig cites no authority hostile to the Kaiser, but builds up his case only by citations from the Kaiser himself, his personal friends and admirers, his tutors and official intimates. More than that, he gives to the Kaiser a clean bill of health so far as his personal morality is concerned and takes the side of the Kaiser against the hitter's parents. The tragic Emperor Frederick and his English wife he holds responsible for Wilhelm's unhappy youth and much of the still more unhappy bent of his patho- logical mind. He also stresses the Kaiser's physical deformity and attributes to his desire to conceal and conquer that defect many of his blustering traits — for instance, his masquerading as a soldier — while crediting him with enormous determination and will-power in overcoming a handicap which might have entirely ruined another career. It is only fair to add that the partisans of the Emperor Frederick and his consort have vigor- ously replied to Herr Ludwig's characterization of them. It is undeniable also that the empress-mother adequately sized up her son and, although usually opposed to Bismarck, was one with the Iron Chancellor in deploring that incredibly stupid policy of driving Great Britain into the alliance with Russia and France which was the undoing of Germany. But the disasters of 1914-1'JlS wen- inevitable when the Kaiser came to the throne bereft of parental love and sur- rounded only by sycophants and court officials, not one of whom ventured to tell him the truth about himself and his policies. Historians of the future who read Herr Ludwig's volume will surely wonder how any people as gifted and as able as the Germans could possibly have stood for government by such a man. Not even the fact that many of our American citizens of the 100 per cent captain-of-industry type — the same who are now worshiping at Mussolini's shrine — declared the Kaiser to be "miraculous" exculpates the Germans; it was the great Nicholas Murray Butler himself who, after receiving the Red Eagle of the third class, declared the Kaiser to be "at once a man of action and a student," "of judicial temperament and abounding in sympathy and imagination," "of sound ideas and true ideals," who if he "had not been born to monarchy would have been chosen monarch — or chief executive — by popular vote of any modern people among whom his lot might have been cast." Those who saw him at closer range can still less be for- given for their mental aberrations in estimating him. Well, this German biographer of the Kaiser proves per contra that Dr. Butler's hero was incredibly shallow, entirely undereducated, with no sympathy for or understanding of the masses of his people; that he was vain, egotistic; that he was swung one way or another by hatred, by anger, and by jealousy, and was totally lacking in statesmanship, besides being cow- ardly to a degree. He had no ideals save the commonest im- perialistic ones. Never could this great man face an issue or take a position unless compelled to do so. Usually he vacillated, trimmed, dodged, and if he decided, decided wrong. Take his attitude during the crisis prior to the war as Ludwig sum- marizes it. Immediately after the Serajevo assassinations, the Kaiser wrote: "The Serbs must be cleaned up and, what's more, promptly." On July 5 he first refused to give the Austrian Ambassador his consent to the despoiling of Serbia; after lunch, without consulting his Chancellor, he gave him a blanket power of attorney, for Germany. On July 10 he penned his • Soon to be published in this country by G. P. Putnam's Sons.

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 535 belief that the Austrians were trying to devise terms the Serbians could not accept, yet he twice wrote "too bad" when the Austrian ultimatum was delayed. The Serbians wei band of robbers who must be arrested for crimes." On July 26 he wrote: "One fulfils ultimata or one does not. But one does not discuss any longer!" Next he annotated Sazonov's throat, that if Austria devoured Serbia Russia would fight, this slang: "All right; go to it!" But when the Serbian answer came this man of war char- acteristically swung completely around : "A brilliant perform- ance for a period of only forty-eight hours! This is more than one could have expected. A great moral success for Vienna; but with this every reason for war disappears." He was ready then to be the intermediary for peace between Serbia and Austria — to intercede for what he had just said was "not a civilized nation," but "a band of robbers." The "murderers of princes" wen' actually praised. He had forgotten that he had ordered them driven from the Adriatic. Next his fury turned on the Czar — and the Serbians were again "bandits and murderers of kings." And so it went in that terrible crisis. Beyond question the most moving and dramatic portion of this extremely dramatic book — (fascinating even though it gives evidence of haste in composition and suffers from its style) — is the straightforward narration of the wretched Kaiser's performance during the war. Always he was fed with good news — never bad; at first his orders alone were followed. Then authority slipped from him, for he developed no leader- ship, no inspiration, no quality of statesmanship, not the faintest glimmer of military capacity or understanding. He gave only one hour a day to the war! Vital military confer- ences were shortened or ended because lunch was ready; his headquarters, because of possible danger, remained 200 kilo- meters behind the front. And so, Ludwig writes, "one loses battles." As the end drew near everybody in his entourage talked to him of art, science, technical advances — anything to distract him. When finally the truth was revealed to Wilhelm he was utterly bankrupt, he could do nothing, advise nothing, say nothing — he could not even die with his troops. He would never surrender — "to the bitter end I shall fight." Go to Holland? Never, never. "Well" — a few hours later — "if I must, but not until tomorrow morning." The next morning his son to whom he had given his word not to flee could no longer find him in Germany. In the gray of the morning the Kaiser ended his utterly incapable career in the most incapable way. He lost his only chance to win the respect of mankind. The Kaiser, it is said, proposes to answer Emil Ludwig. It would be characteristic of him, but still more characteristic if he decided not to, for this book is complete, overwhelming, crush- ing in its simplicity, its authoritativeness, and its directness. If it is not the final estimate of history, it is surely extraor- dinarily close to it. Oswald Garrison Villard Scraps of Paper Chiffons de Papier. Par Alcide Ebray. Paris : Andre Delpench. 20 francs. ' ' A TREATY," someone has said, "is an agreement between 'A two or three Powers, destined to be violated." M. Al- cide Ebray's book should convince any one who doubts the defi- nition. He parades before the eyes of the reader an uninter- rupted series of treaty violations from 1830, when the Treaty of Vienna suffered its first but not its last infringement, to the days when France defied the Treaty of Versailles by her illegal occupation of the Ruhr. All of the Powers seem to have concealed under the signature of their diplomatic agents mental reservations pregnant with new conflicts, and they seem to have rivaled each other in bringing their tribute to the altar of disloyalty and perjury. Among these are the six violations of the Treaty of Vienna (1815), one of the Treaty of Paris 6), and four of the Treaty of Berlin (1878), to cite only the principal European treaties of the century. The World War made new records in the art of violating treaties. The belligerents indulged in an orgy of destroying these scraps of paper, and the defenders of law, of justice, and of civilization distinguished themselves particularly. To the violation of Belgium's and Luxembourg's neutrality by Ger- many M. Ebray opposes the violations by the Allies of the neutrality of Greece, of the perpetual neutrality of Corfu, and of international law at sea, the illegal financial blockade, the Brit- ish protectorate in Egypt, the violation of Persian neutrality by Russia, Turkey, and England, and of the neutrality of the Aland Isles by Russia — a criminal series. But the crowning act is worthy of the beginning, and the "greatest scrap of paper" was the Armistice agreement of November 5, 1918, establishing Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points as the basis of the peace. This contract the victorious Entente flagrantly violated in the Treaty of Versailles, and the Government of France in occupying the Ruhr even violated that. The book concludes with an expose of the question of Free Zones and of the Franco-Swiss disagree- ment which followed the French denunciation of her former pledges. The author of "Chiffons de Papier" deserves a special place among the defenders of reconciliation through truth. He has only contempt for the hostility and anger which his book may arouse. His one reply is : "The only question is whether I tell the truth." Baron Baudran A New Look at Cervantes El Pensamiento de Cervantes. Por Americo Castro. Madrid: Casa Editorial Hernando. 11 pesetas. '"pHERE has been no memorable book on Cervantes. Like *■ Shakespeare and Goethe he has been the victim of many dull commentators, but no work of interpretation has yet been writ- ten about him, while already more than enough exists in the nature of philological studies. This book is not, strictly speak- ing, such a work of interpretation — it is only incidentally so. Scholarly in the very best sense of the word, ingenious and pro- found in his approach, Serior Americo Castro is concerned ex- plicitly with an academic question. But the problems which he suggests and on which he touches tangentially are of very wide reach. It has long been the fashion to think of Cervantes as an un- lettered man — "un espiritu lego" — whose greatness consist tirely in his profound knowledge of human nature and his wide experience of the world. With his patriarchal authority Me- nendez y Pelayo placed the final seal of orthodoxy on this un- critical estimate of the author of "Don Quixote"; and not only Fitzmaurice Kelly but also many authoritative critics, foreign and Spanish, have helped it to gain currency. It was never suspected by these critics that lack of education and a profound knowledge of the world involved at bottom a contradiction. They never realized that such knowledge as they were willing to grant Cervantes implied a preoccupation with the intellectual problems which baffled the humanists. The fault lay, of course, in their own shallowness, in their own lack of philosophic in- sight, since they ignored the fact that intellectual problems have, as we would say today, pragramtic consequences, that they are therefore capable not only of philosophic but of dramatic treat- ment as well. It amounted to saying, as in fact Menendez y Pelayo did actually say, that Cervantes had no intellect because he left no system of metaphysics behind him. Furthermore, it never occurred to these critics that a man is great not only in so far as his expression of his own age is adequate and em- bracing— which, of course, implies a grappling with intellectual problems — but also in so far as he is able to transcend his age; that is to say, in so far as he is able to sound, and to some extent disintegrate, the popular dogmas and the fundamental

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536 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 abstractions under which he lives — which once more presupposes a mind consciously occupied with philosophic problems. It has been Sehor Castro's task to apply these criteria to Cervantes and to show how little justified, how superficial, has been the criticism of Cervantes until this very day. Taking con- cepts such as that of justice or love or that untranslatable Span- ish "honor," studying parallelisms between Cervantes and Erasmus and other of the humanists, making also a careful study of Cervantes's aesthetic ideas as found expressed in his works, Senor Castro undertakes to show — and successfully shows — that Cervantes was a man of the Renaissance as much as any of the great humanists. He shows Cervantes as a man of profound intellectual preoccupations — of which he was fully ous — and as a man of far wider culture than his critics heretofore have been willing to admit. He shows, for example, that his religious ideas were far from orthodox, that it was only his sly dissimulation which saved him from the jealous guar- dians of the current orthodoxy. He shows — and very strangely students of Cervantes had never seen any significance in this — that his attitude toward sex morality and toward justice goes distinctly counter to the popular ideas of his time. He shows, in short, that Cervantes considered and reacted very quickly to every influence of the Renaissance, and that this reaction is not implicit but explicit in his work, and discernible to a reflective r with an adequate culture. For Cervantes, an aristocrat of the mind, never wrote for the unlettered mob. Unfortunately, the book is only incidentally an elucidation of the g< nius of Cervantes. Unfortunately, too, it is only inci- dentally a very suggestive approach to the study of the method of Cervantes — the m sthod by which he managed to translate into dramatic terms problems which were, to him, consciously, in- tellectual ones. Yet it is so rich in implications, it studies Cervantes from so unique an angle, that no student of Cervantes or of Spanish culture can overlook it. Elisko VlVAS The Simple Savage Die Malerei der Eiszeit. Von Herbert Kiihn. Munchen: Del- phin-Verlag. A RTISTIC expression is determined by two factors: ego and -**• environment. The former of these, which builds its own world, results in art that is abstract, symbolical. Environment, on the other hand, exists here and now; the man governed by ks no hidden meaning behind obvious things. With this as iiis thesis, Hi rbert Kiihn sets out to interpret the painting and sculpture of the Old Stone Age. He first corrects the error — made more often by historians than by scientists — that styl- ized art is primitive. Granted, it is the art of many savages; but savages may possess an elaborate and ancient culture. The evidence shows that stylized art is a product of the ego, the result of ages of cultural evolution, a companion of deep mysti- cisms and complicated philosophies. It is the precise opposite of primitive. True primitive art, therefore, is realistic: the art of a mo- ment in nature. Thousands of specimens of it hang on the walls of galleries, acclaimed by critics. Since it belongs to our age we ignore its primal relationships; were we less egocentric we should place it where it belongs — as a relic of the troglodyte age. But it is not of the salon that Kiihn writes. The paintings which he analyzes rest on the walls of great limestone caverns where in dark, subterranean galleries survive the records of the Cro-Magnon race, dwellers in Em-ope when man fought the cave bear and hyena for possession of southern France. HeiT Kiihn has selected several of these ancient pictures for detailed review — three bison from Altamira, two reindeer and a wolf from Font-de-Gaume, and several other important pieces. He shows the skill with which the paleolithic artists distributed masses of color to show power of movement in stand- ing bodies or massed them to center force. He calls attention to effective devices of contrast and shading; points out vigorous modeling and skilful brushwork. In short, he proves that Cro-Magnard man was a capable painter, of impressionistic leanings, who did work that many a modern might envy. In his analysis of sculpture and the earlier types of Cro- Magnon drawing, however, Herr Kiihn is less convincing. Like many critics he seems to judge a picture by its size, accuracy of outline, and perfection of blending. Applying similar stand- ards to sculpture, he finds slight merit in that of the paleolithic, . which is small, simple, and none too realistic in details. Herr Kiihn lumps sculpture with early drawings, and dismisses both as relics of an early and unimportant stage in Cro-Magnard artistic evolution. This is unfortunate, for it chances that the very pieces which Kiihn rejects are the ones which most attract the pro- gressive artist of 1926. Impressionism, which Kiihn praises so loudly, is at best a somewhat sublimated realism, comparing with the art of Chagall and Matisse somewhat as Hough com- pares with Theodore Dreiser. Therefore, when Kiihn shows us that the Cro-Magnards became impressionists he does not take our breath away; we wonder if he can say nothing better of them. Clearly, then, primitive Cro-Magnard art has much in common with that of the radicals of today. To my mind this indicates a defect in Herr Kiihn's theory — it indicates that things are less simple than he makes them, and that his sepa- ration of ego and environment is artificial as well as arbitrary. I cannot believe that a man with the intellect of the Cro- Magnard would be merely a "creature of the environment," no matter how simple his life. Moreover, we know that this life was not simple: that it was characterized by religion and ritu- alism, and by elaborate magic. With this the case, what becomes of Herr Kiihn's thesis? Of course he avoids the difficulty by denying to Cro- Magnard man any formalization of life. He dismisses with a sentence the evidence of magic, assumes lack of religion without argument, insists on extreme simplicity of social organization and habit. Yet he does not argue against the evidence, and the graves, models, and pictured dancers and magician remain unanswered. In short, Herr Kiihn has been carried away by his thesis, which leads him to deny wholesale the work of anthropologists. Artists have a way of doing this, just as scientists have a way of pooh-poohing or ignoring the ideas of artists. Both are wrong; the evidence is at hand, and must be studied fairly by anyone who would interpret the psycho- logical background of Cro-Magnard art. That Herr Kiihn has not done so is unfortunate, for the errors he recklessly makes do much to destroy confidence in what otherwise would be a most welcome book. Carroll Lane Fenton Heavens Above and Earth Beneath The World of William Clissold. By II. G. Wells. George H. Doran Company. Two volumes. $5. WITH unnumbered reams of paper before him and the world's most rapid pen in his hand, H. G. Wells has begun once more from the beginning, determined that this time at least nothing from the Cro-Magnon man to Henry Ford shall escape him and that of one book at least he shall be able to say: " 'Tis all ye know on earth or need to know." Here, prehistory and prophecy both have their place along with religion, science, economics, and sociology, and nothing that has been said before need on that account be left unsaid. Mr. Wells has written — and the world has read — some thirty-two novels and romances, an outline of history, and a dozen volumes of sociological disquisition, to say nothing of various miscel- laneous works, but it does not matter. Everything that he has ever said before — provided he still believes it — must be said again, and though in the process his interest never fails,

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 537 that of his readers sometimes does. Not only is the character of our civilization reanatomized and the meaning of history re- canvassed, but we are treated to the life of one more hero — is it the tenth or perhaps the twelfth? — who began a career in pure science only to discover that the need for woman forced him into a more lucrative career. In short "The World of William Clissold" contains, let us say, two hundred pages of reasonably fresh material and six hundred that are merely rechauffe. Moreover all of it, the fresh and the stale alike, is written in that clear, facile, but debased style characteristic of its author. If the essence of the journalistic style is, as I take it to be, the sacrifice of every other virtue — beauty, conciseness, and accuracy — to what is called "readability," then Wells is the perfect journalist. Never once does he let us pause. Bet- ter three pages that can be skimmed with the eye than one phrase so apt or so compact that it must be weighed for an instant. There are some clever things cleverly said, but they are all but lost in a flow of words and a flood of sentences, always competent, seldom distinguished. Patiently, painfully clear, mercilessly explicit, and yet jaunty with the jauntiness of the popular lecturer desperately afraid lest his audience shall walk out in the midst of his most earnest plea, the book constitutes in itself the most damning arraignment of that popular education with which its author is so much concerned; it illustrates in itself all that vulgarization implies. The work is called "a novel from a new angle." The historico-scientific and the politico-sociological disquisitions which constitute the bulk of the volumes are presented, so the preface states, merely as the opinions of the hero and hence an essential part of his character if he is not to be represented, like most of the characters in English and American novels, "as cleaned of thought as a rabbit is of his bowels." Yet what is one to say of a "novel" which proceeds after the following fashion: "In the next two or three sections I propose to write a short history of human society as a labor-money complex evolved out of the primitive patriarchal society"; and which, moreover, makes good this threat? What except that it is, the good intention of the author notwithstanding, no novel at all and that it fails as such, not because its hero has opinions, but because these opinions are not fused in any way with the other elements of the story? They are not integrated struc- turally because the narrative is merely abandoned from time to time that they may be interjected, and they are not inte- grated in any less tangible fashion because the majority of them exercise no determining influence upon the hero's life. The course of his career, amorous and commercial, would have remained quite the same even though he had never heard of the Cro-Magnon civilization or the Old Man of the tribe, and his opinions upon these topics are quite as irrelevant to them as they are to the fact that an automobile accident in the moun- tains cut short his life. The book is, then, not "a novel from a new angle" but merely the device of a conciliatory pedagogue who says: "Now if you will listen attentively to what I have to say, I will tell a tale before we go to the next lesson." Only a very famous man would be permitted to ramble at so unconscionable a length, and the privilege is one of doubtful value. Buried in the two volumes are half a dozen good magazine articles, like the bitter analysis of the element of suppressed envy in modern socialism which ends with the frankest statement Mr. Wells has ever made of his lost faith in the mass and his prophecy of an "aristocratic revolution," and a score or more shrewd observations like that of the hero who remarks: "I will not say coarsely that I learned that women are to be bought, but I saw quite clearly that they must be paid for." Yet buried they are for the very reason that Wells, because of his great fame, may wander and repeat as he will in the full assurance that no publisher will dare to suggest that he change one word. He is a privileged talker, and the best of such suffer more often than not from their privilege. Joseph Wood Krutch The Last Napoleon Die Rheinpolitik Kaiser Napoleons III eon 1863 bis 1870 und der Ur8prung des Krieges eon 1370-1871. Von Hermann Oncken. Drei Bande. Stuttgart: Deutsche Vcrlags- Anstalt. rnillS new work on the Rhine policy of Napoleon III is * monumental. Such a wealth of documents, most of them new, has seldom been devoted to one limited subject; while the introduction in itself is a complete book, clear, readable, and convincing. The fact is lure brought home that the Spanish candidature was a mere episode — a pretext on which Napoleon Already Lord Clarendon had warn< that Napoleon's set purpose was to assure the future of his dynasty by obtaining an increase of territory. He thought to gain his goal with the aid of Bismarck. As soon as the Danish war was over he laid down the alternatives: compensation for France or war. He worked to bring about the war of 18GG for the double purpose of rendering Germany impotent and acquiring for France the Left Bank of the Rhine. We have the confession of Minister Drouyn de Lys that Napoleon's policy was to conclude a neutrality treaty with both sides, the price of which should be the coveted provinces. His demands varied according to circumstances; at one time he would have been content with the boundaries of 1814, at another with an independent buffer state. He sought an alliance with Prussia that would have given him Belgium. Napoleon's persistency and his ingenuity in finding new expedients during the period covered by Oncken were amazing — amazing, too, the cold calculating spirit in which he reckoned on gaining his ends through a general war. He so influenced Austria that on the eve of her struggle with Prussia she con- sented to his price — this time the Rhenish buffer state. He had helped to bring Austria and the South German States together; he felt sure that the combination would win. All the more bit- ter was his disappointment at the outcome of the struggle. Revenge for Sadowa became the war cry of the French nation. Napoleon still tried to lure concessions from Bismarck: coopera- tion in invading Belgium and consent to the cession of Luxem- burg to France. Bismarck went very far. If Napoleon wished to annex Belgium he would not stand in his way; but taking an active part in the matter was out of the question. Checked in every direction, facing overthrow at the hands of the dis- appointed militarists at home, Napoleon saw in war the only hope of propping up a falling dynasty. The years 1868 and 1869 are full of the attempt to close offensive and defensive alliances with Austria and Italy. An agreement was readied by which the three sovereigns felt morally bound, and in all three countries military reorganization was carried on with feverish haste. Then fell the bomb of the Spanish candida- ture. We have the confession from the French side that the chief grievance was that the incident came too soon. France already had a lead of ten days in war preparations; a few days more and she would have been invincible. Among Napoleon's severest critics in the Spanish matter were the Austrians. Metternich asked Grammont why he did not go to war with Spain rather than with Prussia — told him he was merely jumping at a pretext for starting a war; and Beust thought that "appearances indicate a little too clearly that France wants to pick a quarrel with the Prussians." The documents are full of interesting revelations, and they give a wonderful insight into the frame of mind of Na- poleon and Eugenie. Metternich, whose dispatches are given, was his confidant and, despite his criticisms, his well-wisher. A French victory would have changed the whole course of his- tory. But Austria, it is clear, was hampered by various considerations and by a wholesome fear of Prussia. These volumes are of the first importance to students of the relations between France and Germany in the nineteenth century. Ernest F. Henderson

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538 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 1 P:- The Nation's Poetry Prize rTIHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for jf the best poem submitted by an American poet in a contest conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. This year in addition a second prize of $50 and a third prize of $25 will be offered. The rules for 1926 are as follows: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. 3. No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- cumstances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent from this office. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. (i. The winning poems will be published in (lie Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation, to appear February 9, 1927. 7. Besides the winning poems, The Nation reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted in the contest. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. Poems should in no case be sent to them personally. Books in Brief Spanische Wandertnujcn. Ein Reisebericht von Hans Rose- lieb. Berlin: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft. This earnest disciple of Montesquieu sets out to trace the influence of Spain's geographical, ^eolo^ic, and climatic charac- ter or. the nature and history of her inhabitants. Pedro Caldcron de la Barca. Von Dr. Max Victor Depta. Leipzig: Verlag Quelle & Meyer. In this simple study of the second greatest dramatist of the Spanish Siglo de Oro, Dr. Depta has been as rigidly syste- matic as a dictionary-maker. But his manual will probably be much more frequently consulted by students of Spanish literature than more brilliant and more readable volumes. Shakespeare, Wesen und Werke. Von Julius Bab. Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft. Most interesting here is the listing of Shakespeare's great depreciators, Voltaire, Tolstoi, Shaw, in an effort to differen- tiate them from the unqualified admirers, Goethe, Hebbel, Swinburne. Romain Rolland vnd die Emcuerung der Gcsinnuny. Von Eugen Lerch. Miinchen: Max Hueber Verlag. Reinforced with forty pages of bibliography and notes, this work is sound and useful in spite of a tendency to uniform eulogy which is a little unfair to "Jean Christophe" and to the new, incredibly delicate, and beautiful "Soul Enchanted" serial. The final chapter of appraisement, envisaging Romain Rolland as repeating or renewing a Rousseauistic return of spontaneity, ends too abruptly for clearness. Grabbe. Der Roman Seines Lebens. Von Paul Friedrich.. Berlin: Concordia Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Engel und Toeche. Paul Friedrich has done a great service to the memory of the Westphalian Shakespeare. He has edited his works, he has collected and published a Grabbe memorial volume, and he has sponsored stage performances of four or five of the most play- able dramas. This volume is probably an additional service, although, apparently quite unintentionally, it confirms rather than confutes the charges of surly boorishness, obstinacy, and ingratitude commonly brought against the wretched, half-mad author of "Napoleon," "Hannibal," and half a dozen other astonishingly powerful and astonishingly bad plays of violent passion and contemptuous pose. Le Waiter Scott Normand. Barbey D'Aurcvilly. Par Henry Bordeaux. Paris: Plon. 9 francs. A pleasant volume on the regional novelist who immor- talized in literature the little Cotentin peninsula which juts out northwest from Normandy. If M. Bordeaux adds to this gen- eration's interest in a neglected writer, of whom Remy de Gour- mont said truthfully that if a certain book of his had been writ- ten by Balzac it would be acclaimed as Balzac's greatest book, he will have done a real service. Reise in Polen. Von Alfred Doblin. Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag. A popular German novelist travels into the four corners of Poland, spends some observant days or weeks in each one of its six or eight principal cities, and writes keenly and sym- pathetically of what he sees and hears. More interested in human beings than in states, governments, and politics, he tells us considerably more about Poles than he does about Poland. When a German can write like this about Poland, there must be hope for Europe. Richard Dehmel. Die Geschichte eines Lebens-Werkes. Von Julius Bab. Leipzig: H. Haessel Verlag. Dehmel has been dead five or six years, but this painstak- ing life by Julius Bab was undertaken at his instance, and is informed with life and reality through the author's personal ac- quaintance with him. A rash, tumultuous, generous nature and a slowly ripening but at last magnificent gift are here evaluated by one of the keenest contemporary critics. International Books in Brief International Relations as Viewed from Geneva. By William E. Rappard. Yale University Press. $2.50. A sympathetic but fair record of the League's work in executing the peace treaties, in promoting international coopera- tion, and in attempting to outlaw war, written by a philosophi- cal Swiss professor. The League of Nations at Work. By Philip Noel Baker. London: Nisbet and Company. 3/6. An amiable account of the work of the League so short that, as the preface declares, its failures and mistakes are omitted. Syria. By Leonard Stein. Adelphi Press. $1.50. A brief history of Syria since it fell into French hands after the armistice. The author, being British, restrains his condemnation of the Mandatory Power. Survey of International Affairs, 1921,. By Arnold J. Toynbee. Oxford University Press. $8.50. This invaluable reference book is full of meat. On West European affairs, and in its generous chapters on security and movement of population, it is excellent; but it is absurd that its data on Russia should be so largely based on gossip from the London Times.

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 539 Geneva Opium Conference : Statements of the Chinese Delega- tion. By Sao-Ke Alfred Sze. Johns Hopkins Pre . $1.25. A footnote to a dirty history. Addresses. By Sao-Ke Alfred Sze. Johns Hopkins Press. $1.25. The Chinese Minister to the United States graciously indicts the Western Powers and proclaims China's right to break their leading-strings. Das Franzbsische Gelbbuch von 191J,. Edited by Alfred von Wegerer. Berlin: Deutsche Verlag fur Politik und Geschichte. When will the French dare open their war archives to the historians? Already Poincare, and Viviani, and Bourgeois and Pages, the Frencli yellow book on the Balkan crises, and the Russian publications have brought to light essential docu- ments omitted from the official "Yellow Book" that helped deceive us all in 1914. Dr. von Wegerer has collated the new documents with the old in an impressive exhibit of official text-twisting. Yon Bismarck zwm Wcltkriege. Von Erich Brandenburg. Deutsche*Verlagsgesellschaft fur Politik und Geschichte. Zweite Auflage. $3. This is the second edition of what is today the standard volume of pre-war German diplomacy. Brandenburg's work does not lend color to the charge recently advanced by Profes- sor Vermeil of the University of Strasbourg, that "Die Gi'osse Politik" tended to clear the Germans of all responsibility for the prewar hatreds, the armed camp of Europe, and the out- break of the war. His volume is at times very bitter in its criticism of official stupidity and lack of vision; but his refer- ences are in most cases to the published documents. Branden- burg's is thus not merely an excellent first-hand account of the pre-war situation but also the best check anywhere to be found on the published German documents. Drama Spiders WHAT Bacon said quaintly of philosophers may be said of writers as well. Some are ants, laboriously accumu- lating material which remains an inert mass; some are spiders, spinning endless threads of gossamer extracted from their own bowels; and some are bees, ranging widely over the fields of the world but digesting what they find into honey. Bacon in- tended no disrespect (at least to the bees) when he employed this entomological metaphor, and I intend none now; but Luigi Pirandello, introduced to America some years ago with his "Six Characters in Search of an Author" and responsible for the newly produced "Naked" (Princess Theater), is an un- mistakable spider. Long before he dreamed of turning dra- matic author he was trained in that paradise of arachnids, the University of Bohn, and there he entangled himself, once and for all, in metaphysical webs. "Lost in Plato's honey head," eternally preoccupied with the relations of being and seeming, of reality and fiction, he spins endless subtle threads which no delicate endeavor of the mind can disentangle, but which the toe of Dr. Johnson's boot — that famous boot with which he en- deavored to demonstrate the reality of matter — would find very immaterial indeed. "Naked" is one of that whole series of plays in which Pirandello has endeavored to dramatize the relation between characters as they are and as they are supposed to be. Spe- cifically it deals with the unsuccessful efforts of an unfortu- nate girl to achieve some definite existence in the mind of "Viking "Books "It will lie remembered as long as \m eric an Tragedy — remembered and read." — .Wit' York Times. POWER by Lion Feuchtwanger This great romance of a Jew who courted power is beginning to win the wide recognition here which it received in Germany. "A perfect literary achieve- ment."— Springfield Union. $2.50. THE TIME OF MAN by Elizabeth Madox Roberts A Book-of-the-Month Club selection. "A wonderful performance." — Sher- wood Anderson. "A work of genius." — Ed York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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540 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 herself and others, efforts which, beginning close to reality in an attempt to enter the categories of wife and mother, end in an ecstasy of pathological lying which makes her a seven- days' wonder in the newspapers and all but crowns her hope with the attainment of real being as a character in a novel. Each of the important personages of the play is multiple — -what he is, what he wants to be, and what each of the others thinks him — and the action consists in the process by which these separate elements are in a certain measure distinguished from one another. It begins when the novelist, intrigued by the woman whom the newspapers have led him to suppose the heroine to be, takes her under his wing; and it ends when she has been stripped naked of all seemings, left a creature with no existence except as a certain quantity of flesh and bones and hence no longer real at all in any world that counts. Fate has blocked every one of her efforts to achieve a significance in either her own mind or the mind of others, and she takes poison in order that at least she may become "a girl who committed suicide." The thing which distinguishes Pirandello's plays, which forces them upon even an unwilling attention, is the unexpected, almost inexplicable passion with which his fancies are invested and which leads him to the invention of strangely intensified characters upon whom metaphysical conceptions work with all the destructive force of the most elemental emotions. Every reflective mind has toyed at times with speculations akin to his, but there are few for whom they are very real, few who live as though such subtilties were important; and only very rarely does a mind like Melville's or like Pirandello's become mastered by them. 1' or him the web has become a thing not of gossamer but of steel. Bound hand and foot in spider's silk, he struggles desperately to wrench himself free; cries of very real anguish, torment, and despair burst from his lips; and though all about him may protest that nothing really restrains him, that he needs only the movement which ignores their ex- istence and which daily living every moment involves in order to snap the invisible cords which bind him, it is just that brutal physical movement that he cannot make. Hence it is that however intangible the substance of his plays, their emotion is very real and they have in consequence the power to hypnotize for an hour the spectators who watch them and to make gossa- mer seem irrefragable. Yet it is only for an hour or two at most that the spell lasts. Though the two chief characters in the present production are excellently interpreted by Augustin Duncan and Marguerite Kisser, one leaves the theater rubbing one's eyes and content to be once more in a world where, for the sake of convenience, we generally assume that things are more or less what they seem and where, by consequence, people do not usually commit suicide except for fairly tangible reasons. Ferenc Molnar, I have always maintained, is a writer whose world is completely confined within the framework of the proscenium arch and whom it is impossible to discuss in any terms save those which belong exclusively to the theater. He is a skilful puppet-master whose sole concern is with manipulation, and in "The Play's the Thing" (Henry Miller's Theater), the latest of his pieces to be performed here, he ap- pears as frankly that. The story concerns a pair of play- wrights, it involves a play within a play, and it takes its point from the way in which the author continually directs the atten- tion of the audience to the ingenuity of his own devices. P. G. Wodehouse made the adaptation, and a good deal of the wit of the lines appears to be his. As ably acted and directed by Holbrook Blinn it furnishes an extremely amusing evening. "Head or Tail" (Waldorf Theater) is an excruciatingly undis- tinguished comedy-drama from the Hungarian, dealing with a jealous husband and a wavering wife. "John Gabriel Borkman" and "Tl e Little Clay Cart" have been added to the current repertories of, respectively, the Civic Repertory Theater and the Neighborhood Playhouse. Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATER □ —The Neighborhood Playhouse,46/.^,d^~^77/,Y- — Evenings (Except Monday), Matinee Saturday The Hindu Classic THE LITTLE CLAY CART nnaarrp Theatre, 48th St. We»t of Broadway. Evening* 8:80 u"5allc Matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2:30 THEODORE DREISER'S N MERICAN TRAGEDY "A PLAY WHICH IS BOUND TO WRENCH A MILLION HEARTS." — Journal. DRAMATIZED BY PATRICK KEARNEY. YIDDISH ART THEATRE 12th St. and 2nd Ave. Opening Tuesday Evening, November 16th with MAURICE SCHWARTZ PRODUCTION OF ABRAHAM GOLDFADDEN'S "THE TENTH COMMANDMENT" Evenings 8.30 Matinees Saturday and Sunday 2.30 -A Theatre Guild Production- Bernard Shaw 's Pygmalion CI 111 n "Theatre, West S2nd Street. Evenings 8:30 VJ*-/iX-"L' Matinees Thursday and Saturday 2:30 CIVIC REPERTORY THEATRE EVA Le GALLIENNE 105 W. 14th St. Tel. Watkins 77G7 Thursday, November IS. "Three Sisters." Friday. November 19, "Saturday Night." Saturday Matinee, November 2U. "Saturday Night." Saturday Evening, November 20, "Three Sisters." Monday, November 22, "La Locandiera." Tuesday. November 23. "Master Builder." Wednesday Matinee, November 24, "I. a I.ocandiera." Wednesday Evening, November 24, "Three Sisters." Evenings & Saturday Matinees, 50c to $1.50. Wednesday Matinees, 35c-$l. □ LECTURES a SPECIAL LECTURE Adjustments in the Family and Beyond Dr. S. Ferenczi of Vienna AUSPICES Child Study Association of America, Inc. Empire Room, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Thursday Evening, December 2nd, 8:30 Admission to members $1.00, to non-members $1.50 □ ENTERTAINMENT □ Get out your smocks and boots for the NEW MASSES Workers' and Peasants' Costume Ball Friday, December 3, at 9 P. M. - Hall, 119 East 11th Street Tickets now $1.60— at the door $3.00 On sale at Jimmie Higgins', 127 University Place Rand School, 7 East 15th Street or by mail New Masses, ?.9 West 8th Street Tel. Stuyvesant 4445 When writing to advertisers, please ■mention The Nation

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 541 PUBLISHERS! We have just begun the second volume of Two Worlds Monthly You can easily find the new number — It is displayed on 22,000 news stands from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast. With this new number we throw open our pages to your advertising. Two Worlds Monthly has proven a powerful advertising medium for our own books. Its net paid circulation of 40,000 copies monthly makes it THE GREATEST BOOK MARKET IN AMERICA Write For Our Rate Card READERS! Beginning with the December X umber, which is on the stands Two Worlds onthly introduces three new Features i. A Foreign Literary Letter; 2. A Review of Current Plays; 3. A Review of Current Books. It maintains its old standard of publishing every month, in addition to the regular installment of Joyce's "Ulysses" a dozen brilliant, realistic stories from the pens of the most unsparing of contemporary story tellers. Among the writers in the current issue are: Arthur Schnitzler, Frank Wedekind, D. H. Lawrence, Ivan Bunin, Hugh de Selincourt and Philip Guedalla. // you are a subscriber, why not thrill a friend with a subscription? If you are still on the outside, you can begin your subscription with Number ... Just clip this coupon, send it along with Five Dollars, and the first 5 numbers will go out to you immediately. The other 7, completing the first year and the whole of ULYSSES, will follow as they appear. TWO WORLDS PUBLISHING CO., 500 5th Ave. (Suite 405-8), N. Y. C. Gentlemen: For the enclosed Five Dollars send the first 12 numbers of Two JVorlds Monthly to Name Address When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Foreign Rule in Shanghai By JAMES H. DOLSEN Shanghai, September 30 SHANGHAI, the great commercial metropolis of the Far East, suppresses all free speech on the subject which matters most to the mass of its citizenry — their ability to make a decent living for themselves and their families. Working conditions are notoriously bad, as the Shang- hai Child Labor Commission Report of two years ago re- vealed. An exhaustive investigation made this year under the direction of the industrial department of the National Y.M.C.A. Committee of China shows that there has been little, if any improvement. The wages of the overwhelm- ing majority of the 450,000 persons engaged in this city in industry and transportation are below $12 a month. As wages are paid in silver ("Mex")> this reduces itself to $6 a month in American currency. The average income monthly of an adult male is estimated by M. Thomas Tchou, who was in charge of the Y.M.C.A. inquiry, at between $10 and $15 ("Mex"). Including the earnings of the wife and children, the latter of whom may start in the mills as early as six years of age, Tchou concludes that the ordinary family income does not exceed $20 a month. A study of estimates by Chinese and foreign authori- ties of budgets for typical Chinese families shows that a family consisting of the parents and two children — the reader will realize that the ordinary family consists of more children — reaches a total of from $21 to $23 a month. The following, which was used in a series of articles in the Shanghai Times, a conservative paper, re- veals what a dreary existence is implied within such limits. In this case the family income exceeded the $20 a month income by a few dollars. Food Rice $8.00 Vegetables 4.00 Condiments 1.50 $13.50 Heat and lighting Fuel and oil 1.50 Rent and taxes 2.00 Clothing- 2.00 Tobacco and refreshments 1.00 Miscellaneous 1.00 Total $21.00 Conditions last summer became worse because of the unprecedentedly high price of rice. As this is the staple food of the workers and in many cases practically their sole sustenance it is not remarkable that symptoms of dis- content appeared among the masses. The normal price of rice ranges from $10 to $12 per picul (133 1/3 lbs.). In August it reached nearly $20 per picul. The rise of the general price level over last year's as shown by the official index numbers was then about 35 per cent. Unrest in the factories became more pronounced. But the authorities of the Internatioi.al Settlement, advertised proudly as "the Model Settlement," within whose bound- aries most of the mills are located declined to face the situation. In the Shanghai Municipal Council Report for 1925, the secretary, E. S. B. Rowe, cites the following reply to a protest against police interference with a gathering to elect delegates to a national conference: The council has learned by experience that the intro- duction into the Settlement (city) of political questions, particularly where there are so many conflicting interests, is detrimental to its peace and order and to the best in- terests of its inhabitants as a whole, and it has therefore determined that so far as lies in its power it will preserve the Settlement from these incitements to disorder and trouble which unrestricted airing of political views inevi- tably provides. A regulation of the Settlement Council requires a 48- hour notice in advance "of the intention to hold any meet- ing partaking of a political nature, so as to allow sufficient time for investigation and a decision as to whether such meeting may or may not be held." The foreign council which rules Shanghai publishes a monthly Municipal Gazette, a large part of which is occu- pied with descriptions of how the Settlement police, com- posed of Chinese and Sikh patrolmen under British officers, help the local employers break strikes, as for instance: "Three of the mills affected [referring to the situation in July among the 19,563 cotton-mill workers then on strike] locked out the workers. This had the effect of reducing the latter to reasonableness in two instances. ..." The refer- ence is to the return of the workers in two of the Japanese mills when they could no longer hold out. One of the local English papers admitted the strikers had been starved into returning to work. The acme of this anti-union attitude is contained in a memorandum which was sent to the mill-owners of this district by the Shanghai Municipal Police Department in July. It points out many of the ways in which the employ- ers can help prevent strikes. The memorandum draws at- tention "to the employers' lack of precautions in not pre- venting agitators and other undesirable people entering their mills." It complains of the "failure of the employers to inform the police early enough when any dispute starts." The memorandum concludes that "a sterner front is neces- sary" in view of the capitulations made by the manage- ments in recent strikes at Japanese mills. Such acts as refusing to charge rioters arrested or detained by the police, payment of wages to the workers for periods that they have been idle through their own fault, and granting interviews to agitators who profess to represent the workers are frowned upon as "a mistaken leniency." Under the latter classification are also included yielding to the agitators' demands and reengaging dismissed men. It requires little foresight to see that under repression such as this, with the cost of living constantly rising and living conditions for the overwhelming mass of the work- ing people insufferably bad, the whole state of affairs com- plicated by the growing resentment against foreign domina- tion, a breaking-point must be reached where almost any- thing is possible. Ninety-seven per cent of the population of this tyrannized Settlement are Chinese. A few of the more thoughtful of the leaders of foreign opinion and the industrialists see the danger, but most do not, and the "die- hards" dominate. They will surrender nothing except to a force greater than that which they can muster. Perhaps the Cantonese armies will awaken them at last.

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 543 > .-"v^-vrifyVimf^j. THE MONUMENTAL MASTERPIECE which sold over 150,000 copies in Germany Some of the Subjects Treated: Love and Religion; Love and Art; How Love begins in Art; The Meaning of the Chromosomes; How Old Is Man? The Love of the Ichthyosaurus ; Relics of Primitive Love; The First Visible Evidence of Love on This Planet; The Nature of Emotion; The Law Against Inbreeding; The Love Romance of the Tapeworm; The Worm That Eats Its Mother After Birth; The Animal in Man; The Contrast Between Male and Female Love; Polygamy, Polyandry and Monogamy ; Communal Marriage; Natural History of Prostitution; The Wonder of Creation. LOVE-LIFE IN NATURE by WILHELM BOLSCHE Two Volumes. Boxed, $10.00 Albert & Charles Boni — 66 Fifth Avenue. New York Understand in rselves ™heaf^ae^f Understandir Ourselves Dr. Dearden is a noted English psychologist, and his book comes to America with the praise of noted author- ities and the gratitude of many thousands of English readers. It is a clear, frank, wise and intimately helpful book that offers veritable keys to happiness to those who find them- selves their greatest problem. BONG & LJVER1GHT ®-GQOdr§ ^ BOOKS From the Contents The Technique of Life Control The Instincts The Emotions Running from a Weakness Fear, Worry and Lack of Confidence The Self, the Subconscious Mind, & Dreams Insomnia The Sex Instinct Sexual Perver- sion The Bachelor- Girl and Man The Sexual Act Impotence and Sterility Marriage Large 12 mo. Everywhere $3.00 The Fine Art of Happiness The Art of Happi- ness, Dr Dearden shows, is self-knowl- edge. Dr. Dearden teaches us how to un- derstand oneself, how to account for one's strange actions, how to overcome fears and re- pressions, how to break through morbid states of mind, and by that mastery of the art of happiness, to win hap- piness. Publishers New York BROOKS jdR4yn*yiTOnteiwy!™myn*yn$ymumyrwn JFilliam Morrow & Company READ for yourself this living biography of the real Washington — judge whether it does not reveal a more human, lovable and greater per- sonality than (he plaster saint of the old histories. George Washington The Human Beinjj and the Hero by RUPERT HUGHES "1VTR' HUGHES has taken tne youthful Washington, a -LVl fading myth, and made him a red-blooded, lusty, gusty human being for the first time. A splendid, stirring story." — Clande G. Bowers in The Nation. 590 pages with many illustrations. Third printing. S 1.00. Young Fol k , Old Folk by Constance Travers Sweat man ((pEADS delightfully, some- -*-^- what like an older 'Seven- teen'. "-Los Angeles Record. $2.00 303 Fifth Ave. «|| idFiHiiruypuyn+yiw rlr Wayfarer by K A T H L E E N M I L L A Y << A STRONG, vivid, fascinat- **■ ing story, set forth with dramatic power." — Boston Eve- ning Transcript. Second large printing. $2.00 New York +yntyn+ypitypi+yn When vMting to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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544 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 Japan's Alien Land Law AN imperial ordinance providing detailed regulations for alien land-ownership in Japan took effect on November 10. A draft of this ordinance, settling a matter which had been in dispute for fifteen years, was sum- marized as follows in the Japan Chronicle (Kobe) for September 9 : 1. Aliens or alien juridical persons belonging to the countries mentioned below cannot own land in the Japanese Empire: China, Persia, and Finland. 2. If aliens or alien juridical persons belonging to the countries mentioned below desire to own land in the empire, they must obtain the permission of the Minister of Justice and the Foreign Minister: Sweden, Norway, Poland, Holland, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, and Chile. 3. Each State of the United States shall be regarded as a country, and in regard to the possession of land in Japan by aliens or juridical persons belonging to each State, the stipulation of Article 1 of the Alien Land Law shall be applied. 4. In regard to Japanese or alien juridical persons, a majority of whose members, shareholders, or executive officers, or more than one-half of whose capital or a majority of the votes of which belong to aliens or alien juridical persons as mentioned in Article 1 of the Alien Land Law, they shall be regarded as of the nationality of the countries whose nationals constitute more than two-thirds of these juridical persons, and as such Article 1 of the Alien Land Law shall be applied. For instance, if the number of the foreigners employed by juridical persons is in the proportion of 2 for Englishmen and 1 for Americans, this juridical person shall be regarded as a British concern, and shall be treated as such under the 'aw. 5. Under Article 4 of the law, aliens or alien juridical persons are forbidden to own land in the districts mentioned below: (a) The strategical zones, (b) Sado Island, (c) Oki Island, (d) the Luchus, (e) the Idzu Islands, (/) the Bonins, (g) the Kuriles, and (h) the Korean border. 6. In case aliens or alien juridical persons have lost their land-ownership rights under the Alien Land Law, they must dispose of their land within a year, as otherwise their land shall be put to auction. In commenting upon the law the Chronicle said: The number of foreigners who will take advantage of the m.w law to own land in .Japan will be very small — all the smaller because the one nation which has the greatest interest in owning land in Japan, the Chinese, is expressly ex- cluded. The hesitation in granting land-owning rights to for- eigners no doubt arose from the traditional fear of foreign domination. To allow a person of any other nationality to own a piece of the sacred soil of Japan set med almost like sacrilege. On the other hand, there was the desire that Japanese subjects should be allowed to own land abroad and the desire to remove the reproach cast upon Japan, that while she claimed land- owning privileges abroad, she did not grant them to aliens in her own country. China, it will be noticed, ranks with Persia and Finland among the countries outside the pale of land-ownership in Japan. It is a strange combination, but presumably the land laws of Persia and Finland also prohibit foreign ownership. To be quite fair the Japanese Government should have included in this list those States of America which also prohibit foreign ownership, since the regulations provide that each State of the United States shall, for the purposes of the law, be con- sidered as a separate country. A tide 1 of the Alien Land Law, it will be remembered, requires that persons belonging to countries which either prohibit the acquisition of rights re- garding land by a Japanese subject or make their acquisition The Training School for Jewish So- cial Work offers a fifteen months' course of graduate study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Centers. Several tuition scholarships and maintenance fellowships are avail- able to especially qualified students. For further information, address the Director, THE TRAINING SCHOOL for JEWISH SOCIAL WORK 210 West 91st Street, New York City FIFTH AVENUE RESTAURANT 200 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK A LUNCHEON RESORT FOR THE DISCRIMINATING CLIENTELE — THOSE APPRECIATING UNEX- CELLED CUISINE AND SERVICE. EVENINGS— SPECIAL PARTIES ONLY. ANNIVERSARIES, BANQUETS, LADIES' NIGHTS, BEEFSTEAKS, SMOKERS, SUPPER AND DINNER DANCES. OUR BANQUET DEPARTMENT SPE- CIALIZES IN SERVING GROUP DINNERS UP TO 1000 AT $2.00 A COVER UP. Ownership Management by THEODORE KEMM GRAMERCY 4900 to 4907 When 'writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Nov. 24, 1926] The Nation 545 Expression in Literal ure Author of THE NEWER SPIRIT byV.F.CALVERTON With an Introduction by HARRY ELMER BARNES CONTENTS 1. Elizabethan England. Z. Sex in Puritan Esthetics. 3. Sex in Restor- ation Litera- ture. 4- Social Change and the Senti- mental Com- edy. 5. SexExprcsslon in the English Novel. 6. Romanticism and Revolu- tion. ?. Politics and Pnetrv. 8. The ViccIeM Victorians. 9. The Immoral Revolution. -*- THE next great battle between the forces of obscurantism and light will be over the attitude toward sex, writes Professor Barnes in his introduction. It is likely that this book, clearly, and sanely written, describing the evolution of sexual attitudes and the growth of freedom of expression in our time will be one of the his- toric books of the conflict. 12 367 $2.50 BONI & LIVERIGHT NEW YORK § good books i§ os BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS The fun of giving with none of the drudgery. Book gifts in imported decorative wrappings sent direct to your friends post free anywhere. Send for our illus- trated Christmas catalog. THE POST-BOX BOOK SERVICE Inc. 15 West 44th Street, New York The Today and Tomorrow Series "No one who is interested in today and who therefore has a stake in the things of tomor- row can afford to overlook these books." —William Allen White. Each volume $i.oo at any bookstore E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., New York "Belongs to all time" FORTY IMMORTALS by BENJAMIN DeCASSERES The Story of the World's Great Civilizers " 'Forty Immortnls' is one of the great- est books of criti- cism that I know. I have read nothing in criticism which is as condensed, as lyrical, as fulgurant, as intuitional. From the background of an imposing erudi- tion there leap from each page lightning flashes which illumi- :i a t e a complete literary landscape, a complete human soul, where they are seen for an instant as one could not see them in a year, perhaps in a life- time of study. This book is not criti- cism; it is crea- tion." — Maurice Maeterlinck. Anatole France Friedrich Nietzsche Gabriele D'Annunzio Percy B. Shelley Walt Whitman James B. Cabell William Shakespeare Gustave Flaubert Thomas Hardy Edgar Saltus "Unhackneyed, bril- I i a n t. ' * — //. L . Mencken. "Invigorating, dai- zling." — The Book' man. "You won't fall asleep over this vol- ume."— Ken elm Dig- by. "In 'Forty Immor- tals' DeCasseres comes nearer t o achieving the pur- pose of constructive criticism than any- body else we can re- call to mind." — New York Times. ^EVEN ^RTS PUBLISHING COMPANY 160 Fifth Avenue, New York YOUR LEISURE A PLEASURE YOUR PLEASURE A PROFIT Yoi reading can ensure yourself one evening's pleasant a week during the coming winter by devoting it to SI)? iHanr^Ht^r (Suarbtatt WEEKLY You will like its freshness of viewpoint coupled with the accuracy of its facts. It is a store-house of information on international politics, European trends of thought, current English literature, and cultural developments the world over. The intellectually inclined in more than sixty countries depend on The Manchester Guardian Weekly to keep them furnished with reliable information on all important world happenings and on new trends of thought in various countries. MAIL THIS COUPON To The Manchester Guardian Weekly, 222 West 42nd Street, New York City. I enclose three dollars for a year's subscription to THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WEEKLY, to be mailed to me direct from Manchester, England. Name Address When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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546 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3203 conditional or restrictive, shall have the same or similar con- ditions or restrictions applied to them. Thus those States in the United States which prohibit land-ownership by aliens rank with China, Persia, and Finland in being excluded from land-ownership in Japan. Of course the difficulty here is that the United States courts are prone to make a difference between aliens who can acquire naturalization and those who cannot, a restriction which cannot be applied in Japan, where the natu- ralization law does not provide for any exceptions. In fact, the regulations as ! nited States arc concerned will be very difficult to a ere is no system of registration in America, exce] . and the State to which any American belcn us difficult to determine, since he might be born in one State, and yet be domiciled in another. An American who happened to be born in a State which pro- hibited alien land-ownership but had passed his life in a State which had r.o such prohibitory legislation would consider him- self badly treated if he was told that he had no right to own land in Japan. Then there are the countries whose nationals are required to obtain the consent of the Minister of Justice and the Foreign Minister before they can own land in Japan. These include Sweden, Norway, Poland, Holland, and several South American countries. No explanation is given. . . . The present law is better than the one which was passed some years ago, but never brought into operation, inasmuch as the Hokkaido is not excluded in its application. But never- theless it is drawn up in a very niggling spirit, hardly in con- sonance with the high and lofty principles of racial equality which Japan ostensibly espouses. . . . Juridical persons formed by nationals who are not allowed by the regulations to own land in Japan will have to dispose of their property within a year, and the determination of the right of American juridical persons to hold property will probably give plenty of work to the lawyers. In the case of juridical persons formed of two or more nationalities there will be further complicat oris. Thus the law, far from being an extension of privileges, is in some respects reactionary and will entail hardships. Japan's rum- plaint against America is not that the States prohibited land- ownership but that once having granted it, they should with- draw the right without any consideration for the losses entailed by this change of policy. Japan herself, however, is following in the same path. After having granted foreign juridical per- sons the right to own land unrestrictedly, she now proceeds to put restrictions on such ownership. . . . Contributors to This Issue Raymond Clapper is the Washington correspondent for the United News. Lewis S. GANNETT, associate editor of The Nation, spent last winter in the Orient. Ida TREAT is the author of "Primitive Hearths in the Pyrenees," to be published this winter. B. W. HUEBSCH, the publisher, now associated with the Viking Press, is spending a year in Europe. Rene Lalou is the author of "Contemporary Literature in France." Baron Baudran, a retired French army officer who now resides in Berlin, is deeply interested in bringing Ger- many and France together on the basis of perpetual peace. Elisko Vivas, a frequent reviewer of Spanish books for The Nation, is now at the University of Wisconsin. Carroll Lane Fenton, paleontologist, is at the Walker Museum, University of Chicago. Ernest F. Henderson has made a study of war-origins, particularly in connection with Sir Edward Grey. James H. Dolsen, now in China, is the author of "The Awakening of China." True food is the foundation of Good health Jrufbod, Fresh Vegetables Whole Wheat Products Satisfying Diet for Diabetic L ^ ^ST^URAMT J No animal fat used 153 W. 44th St., East of Broadway At 8 o'clock THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE Program November 21-27 AT COOPER UNION (8th St. and Astor Place) ADMISSION FREE Sunday, Nov. 21 — Mr. G. F. Beck — "Democracy at the Cross Roads." Tuesday, Nov. 23 — Mr. S. H. Clark — "The Silver Box," by Galsworthy. Friday, Nov. 26 — Everett Dean Martin — "What Is the Matter With Modern Ideas? The Influence of Rousseau on Modern Ideas." AT MANHATTAN TRADE SCHOOL (Lexington Ave. and 22nd St., at 8 o'clock) Admission, 25 cents Reduction for Course Tickets Monday, Nov. 22 — Mr. Mark Van Doren — Literary Critics of Our Civilization. "Sinclair Lewis." Wednesday, Nov. 24 — Dr. Irwin Edman — Varieties of Metaphysical Experience. "Art and Reality." Thul day, Nov. 25— No Meeting. Saturday, Nov. 27 — G. Kingsley Noble, Ph.D. — Evolution: Facts and Theories. "The life of the past." AJV4 r^Qf^fiXA/ HFADV A Kraphle human-interest itory of the mwO\_WW Ul/\C\. I Iife of the people in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth. $1.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. CHARLES H. KERR & CO. S47 East Ohio Street, Chicago REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS ^.[^^.J^: Suit Length* Cut to Order. Price $2.29 per Yard. Postage Paid Nr WALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Writ* fer patterns listing shades desired I Want someone for a position Want a position? The responsive employer and the intelligent applicant for employment read The Nation. Write for rates. Dept. W, The Nation. GENERAL DRUG CO., 94 N. Moore Street, New Yort When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1865 Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMHI.K 1, 1926 No. 3204 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 647 EDITORIALS: Laurels for Age ; Checks for Youth 5-19 Long Service in Congress 650 General Wood Plays Mussolini 651 The Oath of Allegiance 661 EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURE. By Hendrik van Loon 662 THE MAKING OK A MILITANT. Anonymous 553 MONGOLIA— A NOMAD REPUBLIC. By Lewis S. Gannett 565 WHEN THE OIL GIVES OUT. By Jonathan Norton Leonard f>.ri7 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 659 CORRESPONDENCE 659 BOOKS ART, PLAYS: Chant of the Old Men in the Woods. By Charles Norman 562 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 662 A Bishop Outside the Pale. By John Hnynes Holmes 5t>2 God and Mammon. By Stuart Chase 663 French War-Gold. By Ernest F. Henderson 664 A Friend of Labor. By H. S. Villard Simpleton and Saint. By Mary Rosa •>** Books in Brief ™° The Nation's Poetry Prize Art: Brancusi. By Walter fach........ 666 Drama: Nodding Homer. By Joseph Wood Krutch 66b INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION : Mongolia's Constitution >t>J OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editoks LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subscription Rates : Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, $6.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation, New York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England. TREASON HAS RAISED ITS HOARY HEAD in Wash- ington, where it is openly muttered that President Coolidge's utterances on the question of tax legislation and tax reduction have "put the gang in bad" by his use of the word rebate. How can you defend an income-tax "rebate" when there happen to be seven corporations whose profits this year will be more than one billion dollars that would thereby receive a nice little gift of ten to fifteen millions of dollars which they do not need and had never expected or asked for; when out of $250,000,000 you pro- pose to return $200,000,000 to corporations and individuals having an income of more than $50,000? Eighty per cent of the distribution would thus go to 1 per cent of the tax- payers. With these facts revealed it is not surprising that the President's choice of words has been criticized as very unfortunate. The Treasury is much more tactful in sug- gesting a "credit" on the first two income-tax payments of next year or a "six months' tax reduction." The big corpo- ration pals of Coolidge and Mellon would get the swag just the same, but for heaven's sake, Why give it away by calling it a rebate? ask the embattled insiders in Wash- ington. What is worse, the National Association of Manu- facturers, representing twenty powerful business organiza- tions, isn't satisfied with the rebate, but is supporting the Democratic leaders by demanding a revising downward of the entire tax schedule. The United States Chamber of Commerce, too, wishes no rebates, but a complete over- hauling of the tax situation. Secretary Mellon, who has never failed to guess from $300,000,000 to $500,000,000 out of the way in his annual forecasts of our national income, is still so uncertain about his outcome and outgo that he wishes the present rates continued. SENATOR BORAH has a way of expressing American idealism reminiscent of the best days of Woodrow Wilson. His recent address on China before the National Council of Jewish Women was a stirring challenge: The nation [he said] which . . . invokes the brutal policy of force in China will be the deliberate assassin of justice in the Orient for decades and decades. It will dedicate that land to misery and bloodshed for years to come, and in the end it will settle nothing. Force never does. . . . China may furnish the acid test of whether the world has been converted to justice or whether it proposes to retain the barbarous creed of force. What a stinging answer to the timid pessimism of Silas Strawn, American delegate to the Extraterritoriality Con- ference, who has been telling his audiences that since China is in civil war America must stand with the Western Powers and refuse to remedy the crying abuses of the unequal treaties. Mr. Strawn's policy of doing nothing now is a herald of the gunboat policy tomorrow. Our gunboats indeed already line the Yangtze, in silent defense of an unjustifiable status quo. Will not the State Department heed the warning? DOLLAR DIPLOMACY at its worst is again uppermost in the conduct of our relations with Latin America. Our immediate recognition of Adolfo Diaz as President of Nicaragua, following his election by the Nicaraguan Con- gress, ended our long and quixotic course in refusing to acknowledge the regime of General Chamorro because it was based upon a coup d'etat. Such refusal was logical under our announced policy in Central America, but it went against the grain, because Chamorro was a Conserva- tive and friendly toward the business interests of the United States. The outcome illustrates how impossible it is to carry out fairly a policy of refusing recognition to gov- ernments in Central America other than those which we regard as constitutionally elected. For it is a question whether Vice-President Sacasa, who did not resign but was forced to flee the country when Chamorro seized power, is not more constitutionally entitled to the presi- dency than Diaz. And who is Diaz? He is none other than the man who was made President of Nicaragua in 1911 by grace of our Department of State and the initia- tion of a policy which led to the occupation of the republic for thirteen years by our Marine Corps. Previous to his elevation to the presidency Diaz had been an employee of a United States mining corporation at Bluefields at $1,000 a year. He was not known to have other resources, yet he lent to the revolutionary movement behind him no less than $600,000.

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548 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 AND WHAT DOES DIAZ, puppet and tool of the gov- ernment and business interests of the United States, do as soon as he is recognized as President by Washington? He promptly asks for the return to Nicaragua of military forces from the United States in order to sustain him in office, indicating that his government, which we rushed to recognize, is no more established de facto than it is de jure. More mischievous still, Diaz complains that his adversaries are receiving assistance and inspiration from Mexico, thus opening the way for Secretary Kellogg to renew his quarrel with the Calles Government. That quarrel was dropped some months back simply because the sharp religious issue in Mexico made Washington feel that it was expedient to do so To have continued to hound President Calles when under attack by the Roman Catholic church would have seemed to Protestants in this country too much like giving aid and comfort to the Pope. Now that the religious issue has subsided Mr. Kellogg leaps at the chance of resuming 1 is attack on the ground that Mexico is trying to bolshevize the republics to the south. A great to-do has been started against an alleged "red drive" to capture Central America. Proof so far is lacking, but supposing the charge were true, who gave Uncle Sam any more right to interfere in Central America than Mexico has? Washington, Nov. 17.— Private advices received here indicate that, with the revolt of the Yaqui Indians still out of control, revolutionary movements of consequence are springing up in other parts of Mexico. General Gallegos sur- rendered unconditionally to President Calles the other day, but several other "generals" are reported in revolt. . . . Private dispatches received by banking circles in Wash- ington today were to the effect that Chihuahua and Durango would be in revolt within thirty days. VERY SIGNIFICANT, we call this dispatch from the New York World's Washington Bureau. "Banking cir- cles in Washington" expect rebellions in Chihuahua and Durango within thirty days. When people know of revolu- tions ahead of time they are usually part of the plot. Who are these "banking circles in Washington" that are plot- ting against our neighbor Mexico? It seems to us the duty of the World, which has played an honorable part in the struggle for decency toward Mexico, to expose and denounce the sources of information of its Washington bureau. OF THE VARIOUS PROPOSALS for saving the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti one of the best is the demand for a Congressional investigation. It is useless now to hope for anything from Judge Thayer. His latest decision proved that his mind was closed and prejudiced; his value as a judge is over. An appeal from Judge Thayer's ruling is now before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, but that tribunal can pass only on the legal correctness of Judge Thayer's action; it cannot consider on their merits the reasons for a new trial. The suggestion of the Boston Herald that Governor Fuller appoint an extra-legal commit- tee to study the case and make recommendations is excel- lent, as it would relieve him of the charge of acting under radical pressure, but Governor Fuller's only power in the circumstances is that of pardon — which ought to be a last recourse. Congress, of course, has no authority over the judicial machinery of Massachusetts, but in the interest of our federal administration as well as that of common fairness to two condemned men it ought to lay bare the sinister part taken by the Department of Justice, former agents of which have sworn that, in spite of a prevailing opinion in the Boston bureau that Sacco and Vanzetti had no connection with the Dedham murders, the bureau never- theless assisted in, if it did not instigate, the prosecu- tion as "one way of disposing of" two undesirable radicals. In the face of the legalized official conspiracy against Sacco and Vanzetti, it is pathetic to hear the president of the New York Bar Association protesting because the Har- vard Law School has revived the statement made in 1905 by William Howard Taft that "the administration of the criminal law of the United States is a disgrace to civiliza- tion." It is more than that; it is a swindle and a perver- sion of justice. THE SETTLEMENT between the International Ladies' Garment Workers and the "inside manufacturers" has brought near to an end the longest, costliest, and most vio- lent strike in the history of the needle trades in New York. It was also, generally speaking, an unsuccessful strike. The union, having rejected the report of Governor Smith's com- mission even as a basis for negotiations, called out 30,000 men and women to fight for a set of demands on which in the end they were forced to compromise. The vice-president of the union, summarizing the terms of the settlement at a meeting of shop chairmen, said: "We had to accept reorganization. That was a defeat. On hours it was a compromise. We gained the right to organize examiners. We lost the designers. We lost on time guaranties." The union also won in the matter of wages, an increase of from $2 to $4 over the advanced rates suggested in the Governor's report. The "reorganization" referred to gives the employer a right to discharge up to 10 per cent of his force in a year. This is a serious blow to the union, which, for sixteen years, has been able to enforce a system of practically per- manent tenure for its members. The forty-hour week was won for the future. During the next two years it will be fixed at forty-two, dropping to forty the third year. The strikers were also defeated on their demands for a guar- anty of thirty-six weeks of work or pay during the year. The union is now faced with the difficult task of winning an agreement from the jobbers, who control the output of 70 per cent of the cloakmakers through innumerable small, fly-by-night manufacturers. Whatever its final effect may be, the struggle has been a valiant one. The workers who held out through twenty weeks against violence and judicial dis- crimination, and those who are still on strike, deserve continued support until the settlements are completed and the busy season opens. THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE of New York honored itself two weeks ago in bestowing upon Miss Emily Howland the degree of Doctor of Letters. On the 20th of November Miss Howland celebrated her one- hundredth birthday. "A central New York school teacher," a dispatch declared her to be. She has been and is far more than that. Born a Quaker and true to that noble faith all her life, Miss Howland was one of the pioneers in teaching the Negro at a time when to do so one courted mob violence and. in Southern States, long terms of punish- ment. During the Civil War she took charge of one of the great camps for freed slaves and from that day to this has supported Negro education everywhere by her precept, her example, her large and generous financial gifts.

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 549 Side by side with this great service she fought for woman suffrage and temperance; her one great cause today is that of peace. At her great age she still manages two farms and a school and is a director in a bank. Best of all, her soul is as young and forward looking as ever. When the degree was conferred upon her on October 28, a similar honor was bestowed upon Dr. Frank Sheldon Fosdick, for fifty years a teacher in Buffalo schools and the father of Raymond and the Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick. By a happy choice the latter was asked to make the address upon this rare occasion. Among other things he said that: The end of all true education is to produce genuinely independent individuals capable of taking: intelligent charge of their own lives. There can have been in history few times when an independent minority was more deeply needed than now — men and women who dare to think their own thoughts, stand on their own feet, take charge of their own lives. We need men and women who know that the economic order cannot remain as it is, that we must look forward to a more decent day when the profit motive sinks and the service motive rises into the ascendancy; men and women who see that a narrow nationalism will not do, that patriotism is not enough. Dr. Fosdick must have had Emily Howland in mind as well as in sight. Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota, the lone Farmer- Labor member of the Senate, announced that he expected at an early date to hold a caucus with himself at which he would work out his program for the Seventieth Congress. — Press item. FELLOW Progressives, Henriks all, Let's do a little talking. This is the time, in dreary fall, When parties all are caucing. And to our caucus I'll expound Each Farmer-Labor tenet, For I'm the leader well-renowned Of my party in the Senate. We'll fight the Court, the League, and all Such frenzied superstitions. We'll fight against our honest Cal For uncoerced commissions. We'll cringe to neither Dry nor Wet, Nor patriot debater; We'll recognize the Soviet, Be nice to the Equator. And Cal will ask us in to tea And Mellon, out to dinner; And we shall smirk with joy to see Republicans grow thinner. And Democrats will falsely smile Or honestly look dour, Because we still maintain, the while, The balance of the power. Fellow Progressives, let us all Unite and act as one, We'll answer to our country's call And have a lot of fun. I thank you for your patience, friends, I love you as my life. And now our party caucus ends With no internal strife. Laurels for Age; Checks for Youth WHEN Anatole France received the Nobel prize for literature in 1921 he is said to have remarked, "I need neither the money nor the fame." Kipling might have said the same with almost equal truth, and now Bernard Shaw, who has just been chosen for it, responds in a simi- lar strain: "My readers and my audiences provide me with more than sufficient money for my needs ; and as to my renown, it is greater than is good for my spiritual health. Under these circumstances the money is a life-belt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety. I therefore respectfully and gratefully beg the Swedish Royal Academy to confer on me the additional and final honor of classing my works in that respect hors de concours." These incidents are sufficient to raise once more the whole question of literary prizes, their purpose, and their usefulness. In the past the Nobel committee has been criticized for giving the prize to such people as Tagore, Heidenstam, and Benavente, while more distinguished writ- ers were passed over, but there can, of course, be no such criticism here. Few will deny that the three men named above all "deserved" the prize. Many, in addition, will rejoice that it could be given to Shaw — to one whose opin- ions have been so divergent as were Shaw's, to one who, as late as 1914, courageously forfeited the measure of tol- erance which he had won from the great public and began the struggle anew. And yet the sum involved, between thirty and forty thousand dollars, is too large to be wasted, and it is a pity that it should go, even occasionally, to those who have no possible need of it, when there are so many struggling writers to whom it might well make the dif- ference between a life wasted in a continual battle with poverty and one devoted to the full development of a talent. There is, indeed, an initial confusion involved in the plan of the prize, since it fails to make any distinction between the occasions where homage and those where financial aid is appropriate. Honor belongs to those who have earned it; money to those who need it most. To age, secure in achievement, should go the laurel crown; to youth the check. Shaw has agreed to accept the money temporarily, as otherwise there seemed to be no legal way of disposing of the cash. But he does not intend to retain it. He suggests that it be used to encourage "intercourse and understanding in literature and art between Sweden and the British Isles" and has proposed a fund to bring important Swedish books to England. It is true also that this is a fine gesture; but it was the intention of Alfred Nobel to encourage specific writers, and when Shaw gets the prize none is en- couraged. Could not some arrangement be made by which the prize could be divided, the honor and the money going separately to those who deserve them most? Failing that, could not some American be found to offer a similar prize, not to the most distinguished but to the most promising writer, to the one whose work gave the best evidence that he could profit from the leisure which the prize would bring? For some reason, as yet unexplained, a man is the hardest "cause" to raise money for. We have now endowed "chairs" in plenty; why not also endowed men?

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550 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 Long Service in Congress T IHE death of Speaker Cannon brings to the front once ' 1 more the special usefulness of the Congressman of long service. He may, like Mr. Cannon, be a reactionary and a whole-souled believer in government by, for, and with busi- ness yet if he is chosen from a safe Republican or Demo- cratic district, he may become of special value merely by reason of his long residence in Washington. Speaker Can- non took his duties as a committee member very seriously; when it came to dealing with appropriations he was a veritable watch-dog of the Treasury. He, like Governor Smith in New York, had the business of the government at his fingers' ends, and his shrewd understanding of human nature helped him to gauge not only the necessity of the appropriations asked for but the reliability of the officials who came to ask for money. He once remarked, after such a session, that if the appropriations some bureaus had just asked for were to be granted the whole of the government's income would be used up. But he went on to say how much he liked the zeal of the petitioners, and how right it was that each one should think his work the most important undertaken by the government. But if long service in Washington produces great familiarity with the workings of the political and govern- mental machine, our congressional system is none the less faulty and unfair. A good man from a closely contested district is likely to lose his seat at any time before he has acquired a valuable technique, or after he has made himself an authority. A Representative from a Southern State, or one from the heart of Republican Illinois, is cer- tain to rise to a position of great committee influen. he ever so lazy or lacking in ability, if his health is good. It is seniority which counts. On the other hand, it is almost impossible for a new man no matter how brilliant to make his mark at once. His speeches will not be reported unless they are sensational, and he counts for nothing in the com- mittees until he has served several terms. In this respect, as in many others, the British Parliament is superior to our Congress. At Westminster a young man in his early twenties may make his mark at his first session and so focus attention upon himself as to compel his inclusion in the next cabinet. The younger Pitt did this at twenty-one and one-half years and Fox at nineteen; and in modern times Winston Churchill, who ranks now as probably the ablest debater in St. Stephen's, entered Parliament at twenty-six, made a name at once, and was in the ministry six years later. Long experience counts heavily there as well as in our Capitol. But for a new Congressman a career such as Churchill's is an impossibility. If his seat is safe he must none the less sit for years at the foot of com- mittees and watch his elders and seniors decide party poli- cies, and award, subject now to the budget, the various appropriations to the several departments of the government. This is obviously in large measure due to our committee system. But it is also in considerable part due to that vicious unwritten law which requires that a Congressman shall be a resident of the district he is to represent. In England, as everybody knows, if a valuable member is defeated in one district a safe seat is found for him elsewhere. Here sec- tional feeling would, of course, prevent a Southerner's hold- ing a Massachusetts seat in Congress, and vice versa. There ought, however, to be freedom of candidacy within a State such as New York. That would, for instance, give a Demo- crat who refused to bow the knee to Tammany Hall in New York City an opportunity to contest for a seat in some rural district, or some smaller city. As matters stand, if a man wishes a long congressional career, he must either become the henchman of a boss, as has Nicholas Longworth in Ohio, or, like Mr. Cannon, dwell in a State which is so overwhelmingly one-sided as to insure his return every two years. Plainly, the present situation limits severely the number of men among whom the wheel-horses of Congress must be found; it insures in most cases their being loyal and dull party henchmen. The value of men of experience who have industry and a taste for details is enormous. New York has never had a Governor who so spent himself on the State's business as has "Al" Smith, and his extraordinary knowledge of every department of the State government has contributed greatly to his success. Similarly, in Washington Senator Wads- worth's coming departure from the Senate is an adminis- trative loss — however one may feel about his politics and point of view— because he has mastered the technique of his job after holding it for twelve years, and because per- sonal tastes have made him an authority in several fields. It is rare, indeed, that a new Senator or Congressman takes his seat with such an extraordinary equipment for it as has the present Senator La Follette, whose years of close association with his father gave him a training that enabled him to perform valuable service from the day that he was sworn in. He is the exception. It takes the average new Representative or Senator years to become valuable even if he has ability. He must learn the ropes on the adminis- trative side even though he may be able to shine soon through his oratorical ability. It is, therefore, obvious that, if our Congress were entirely elected in close districts with much electoral mor- tality every second year, it would be a weaker and less useful body than at present. There would be few veterans with facts at their fingers' tips and with years and years of experience to enable them to direct the machinery of government over which the legislature exercises far closer supervision than is generally understood or appreciated. Of course, the veterans can abuse their power, and often do. Their very knowledge of the details may enable them to starve a bureau or sidetrack righteous projects, or to maneuver themselves into strategic positions in which they can take advantage of their knowledge to pull the wool over the eyes of those with less experience. In regarding Mr. Cannon's long career it must not be forgotten that he used his experience and parliamentary skill to throttle the House of Representatives, with the result that there ensued the fight against his rules — a really vital, stimulating, and worth-while fight at the time, even though in retrospect it seems less important. Parliamentary experience is thus easily subject to abuse; but its value in Washington is such that when men like Wadsworth are driven from office their contributions to the administrative side should not be overlooked in estimating their total value to the government and the people.

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 551 General Wood Plays Mussolini LEONARD WOOD, by executive decree, has abolished the Insular Board of Control. As Governor Gen- eral of the Philippines he has fought the board for six years; now suddenly, aided by the Attorney General's office in Washington, he has invented the power to abolish it. When Burton Harrison was Governor the Filipinos, ea to develop the islands with native capital, invested govern- ment funds in the Philippine National Bank, in sugar cen- trals, in development of coal mines, and in a cement plant. When General Wood toured the Philippines in 1920 he im- mediately deplored these sad examples of "state socialism." He took no note of the fact that Japan had built up her industries with government support, nor of government patronage of industrial development in various British colo- nies. But he met a snag in the Board of Control, which had power over these government industries. As Governor he became ex officio one of the three members of this board, but in his desire to "get the government out of business" he was in a minority of one. To the Filipino mind the alternative was subjection to American capital, always more interested in overseas profits than in development of the islands for the islanders. For six years Governor Wood, enthusiastically supported by the American business interests and ardently opposed by a solid Filipino phalanx, has sought to take these enterprises away from the Philip- pine Government. Every decent method failed. So finally he has resorted to the good old technique of the Czar. Opponents of Philippine independence talk much of the "separation of powers." President Coolidge, lecturing the last Independence Mission, seemed to make the "stable government" referred to in the Jones Act synonymous with separation of the functions of the legislative and the executive. It is doubtless true that in the Harrison period the Filipinos, acting through their Legislature, assumed a greater control of their government than Congress had con- templated. For our part, we honor them for so doing; we would despise any people which did not attempt con- stantly to encroach upon the powers of a dominant alien race. But surely if separation of powers means anything, it works two ways. By no possible interpretation of the law has Governor Wood, executive, the right to substitute himself for the courts and by executive decree declare legislative enactments unconstitutional; or suddenly to as- sume control of organizations created by the Legislature which have been functioning under its supervision for years. The courts are notoriously slow, but despite many sad dis- illusionments we still have faith enough to hope that the Filipinos will have recourse to them. Governor Wood's usurpation of power smashes the boundaries between legis- lative, executive, and judiciary as no act of the Filipinos has ever done. It is not administration. For two decades we have been instilling into the Fili- pinos a respect for democracy and self-government. How- ever blood-stained the origin of our rule, it compares favorably on the whole with that in neighboring colonies. There are, to be sure, some who argue that the Dutch, slower to develop schools and parliamentary institutions, have been wiser. The Javans, for instance, have clamored less for independence than have the Filipinos, but the recent bloody uprisings of the Javans might well serve as an object-lesson to these preachers of dictatorship. The Oath of Allegiance STRANGE decisions are made in connection with natu"- ralization. The United States has a body of law on the subject, and an imposing array of regulations has been issued under it by the Bureau of Naturalization of the Department of Labor, which for some years has been trying to establish a uniform administrative practice for all applicants. But in this country, contrary to prevailing foreign practice, the making of a citizen is not an admin- istrative act. The Bureau of Naturalization conducts the preliminaries and makes recommendations for or against citizenship; the final decision rests with the courts. They have no uniform system of practice except as understand- ings may be reached by judges in individual districts. The whim of a single judge is sufficient to establish the practice in any one court at any one time. Take the case of Miss Mary King, an Irish Quaker, secretary of the Young Women's Christian Association of Portland, Oregon. When she appeared before the late Charles E. Wolverton, judge of the United States District Court, citizenship was denied to her because she refused to take the oath of allegiance to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, for- eign or domestic." She said that as a Quaker she would do everything in her power except bear arms, but, despite her argument that Quaker citizens are exempt from mili- tary service, her application was denied. In the course of two years the applications of a dozen other persons with conscientious scruples against bearing arms were denied by the same judge. Judge Wolverton evidently insisted that the phrase "defend the Constitution" meant to do so with arms. There would seem to be no warrant for this interpretation in the words themselves, and the Passport Division of the Depart- ment of State does not construe them as having this mean- ing. As the applicant for a passport is required to take an oath of allegiance containing the same phrase, Roger N. Baldwin, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, recently wrote to inquire what interpretation was put on the words by the Department of State. "I am a pacifist who served a term in prison during the World War for my refusal to obey the Selective Service Act," he stated. "I am wholly opposed to bearing arms for any purpose or to aiding warfare." Mr. Baldwin received a reply from J. K. Anddle, chief of the Passport Division, which seems to us to express a reasonable and intelligent attitude: You are informed fn reply that the department does not construe the oath or affirmation of allegiance prescribed by the passport regulations as necessarily involving physical defense of the Constitution and consequently does not per- ceive any good reason why non-resistants should decline to accept it, especially as it is administered to women and to children old enough to understand its nature. However, if you have conscientious scruples against taking the oath as it stands, the department will consider the matter of issuing a passport to you if you will file formal application for such a document supported by an oath or affirmation of allegiance to the Constitution in the following form: "Further, I do solemnly affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and will, so far as my conscience will allow, defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. So help me God."

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552 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 European Architecture The Builders of Geneva: "Otjt plans were all right, but there seems to be something tfie matter with our little tower."

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 553 These Modern Women Th< Making of a Militant ANONYMOUS 1COME from the oldest American stock. I can say that with absolute truth and without implication of snob- bery because one of my ancestors, on my father's side, was an Indian girl. On my father's side we are English and Scotch back to 1636, when his first ancestor in this country came from England. On my mother's side, we are, with the exception of an Irish great- grandmother, of unmixed English blood, straight back through a signer of the Declaration of Independence to an ancestor on the May- flower. It is, I believe, my father's blood — a long line of farmers — which has most influenced my thinking and is responsible for a kind of militant idealism which marks many of my family. It is, I believe, my mother's blood — a long line of mill- workers and mill-owners — which has most influenced me aesthetically. That strain has given me an intense love of beauty; a feeling, more poignant perhaps, when beauty is expressed in color rather than form. There are two stories, hang-overs from the Revolu- tionary period in my father's family history, which always glow in my imagination. One is the story of a woman and the other of a man. The woman was the wife of my direct ancestor of that period. On the morning of April 19, 1775, her husband was plowing. Suddenly a man on a sweating horse stopped on the road in front of the house and yelled to him: "To arms! To arms! The regulars are coming!" My ancestor dropped his plow, rushed into the house, put on his coat, seized his musket, and ran down to the road. Once there, it occurred to him that he had not said goodby to his wife. He turned to wave to her — she had already taken his place at the plow. The other story concerns the same battle. Deacon Josiah, one of my collateral ancestors, followed the British for miles along the line of fighting. That night he did not return. The next day he was found dead behind a stone wall. He had shot his last bullet, for there was not one left in his pouch. He was eighty years old. Those stories made a profound impression on me. Sometimes I have wondered if they were not the real reason why for years I — naturally the most timid of created beings — was always in one civic fight at least; often in two; some- times in more. My early life was passed in Boston. I received the education typical of the upper middle-class in Massachu- setts a generation ago. I went to four public schools — primary, grammar, high school, and normal school. I went to Radcliffe College. We were poor; genteelly poor; not poor enough to live in the slums and to know the thrill of haphazard picturesque slum existence, but poor enough to float along at a dead level of a lamb-stew existence. Yet the family life was informed with that idea of plain living and high thinking which was the New England ideal fifty years ago. As I look back on my life, it seems to be bound by the Boston Transcript, the Boston Public Library, the Boston Symphony, and the Atlantic MonMy. I am one of seventeen children — the progeny of two wives and one father. The We print herewith the first of a series of anony- mous articles giving the personal backgrounds of women active in professional and public life. Our object is to discover the origin of their modem point of view toward men, marriage, children, and jobs. Do spirited ancestors explain their rebellion? Or is it due to thwarted ambition or distaste for domestic drudgery? The next article is by a woman who, tlwugh willing to fit into the conventional picture, found herself unable to do so. lives of all those children, ex- cept three who died in in- fancy, would make novels. I can here give but a carved cherry-stone idea of my own. My father was born in 1815. He remembered with perfect clearness sitting as a boy in the chimney corner, listening to the tales of the Revolution told by men who had fought in it, and to dis- cussions of witchcraft by people who still believed in witches. Clearly, too, he remembered when at eight his father took him to Charlestown to see the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill monument. La- fayette spoke on this occasion, and Daniel Webster. My father was a handsome person, the black-haired, olive- skinned, gray-eyed type, with a figure like a blade of Da- mascus steel, romantic, chivalrous, gallant, gay — dashing was the word they used to describe him. When he was a half-grown lad, he used to walk a distance — roughly of fifteen miles — into Boston to purchase the Waverley novels as fast as they appeared; trudged the fifteen miles back. As a youth, he went on the stage. It was his boast that he played every minor Shakespearean part, and that he had danced with Fanny Ellsler. He and a half-dozen other young men formed themselves into a black-face company and went to England; the first to visit Albion's shores. This was in 1844. They used to tramp from town to town giving their show and then moving on. My father made pilgrimages to the homes of Shakespeare and Byron, and to all the places he could identify that Scott had mentioned in his Waverley novels. He had a picturesque career; as prison reformer — he was, so far as I know, the first prison reformer in this country — politician, lecturer, author, and traveler. As ne grew older, that fire of his youth toned down to an extraordinary quiet. Always an agnostic, he became a confirmed pessimist, but a gentle and humorous one; he seemed to develop an extraordinary wisdom. My mother was twenty-four years younger than my father, beautiful in a delicately robust way; temperamen- tally capricious; illogical; vain with that charming vanity of the mid-Victorian epoch. All these youngnesses were illumined by a natural instinct for beauty; and they were held together by a dominant quality, seemingly alien to the combination — common sense. She was one of a large family of girls. Her mother died when she was ten. Her father immediately married again

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554 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204, —the makeshift matrimony of a man left alone with an unsolvable problem. My mother brought herself up. Early she went to work in the mills which were owned by her uncles, and in which their relatives were both foremen and workers. It was the Lucy Larcom period in American in- dustry; all my mother's fellow-workers were women of American birth. And there was no sense of social infe- riority in working in a mill. One day, perhap-s, some Ameri- can novelist will reconstruct that interesting epoch. I re- member her telling us that the year she was eighteen she hired a horse on the Fourth of July, and in a habit which she had made for herself rode from Lowell to Boston — to see the doings on Boston Common. When she was seven- teen my mother heard my father make a speech. She came home, waked up all her sisters, and kept them laughing half the night in spirited girlish imitations of him. The next year she met him. A few months later they were mar- ried. He placed her immediately at the head of a large household, where life moved in a highly romantic manner. In winter she used daily to skate. This frivolity in a mar- ried woman appalled the close, conservative community in which she lived. She used to ride horseback almost up to the time her babies were born. And this appalled them even further. Subsequently my father lost his fortune, tiny for this day, but ample for those — and the bad times came. It was at their nadir that I was born; and my youth saw no amelioration of them. Yet ours was a big family and an extremely gay one. Two aunts were familiars of our household. One, my father's younger sister, was a remarkable person. She had been a school-teacher. At the age of fifty-odd she was offered the place of a man principal who had just resigned from the school in which she taught. However, when she discovered that she was expected to do all his work but would not receive anything like his salary, she refused the job. She entered a theological seminary, was graduated at the head of the class, the only woman in it — one of the first American women clergymen. She had a parish in each of two towns, north of Boston. She preached in one church Sunday morning and the other Sunday night. When she W3 ! over seventy she retired; returned to her native town. A year later a delegation of farmers waited on her and asked her to come back, naming any salary within reason. The second household familiar, also my father's sister, was a strong spiritualist. For four summers in my teens I went with her to a spiritualist camp-meeting in Massachu- setts. Every morning and afternoon there were lectures in what they called the "auditorium." There was absolutely nothing for a young person to do in the camp-meeting; and so, out of sheer ennui, I attended all those lectures. Looking back, it seems to me, I heard discussed there every possible system of ethics, every possible theory of humani- tarianism. I was a passive creature. These drifts of thought seemed to float over my mind without touching it. I was conscious then of no impression. I realize now that they had a profound effect. However, I was accustomed to hear all kinds of dis- cussions between my father and my two aunts. My mother, who bore no direct part in the discussion, was always flashing into their abstractions the strong flare of her com- mon sense, the sparkle of her mother-wit. From an early age I became used to ideas. I was at home with them. I don't remember ever having to think things out when new ideas were presented to me. I knew instantly whether I accepted them as truth or not. With an exception; one of the strongest convictions of my thinking life, feminism, was a gradual growth. Indeed, I don't remember hearing the word feminism until I got to college. In regard, however, to that tiny practical aspect of feminism — the franchise for women — I became very early an instant and ardent disciple. The question was first put to me by an extremely able woman teacher in the grammar school. Immediately my mind accepted as truth the idea that women should become in the fullest sense — citizens. I remember taking my new-found theory to my clergyman aunt, thinking I was going to open up a new vista to her. "I have believed in woman's rights all my life," she commented tranquilly. "And so has your father." From that time on, with increasing closeness, I was to be con- nected with the suffrage fight — that long-drawn-out, all- absorbing, irritating, boring battle for an obviously just and tiny bit of human liberty. I became very impatient with the slowness of a struggle waged on such scrupu- lously polite lines, and when the first militant in England threw the first brick my heart flew with it. Thereafter I was a firm believer in militant tactics. Toward the end of the movement I was identified with the militant wing of the suffrage fight. But although this struggle seemed to occupy the sur- face of my mind, I was faintly conscious of a vague but deeper unrest underneath. Away back in the early stir- rings of my young-girl thinking I became definitely con- scious of a growing impatience with the woman's lot. From the moment I was able to think for myself — and I suppose I could number on the fingers of one hand the women I have met in a lifetime who have not agreed with me — I regretted bitterly that I had not been born a man. Like all young things I yearned for romance and adventure. It was not, however, a girl's kind of romance and adventure that I wanted, but a man's. I wanted to run away to sea, to take tramping trips across the country, to go on voyages of discovery and exploration, to try my hand at a dozen different trades and occupations. I wanted to be a sailor, a soldier. I wanted to go to prize-fights; to frequent bar- rooms; even barber-shops and smoking-rooms seemed to offer a brisk, salty taste of life. I could not have been more than fourteen when I realized that the monotony and the soullessness of the lives of the women I knew abso- lutely appalled me. This was, understand, life in the middle class. These were, understand, women without private means or with- out the capacity for earning money for themselves. I saw that most of them enjoyed one brief period of budding and another of flowering; the romance periods of young love and early marriage. After that — my heart sank as I contemplated the picture. All about me I saw lovely young things marrying, producing an annual baby, taking care of too many children in the intervals of running their houses. It seemed to me that early they degenerated into one of two types: the fretful, thin, frail, ugly scold or the good-natured, fat, slatternly slut. As I look back on those years, the mid-day Sunday dinner seemed in some curious way to symbolize everything that I hated and dreaded about the life of the middle-class woman. That plethoric meal — the huge roast, the blood pouring out of it as the man of the house carved; the many vegetables, all steaming; the heavy pudding. And when the meal was finished — the table a shambles that positively

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 555 made me shudder — the smooth replete retreat of the men to their cushioned chairs, their Sunday papers, their vacuous nap, while the women removed all vestiges of the horror. Sunday-noon dinners! They set a scar upon my soul. I still shudder when I think of them. A profound horror of the woman's life filled me. Nothing terrified me so much as the thought of marriage and child-bearing. Marriages seemed to me, at least so far as women were concerned, the cruelest of traps. Yet most women married and all seemed to want to many. Those who remained single often changed into something more repellent than those charmless drudges. I made all kinds of resolutions against matrimony. All the time, though, I was helplessly asking myself, how was I going to fight it — when I so loved companionship? One way, I decided, was not to let myself get caught in any of those pretty meshes which threaten young woman- hood. I made a vow that I would never sew, embroider, crochet, knit — especially would I never learn to cook. I made a vow that if those things had to be done, I would earn the money to pay for thorn. I married, but I kept my vow. I have always paid for them. Even in a young mar- riage, when income was very limited, I went without clothes to keep a maid. And although 1 happen to be extremely domestic in that I must have n home and much prefer to stay in it. I have always managed that the work of that home should he done by someone else, and that my clothes should he made outside it. Through all this spiritual turmoil there had been de- veloping within me a desire to write. And during all these years, I was making a tentative experiment with the august business of reflecting the life about me. Ultimately my first short story was accepted; more short stories; a book; more books. Except for three or four years, my mature life has been economically independent. I hope to be economic- ally independent the rest of my days. When I look back on my fifty-odd years of life on this planet, I wonder what was the real inception of my desire to stand alone — fighting ancestry; liberal influences; discussion-ridden youth? Per- haps it was those Sunday dinners! Mongolia — A Nomad Republic By LEWIS S. GANNETT [This is the second of three articles describing the author's trip across Mongolia from the Chinese to tlie Trans-Siberian Railway. The last article, Toxoard the Pacific Ocean, xvill appear in next week's issue.] UDDE and Tuerin, on the way across the Gobi Desert, have been marked on world-maps for centuries, but they are mere clusters of yurts. Urga is the greatest city of Mongolia — a land vaster than the entire United States east of the Mississippi — and Urga has a population of per- haps forty thousand. It begins as a sort of Russian fron- tier town, with wooden houses strung loosely along a wide road; closes into a Mongol city, with yurts, tents, and more permanent structures hidden behind the tall log stock- ades that line the streets; twists, for a space, into a hud- dled Chinese town, and then climbs the hill, Mongol again, to the Lama City around the high tem- ple where the mummy of the Living Buddha sits erect incased in gold when he died just two years ago. Over the occasional shops are vast signs — in stringy Mongol and chunky Tibetan char- acters, in the Greek letters of the Russian alphabet, and occa- sionally in the lovely forms of Chinese ideographs. Urga's customs- house is a vast com- pound open to the sky. Snow was falling, and From a water-color sketch by a fifteen-year-old schoolboy in Urga. I attempted to carry my bags into the one covered shed. Three large Mongols rapidly removed me and my bags, to the vast amusement of the camel-drivers and idlers who seemed to spend their days placidly smoking and watching the encircling mountains. I was at a dis- advantage because I could find no one who under- stood a word of any language that I knew. I could indicate by signs that the wet snow was not good for my clothes, but they were unimpressed. Slowly, with vast interest, they shook out my garments, one by one. They held up long woolen underdrawers for the amazed in- spection of the considerable crowd that had gathered. They stopped to play with Chinese toys that I was bringing home to my small son. They tried on a necklace intended for my sister. Finally they came upon some letters, and these they stuck in their belts. Some of these were to Feng Yu- hsiang, the Christian general, who was then in Urga, and their seizure broke my pa- tience. Loudly pro- testing in pigeon Eng- lish as unintelligible to them as their Mon- gol was to me, I re- moved the letters from their belts and put them in my pocket. Their voices rose; the crowd in- creased. Finally I had an inspiration. With some of the letters I was done. So, osten- tatiously, I divided the packet, presenting them with the larger

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556 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 share and keeping those 1 still needed; this they regarded as equitable, and we beamed agreement at each other. At that point I remembered my radiolite wrist-watch, and when I showed them that fascinating toy, peace was sealed. They did not even open my second bag. The Russian chauffeur reappeared and assured me that I could get my passport back tomorrow. I had already learned enough Russian to un- derstand the word for tomor- row; and margash — tomorrow — was the first word of Mon- golian that I came to under- stand. I doubted, but there was nothing to do but let it go, after an exhausting cross-ex- amination in sign-language as to my age, marital condition, and number of offspring. The Mongols are having a fasci- nating time learning to be modern, beginning with pass- ports and permits. The Russian consulate was the next stop. The Consul was perturbed. He did ^ot like Americans, but I had a friendly letter from Kara- khan, the Russian Ambassador in Peking. And what was he to do with a man who spoke no Eastern language? Niki- foroff himself, I later learned, spoke Chinese, Mongol, Per- sian, Turkish, and several Cos- sack dialects, but he knew no French, German, or English. Fortunately he had a German secretary, and one of his assistants spoke some French. We finally agreed that I would seek out the Marshalls and hope for shelter there. Marshall is the last outpost of the West in Mongolia. Russian influence, aided by Chinese civil war, had made it almost impossible for British and Americans and other Westerners to do business via China. The trade now moves north, via Russia. But the International Export Com- pany still maintains its compound, and exports a few skins; and Marshall and his wife and his assistant live in Urga as Englishmen do in their trade empire on which the sun never sets. The Marshalls even had a bathtub — the only bathtub in all Mongolia. They had a phonograph, too, and our car, apparently, brought mail for them from Tientsin, and a new record: "I want to be happy." I shall never be able to think of Urga without hearing the whining beat of that record. Every night, after supper, the sounds rang out with a kind of sinister precision. No one else in Urga spoke English; two of the Marshalls' three children had never learned the native tongue of their parents; Jimmy, the eldest, when I showed him a picture of my son, said: "I wish you had pulled Michael out of your pocket instead of his picture. I'd like to play with a little boy who talks my language." The long, cold wintt tells on lonely Anglo- Saxons isolated there on the roof of Asia; and, it had not helped matters when, a few days before my arrival, Mrs. Marshall, entering the kitchen in the morning, had stumbled A page from a Mongolian schoolbook illustrating the fable of the mouse and the elephant — an Eastern version of the familiar story of the lion and the mouse. against the body of her lovesick Russian cook, hanging to a stove-pipe. They all wanted to be happy. The Marshalls were hospitality itself, but politically their position in Urga was weak, and they did not know me. The Russian Consul was even more suspicious; and the task of seeing people in a strange city where hardly a soul spoke any Western tongue but Russian was com- plicated. Eventually I dis- covered a few possible aides. There was Domba Dordji, the president of the People's Party of Mongolia, who had learned a little English in Moscow; Dalai Badmadjopoff, son of the Minister of Justice, who had been to an American school in Tokio; Zaparin, the Russian trade representative, who spoke all the languages in the world and would have been more useful if he had not been presiding over a series of trade conferences which met three times a day; and Vsevsi- atsky, a passionate Russian prison reformer, whose wife spoke German. It is lonely in Urga. Mrs. Vsevsiatsky, for instance, was a high-spirited Russian girl who had almost finished her medical training in Petrograd when the war came near in 1920. She served as a doctor at the front; the bloody ex- perience spoiled her for medi- cine, and she turned first to philology and then to natural science. She came to Urga as an expert attached to the staff of the explorer Kozloff ; quarreled with him, fell in love with and married Vsevsiatsky, who had left his boys' penal colony in a Moscow suburb to help the Mongols work out their first written code of laws. And now she was tied down in Urga by her small daughter, named Gobi after the desert; and an- other child was on the way. Her career was gone. Would she die a provincial official's wife there at the end of the earth, she wondered? Vsevsiatsky's job was the compilation of codes, but his passion was prison reform. A genial, red- bearded, blue-eyed Russian, he had persuaded the Mongols to abolish corporal punishment from the statute-books, but wherever he traveled he found it still in vogue. He showed me photographs of the mogelun, the coffin-like box in which the Mongols used to incase their prisoners, with its single hole through which the prisoner received food and air and, occasionally, removed excrement. He had a little penal museum of rods and whips taken from provincial prison officials. He lamented the universal laments. "The old officials are hopeless," he said, "they do not even want to understand the new system, and the young men do not know enough and will not work." Again and again in that week in Mongolia I found myself comparing Russian advisers with the Christian mis- sionaries in China, trying to teach a people things it did not want to learn. The Mongols were enthusiastic about

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 557 the Russian-conducted veterinary station, but they had no interest in agricultural experts. (They dread tillage, in- closure of the land, as a sure forerunner of loss of inde- pendence.) They welcomed Buriat Russian school-teachers, but the Russian doctor in charge of the Urga hospital com- plained that they had cut off his appropriation for train- ing nurses, insisting that any Mongol soldier could nurse well enough without training. School is a difficult problem in Mongolia. Under the old aristocratic regime* no one but the priests learned to read, and few of them. 1 brought back with me a copy of the first schoolbook ever printed in Mongolia, just off the new printing press, imported from Germany. A census of the ruling People's Party, which includes the progressive, thinking younger generation, had just revealed that even in that advanced group only 1,894 of 5,100 could really read; only 24 knew any language other than Mongolian. Many of the teachers are perforce Buriat Mongols from the other side of the Russian frontier. Pictures of Lenin and Marx were interspersed with drawings of Roy An- drews's fossil baluchitherium and of polar bears, with human skeletons and German butterflies on the walls of the two-story log-cabin schoolhouse which is the educational pride of Mongolia. This, the oldest school in Mongolia, has a history of five years; of its eighty pupils twenty were studying English, fifteen Russian, fifteen Chinese, and the rest were still struggling to master the wriggling let- ters of their native tongue. * Under the Manchus Mongolia was governed from Peking through its feudal chieftains. The Mongols refused to recognize the Chinese Republic in 1911 and declared their independence, which China, in a treaty which Russia also signed, recognized in 1915. This independence, however, amounted to acceptance of Russia's protection. After the Russian revolution China re- asserted its control, but the Chinese troops were driven out in 1920. The White Russian regime which followed was overthrown in 1921, with the aid of Soviet Russian troops, and the present people's republic, opposed to rule of princes and priests, was established. Its constitution, adopted in 1925, is printed in the International Relations Section of this issue of The Nation. Domba Dordji, struggling to exhaustion, iii a manner that 1 understood only too well, to express himself in an unfamiliar tongue, told me of his party's fight to train a democratic younger generation able to replace the heredi- tary princes and feudal grand lamas whose medieval domi- nation still threatened the young nomad republic. He proudly showed me their first publications, introduced me to members of the cabinet three former aristocral teacher, a clerk, an ex-priest, and two who three years ago were tending flocks on the plains and outlined the simple system of taxation. Poor people, which means people who own less than ten sheep, pay no taxes. Those who own between ten and a hundred sheep pay one sheep in taxes; those who own more than a hundred but less than a thou- sand pay ten; and so on. For purposes of taxation a goat is reckoned as the equivalent of a sheep; ten sheep make an ox or a cow; and two oxen a camel. Old Tseren Dordji, the adventuresome Prime Minister who had managed to hold office under the Manchu em- perors, under the Czarist Government of pre-war days, and under the free, so-called "Red" Government of today, proudly outlined for me the history of his people. They had twice conquered China, he said, and had never been con- quered by them. Under the Manchus, he insisted, they had been allies; in recent years the Chinese had broken all agreements, and that was done forever. When I asked about the Russians he scowled, pursed his thick lips, raised his eyebrows, and then smiled a smile that broke into a laugh. "You foreigners think that the Russians are every- thing in Mongolia," he finally said. "It's not so. We Mon- gols have been left behind by civilization, and we need help. So we have invited Russians to aid us in building a national bank and an army, in organizing cooperative societies and a customs service. We like their experts; we trust them; but they will not always be here." When the Oil Gives Out By JONATHAN NORTON LEONARD THE life-blood of this country is oil. Every traveled highway demonstrates the fact as well as a mountain of statistics. Gasoline has become so much a part of our daily lives that we take this gift of nature as a matter of course. Although we are told over and over again that the supply is sure to fail sooner or later, such prophecies make little impression. Some weeks ago the Federal Oil Con- servation Board reported that the total amount of petroleum in known fields in the United States would last at the present rate of production and consumption for only six years. This received the usual amount of newspaper com- ment and was forgotten. By this time we are nearly im- mune to such scares, and we probably shall refuse to wake up until the price of gasoline has risen out of reach and our twenty million carbureters are crying in vain for nourishment. There are now four and a half billion barrels of oil left in the known fields. At the present rate of consumption this would last for six years. But since the total amount cannot be extracted in that time, the supply will begin to fail much sooner. The flow from a field is always greatest at first, for it depends on gas pressure. When this decreases the oil comes to the surface more reluctantly. If the supply is to be maintained after three or four years we must discover new fields. This has always been done in the past and certain optimistic persons get satisfaction from the fact that only 40 per cent of this country is geologically sure not to contain oil. But a large part of the remainder has already been prospected, and the pro- portion of dry wells is rising alarmingly. This dependence on new domestic fields is a gamble at best. The Conservation Board does not attempt to estimate foreign fields. To the present time these fields have proved of much less importance than our own. The more accessible ones in Russia, Rumania, and Mexico are approaching exhaustion already. If we go further from civilization we run into difficulties of transportation and politics which may prove limiting factors. No matter how we look at it the day of the oil substitute is not far ahead. At present there are three possible substitutes for gasoline — shale-oil, methanol or wood alcohol, and ordinary alcohol. Each has its interested advocates, and each figures largely in technical discussions. If the public is not alive to the situation the oil and chemical companies are. Any

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558 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 attempt to find the real facts about the commercial possi- bilities of these substances brings to light an amazing amount of contradictory opinion. Nine articles out of ten are written with some sort of bias. The oil interests, of course, want no change to be made; the States possessing large deposits of oil-shale publish volumes about its economic value; and each holder of patents wants to see his process in commercial use. New discoveries are being made in this field almost daily, for the vast importance of the matter has attracted research workers. There is a rumor, with few details to substantiate it, that the Ger- mans have perfected a process which will supply all their future needs for fuel and lubricants. We do not know yet which substitute has the best chance of coming into general use, but the characteristics and advantages of the three mentioned above are better understood. Shale-oil can hardly be called a petroleum substitute, for it is practically the same substance obtained by a dif- ferent process. Little is known about the origin of oil and oil-shale, but probably petroleum is formed when shale is subjected to heat and pressure at great depths. Oil occurs in rocks and "sands" not at all resembling shale, but this is accounted for by the ease with which it "migrates" from one stratum to another more porous or under less pressure. Petroleum is a thick liquid when it gets to the surface, but in its original state it contains many volumes of dissolved gas, which make it more mobile than water or gasoline. This compressed gas is the force which drives the oil from the rock. Now, when the shale occurs near the surface it has not been treated by this process of natural pressure-distillation, and contains no oil but a com- plex organic substance from which oil is formed. This can be broken up by heat into something very like natural petroleum. There is plenty of shale in this country to supply all our needs for years to come. The best fields are in the central Rocky Mountain regions, although large deposits also exist in Kentucky and other States. If a method should be developed of utilizing this reserve our oil worries would be over for another fifty or a hundred years. Unfortu- nately numerous obstacles appear in the way of this devel- opment. The process of getting oil from shale is by no means as cheap or as simple as drilling wells for it. Both the mining and the distillation are expensive, and the amount of oil recovered is not large — seldom as much as a barrel per ton. The by-products of the distillation, ammonia and water-gas, are not obtained in sufficient quantities to bear much of the expense. Every discussion of shale-oil begins with the state- ment that shale is successfully mined and distilled in Scot- land. This is misleading. The industry was established there before our petroleum came on the market, and it used a very rich kind of shale containing as much as three barrels of oil per ton. When this was exhausted the industry struggled along feebly, protected from competition only by a government subsidy. Even with this artificial assistance it has remained too small to supply the limited requirements of Scotland. We may, however, draw some interesting conclusions from the experience of the Scotch shale distillers. A certain amount of the Western shale lies so near the surface that it can be mined by Jie economical open-cut method, which reduces mining expenses to a low level. Optimistic reports on the subject always assume that this condition is general. The fact is that these open deposits would be exhausted in a short time, and the shale would have to be mined from below the surface like coal or any other mineral. Since crude oil sells around two dollars a barrel and a ton of average shale contains seldom more than two-thirds of a barrel, the cost of mining a ton would have to be kept below a dollar. Even this would leave a dangerously small margin for the cost of distillation. If the price of crude oil rises high enough to make the process pay, the amount of capital and labor required to run a full-sized shale-oil industry is tremendous. Calcu- lating from the Scotch figures and allowing for superior American labor, we find that 5,000 miners and 210 million dollars are needed to run a plant producing 50,000 barrels daily. The United States uses 1,200,000 barrels a day. This means that it will take 120,000 miners and $5,000,000,000 to supply us with shale-oil. Taking into consideration the difficulties of transportation, thinly settled mining country, and the possibility that some new fuel may wipe out this tremendous investment overnight we begin to see why even those companies which own areas of favorable shale-land hesitate to go into the business. The next substitute, wood alcohol or methanol, is in an entirely different class from oil. The old process of dis- tilling it from wood made it an expensive substance, but recently a process has been developed by which it is made directly from coal. Steam is blown through heated coke and changed into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydro- gen. This in turn is forced at high pressure through a heated chamber containing certain catalysts which change it into methanol. The cost of production is hard to esti- mate, for the process is patented and the price of the product kept up to the market level of about 60 cents a gallon. But 15 cents a gallon is considered a reasonable estimate, and quantity production would probably reduce this still further. Several countries which have no oil supplies of their own have experimented with this process and report encouraging results. The French Government announced recently that it would soon open a factory at Lens to pro- duce methanol on a large scale. It confidently predicts that this will make France independent of foreign supplies — an important matter in war time. Methanol is volatile and highly combustible, but it has several disadvantages as a fuel. It gives only half as much heat per gallon as gasoline; so methanol would have to be twice as cheap as gasoline to compete with it in the open market. In addition to this it is extremely poisonous. Its effects if taken internally are well known, but its vapor is also dangerous, particularly to the eyes. A garage where much methanol had been spilled would be an unhealthy place in which to work. The third substitute, ethyl or grain alcohol, is in many ways the most promising. It can be made from every vege- table substance. Its raw material renews itself yearly and can never be exhausted. Alcohol is now made from mo- lasses and various starchy foodstuffs like corn and potatoes, but it can also be derived from cellulose, the fibrous sub- stance present in all plants. For several years alcohol from molasses was used as a fuel in Cuba. Since the advent of prohibition in the United States, however, the demand for alcohol has so increased that the supply of molasses has be- come insufficient. This illustrates a common mistake made by the alcohol enthusiasts. The Cuban Chamber of Com-

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 559 merce, for instance, is confident that alcohol can be pro- duced in Cuba for from 5 to 10 cents a gallon. But in making this calculation they figured the cost of the molasses as almost nothing. Now molasses is a by-product of sugar refining, and if it sells for almost nothing the cost of its production has to be paid out of the profit on the sugar. As soon as molasses became valuable in its own right, the price rose so high that it killed the fuel-alcohol industry. There are many other by-products which can be turned into alcohol — saw-dust, for instance — but these must not be considered valueless. As soon as they find a suf- ficient market to rise out of the class of waste products their cost will have to be considered. The process of making alcohol from straw and wood waste is being considered by several countries which have neither oil nor coal. The Australian Government has given a great deal of attention to the matter and reports satis- factory progress, although the process is not completely worked out. It is certain, however, that Australia could make enough alcohol out of its wheat straw alone to supply all its liquid fuel. Alcohol is a satisfactory substitute for gasoline. Auto- mobile engines can be adapted to its use with few changes and actually run more efficiently. It burns cleanly with no formation of carbon. Its heat value is 67 per cent that of gasoline, which means that a gallon and a half would drive an automobile as far as a gallon of gas. Calling it poisonous is only a figure of speech. What effect its common use as a fuel would have on the enforcement of prohibition is a matter of speculation. In the Driftway JOHN PHILIP SOUSA, although seventy-two years of age, has no intention of retiring as a bandmaster. He is quoted as saying: "The first you'll hear of Sousa's retire- ment is when you read 'Sousa's dead.' A man keeps going by keeping going. When he retires he vegetates. He dries up like a plucked flower and then he blows away." This is a frequently expressed American doctrine, and if Sousa feels that way about retiring it is a good thing for him not to do. It is a good thing for anybody who feels similarly — and there are many such in America — not to do. But as a philosophy it is open to devastating attack. It doesn't explain the situation to say that America is a nation of workers and anybody who quits his job finds himself isolated and neglected; that we lack Europe's leisure class and spirit of play. The man who upon retiring vegetates, as Sousa puts it, is as lost in Europe as here. The trouble lies not in lack of opportunities or company or the neglect of others, but in his own inadequacies. Anybody who withers like a plucked flower upon chucking up his job proves merely that he had no other vital interest. I^ew jobs are good enough to justify that, especially in a mechanical, competitive age when most of us work under orders from somewhere above, spending our days in a routine much of which is without any demonstrable use- fulness save in bringing home the bacon on Saturday night. The average American male so overemphasizes his job that he not only gives it all his days but spends numerous eve- nings and noon-hours at dinners, conventions, or confer- ences, palavering with kindred workers — and calling it recreation. LONG ago the Drifter adopted a better way. In order that — if somebody should leave him a legacy — he could retire without drying up and blowing away, he has never gone seriously to work. The pressure of landlords, milk- men, and such has from time to time driven him to a job. Hut he has never confused a livelihood with life, nor per- suaded himself that he was doing what he wanted most to do if he wasn't. He has dodged promotion this has seldom required heroic effort whenever it seemed likely that he might thereby gain a position and a pay-check which he would hate to relinquish; he has stuck by a job only so long as he has felt that there was another just as good around the corner and that he could leave or be fired any day without a pang. If too glittering prospects are dangled before him, the Drifter at once decides to put temptation out of the way by walking into the office of the boss and calling him a big cheese. ***** BUT it doesn't usually work out quite that way. It has been with the Drifter's jobs as with his romances. He recalls a number of occasions when he felt that an affair with a young lady had gone far enough; he set about devising some kind and considerate way of cutting loose. But invariably before any plan occurred to him the young lady saved him the trouble by action more summary than kind or considerate. * * * * * AND in the same way, while the Drifter has been idling away his hours debating what kind of a big cheese to call the boss — gorgonzola, camembert, brie, or simply mouse — he has received notice that a suit of sack- cloth would be ready for him at the end of the week. The Drifter Correspondence The Voice of Wanhsien To the Editor of The Nation : Sir: Out of the many murderous acts committed by Brit- ish vessels on China's inland waters the most outrageous is doubtless what has befallen and is befalling the people of Wanhsien, Szechuan Province. It is only a week ago that the S. S. Wanliu of the Butterfield & Swire Company swamped at Yunyang two Chinese junks with fifty-eight officers and soldiers of General Yang Sen's army, and $85,000 (Mex.). At Wanhsien, on the same date, General Yang Sen's inquiry was answer^ by letting loose machine-gun bullets from the British gunboej- Cockchafer. Not a single shot was returned. The negotiations for a peaceful settlement were going on and had not ended when suddenly about 4 p. m. the Wanhsien people found themselves under heavy fire from the armed British merchantman Kiawo and the two British gunboats Cockchafer and WidgeOii. Shells dropped like showers. Houses crumbled like ava- lanches. The city went aflame at once. Women and children, if not burned alive or drowned, were torn into pieces. Thousands of lives and millions of property are lost. Yet several other British gunboats are reported advancing toward Wanhsien for another attack. If there was ever vandal barbarism in history the British offenders are certainly trying to revive it. If there are still justice and humanity in the present civilization, our appeal for sympathetic understanding and fair judgment will certainly arouse the world's conscience. We are afraid of no extremes if driven to it. Nor shall we accept any settlement that does

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560 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 not remedy once for all the deep wound in our public sentiment. We therefore call upon you, in your effort to promote peace in the Far East, especially in your attitude toward this case, to stick to the principles of international equality and comity, which are so essential for a lasting peace in the world. H. S. Hsung, Speaker, Wanhsien District Assembly G. C. Yang, Chairman, Wanhsien Educational Association A. C. Pan, Chairman, Wanhsien Agricultural Association Lunpeng Liu, President, Wanhsien Chamber of Commerce Yusuh Ho, President, Wanhsien People's League for Defense Wanhsien, Szechiian, China, September 5 VI. To subdue that passion for war, which education added to human depravity have made universal, a famil- iarity with the instruments of death, as well as all mili- tary shows, should be carefully avoided. For which reasons, militia laws should everywhere be repealed and military dresses and military titles should be laid aside; reviews tend to lessen the horrors of a battle by connecting them with the charms of order; militia laws generate idle- ness and vice, and thereby produce the wars they are said to prevent; military dresses fascinate the minds of young men, and lead them from serious and useful professions; were there no uniforms, there would probably be no armies; histly, military titles feed vanity, and keep up ideas in the mind which lessen a sense of the folly and miseries of war. This thoroughly uncompromising advocacy of peace at this early date may earn Benjamin Banneker the proud title of America's first pacifist. Washington, D. C, November 15 Alain Locke America's First Pacifist ! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: One of your correspondents cites an interesting early instance of pacifism in the peace plan of Dr. Benjamin Rush in 1831. Dr. Carter Woodson's recent compilation of letters, "The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written During the Crisis, 1800-1860," includes Benjamin Banneker's proposal of 1793 for an amendment to the Articles of the Constitution, to establish a "Secretary arc! Department of Peace in the Cabinet." Certain points of Banneker's plan, especially the details of sym- bolic peace frescoes for the walls of the offices of the Secretary of Peace, and peace odes and anthems to be sung every day at "certain hours by a group of young ladies, clad in white robes, in a gallery to be erected for the purpose," very circumstantially point to the Banneker plan as the point of origin for D \ Rush's scheme. Be that as it may, certainly it is most interesting and sig- nificant to note the yet unrealized ideals and objectives of the Foundation for the Advancement of Peace, the Society to Abolish War, the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, and our scores of subsequent societies for promoting public and uni- versal education, all so deliberately and confidently anticipated in 1793 by the Negro mathematician-astronomer of Maryland. To document his quite notable claim, let me quote his suggestions in detail: I. Let a Secretary of Peace be appointed to preside in this office, who shall be perfectly free from all the present absurd and vulgar European prejudices upon the subject of government; let him be a genuine republican and a sincere Christian, for the principles of republicanism and Chris- tianity are no less friendly to universal and equal liberty. II. Let a power be given to this Secretary to establish and maintain free schools in every city, village, and town- ship of the United States; and let him be made responsible for the talents, principles, and morals of all his school- masters. Let the youth of our country be carefully in- structed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in the doc- trines of a religion of some kind; the Christian religion should be preferred to all others; for it belongs to this religion exclusively to teach us not only to cultivate peace with all men but to forgive — nay, more, to love — our very enemies. It belongs to it further to teach us that the Supreme Being alone possesses a power to take away human life, and that we rebel against His laws whenever we undertake to execute death in any way whatever upon any of His creatures. V. To inspire a veneration for human life, and an horror at the shedding of human blood, let all those laws be repealed which authorize juries, judges, sheriffs, or hang- men to assume the resentments of in uviduals, and to com- mit murder in cold blood in any case whatever. Until this reformation in our code of penal jurisprudence takes place, it will be in vain to attempt to introduce universal and perpetual peace in our country. International Debt, New Style To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: May I call your attention to an item of cultural his- tory not likely to be chronicled in your International Relations Section. I have on my desk eight translations into German verse of Fitzgerald's "Omar," all published within the past twenty years. And I have just completed a delighted reading of a ninth (Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Potsdam, 1926). Good as most earlier versions were, this is much the best: — in the subtle unison of epigrammatic thought and wistful melancholy, in clarity, in music (even to Fitzgerald's very cadences, so inti- mately familiar to English ears). It is the work of H. W. Nordmeyer, professor of German at Washington University in St. Louis. Germans in America have in past generations given the English world much of Germany's spiritual goods; here is a symptom of a new German-American movement — to give back to Germany more of our spiritual goods. Dr. Nordmeyer came to the University of Wisconsin some fourteen years ago, as a student from the University of Leipzig, and took his degree here. In fact, one of his examiners was your constant reader, Madison, Wis., October 29 William Ellery Leonard More Assets and Liabilities To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The Drifter's list of American assets and liabilities gives me joy. They pretty nearly cover the ground, but here are just three or four additions, which can, if they meet your approval, be tacked on. Assets — The Nation, Franklin stoves, "delicious" apples, and the woods in the fall. Liabilities — Jazz, "over-stuffed" furniture, The Nation's prize poems, and all free verse, most of which ought to be locked up, unless the solution is given with the puzzle. Zanesville, Ohio, November 9 Mary A. Patterson A New Book by Vicente Blasco Ibaixez A Novelist's Tour of the World When a novelist is thrown among most of the strange peoples and lands in the world, one might expect a fascinating book to result. And when that novelist is the gifted author of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," "Mare Nostrum," etc., his story is one which nobody will be willing to miss ! Fully illustrated. Price $6.00 E. P. DUTTON & CO., 681 Fifth Ave., New York

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 561 "One reason why I like New York'" Nation Dinners New York, Tuesday, Sept. 7 — Some more reasons why time can- not wither nor custom stale New York's infinite variety: .... Ho- eause The Nation has monthly dinners, vastly attended. . . . From The Daybook of a New Yorker, by Burton Rascoe. ember ~ Prohibition Clarence Darrow "The Duty of Civil Dis- obedience'' Major William B. Wright, Jr. Chief Enforcement Officer of Prohibition in Pennsylvania "The Obligation of the Law" Chairman; Arthur Warner Associate Editor. The Nation January n "Censor the Stage?" Elizabeth Marbury and Joseph Wood Kruteh Chairman; Lewis S. Gannett Associate Editor, The Nation February 1$ "Men— What of em?" Ruth Hale and Lorine Pruette Chairman ; Freda Kirchway Managing Editor, The Nation March 8 Songs and Dances by American Indians Speakers to be announced on "The Art of the American Indian" Chairman: Mark Van Dor en Literary Editor, The Nation April 12 "Who is Cal Coolidge?" Frank R. Kent and William Hard Chairman; Oswald Garrison Villard Editor, The Nation The Fifth Avenue Kestaurant, 200 Fifth Avenue, 7 P. M. Series tickets, $12.00; separate tickets, $2.75. Sold only to Nation Subscribers and their Guests. With The Nation for a year: Separate tickets. ^6.25; for the series, $16.00. THE NATION, 20 Yesey Street, New York. Enclosed find $ Send me The Nation for a year and reserve at the dinner (or the series ). Name Address {Tickets will be mailed a few days before the dinner. Reservations made in order received.)

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Books, Art, Plays Chant of the Old Men in the Woods By CHARLES NORMAN We seek what no man has perceived by light Of hundreds of slim candles in the night, What no man with a piercing lantern swinging Through darkness ever saw; though we go singing, We have not seen. Is none among us wearied yet? The damp is in our bones; could we forget The many years of nights among the trees, Seeking as now, we would sail overseas, Beyond the islands. And we are tired. We are grown old with what we have desired Roaming through the darkness in this wood. We would lie down to quiet, if we could Lie down at night to sleep; There is no sleeping Yet. We will go on. Not only winds are creeping From tree to tree, not only unicorns Ripple the streams with starlight on their horns. And there has been no lantern made, swinging Through darkness, to light our way; but we go singing. First Glance 1AM very fond of horses, but I shall never say why. In the first place I am ignorant of the reason, and in the second place I have too often seen lovers of dogs, explain- ing— as they thought — the cause of their attachment, con- founded by lovers of cats. Lovers of cats despise both the horse people and the dog people, and do so from a single cir- cumstance— that these people seem to be moved to affection by the docility of horses and dogs, by their dependence upon them. Cats, it is maintained, have not this docility or this dependence. Since the question whether dogs and horses do really have something in addition is somewhat too abstract for me, I shall not try to answer it, being con- tent to watch and admire particular specimens of the two races as they walk or run before me. For that matter I like cats too, though not, as it happens, so well. I have never understood the war between cat people and dog people. Nor do I wish at present to start a controversy over the relative merits of horses and cows. One reason that horses can be interesting is that we know so much about them — more, says Frederic B. Loomis, than about any other domesticated animal. The late W. C. Whitney was not only a fancier of thoroughbreds and a keeper of stables; he subsidized investigations into the his- tory of the horse, sending expeditions to the fossil beds and tar pits of Western America for telltale bones. The result of such efforts, and of others over the world, is that we know a great deal about the distribution in place and time of this remarkably persistent, adaptable creature. At the Museum of Natural History in New York and at Amherst College one may read his history from charts, exhibits of bones, and restorations of bodies. It is from Amherst that Mr. Loomis writes his informing volume on "The Evolution of the Horse" (Marshall Jones: $3), showing with pictures and with text how our West, which hundreds of thousands of years ago nourished the earliest known ancestor of the animal we now have, lost contact with the species only to know it once more when a few horses, escaping from the Spanish explorers of the Mississippi Valley, pounded the earth there with new hoofs. The story takes Mr. Loomis also, of course, to Europe and Asia, and for the zebra and the ass to Africa. It is an exciting story, told soberly by a scientist for a popular audience. Mrs. Lucy Sprague Mitchell tells it in another form, for children, in "Horses Now and Long Ago" (Harcourt, Brace: $3). Her book, for which much reading had to be done, is a collection of poems and tales designed to lure a child between eight and eleven to more knowledge of horses than he will get by looking at Dobbin in the barn. Mrs. Mitchell, sensibly enough, begins with Dobbin — who is named Dan — and works backward through centuries of change until she reaches the battlefield of Tours, where horses from the North encountered horses from the South. She goes back further still, and all in all she covers fasci- nating ground. I am glad that her book exists, and I hope that here and there it will find children not unwilling to look thus into the past of a familiar beast. That the horse is not so familiar as he was a few years ago is only an- other sign that the book should have been written. I am not so sure that children will like Mrs. Mitchell's exceed- ingly elaborate and exclamatory devices for attracting their attention to the subject in hand. But I shall not pretend to know just how the thing should have been done. Mark Van Doren A Bishop Outside the Pale My Heresy. By William Montgomery Brown. The John Day Company. $2. A BISHOP on trial for heresy is a startling spectacle. We •* *■ do not know how many such churchmen have followed in the fiery footsteps of Cranmer, but they cannot be many. We have an impression that the Right Reverend author of this book is the only American bishop who has ever been unfrocked. How he chanced to fall upon such a fate is an interesting question. But first in order is the equally interesting question how on earth he ever came to be made a bishop. lie was not a great preacher. He was not a scholar. It is his own testimony in this book that he was an "ignoramus"; and his own account of his education and of his state of mind when he wore the miter goes far to confirm his judgment that he "did not know anything." He was a saint, to be sure. He (Joes not say this, for Bishop Brown is the most humble of men; yet every page of his autobiography is like a mirror wherein shine reflected the saintly virtues of simplicity, gentle- ness, charity, and abounding love. But how many saints have been bishops; when was Francis of Assisi granted ecclesiastical honors? No, there must be other reasons for Bishop Brown's eleva- tion. And potent ones, too, for the road was a long one, with a sharp ascent. Determination was there, and ambition, zeal, devotion, character. But these were not the decisive factors in the story. 0, no! Dr. Brown became "a man of great influence in church affairs," first of all because "he had married the

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 563 adopted daughter of a great Episcopalian philanthropist." Again, he became "a man of wealth." Still again, he proved to be a great success in the missionary work which he chose as his "specialty" in the ministry. He went hither and yon start- ing new churches and reviving old ones, until it was said admiringly of him that he "was making Episcopalians out of fence-posts." "I was by no means big," says Dr. Brown, but "I was successful." Just the man for a bishop, obviously! "I achieved wealth," says the Bishop, summing up his career, "be- cause it was given me, honor because I had a pull, and success because I did not know what I was doing." One would have to look far to find a more terrific indict- ment of the church than is contained in this guileless narrative. Yet not so far, after all, for the sequel of the story is even more damning than the introduction. The trouble began with the fact that Bishop Brown, as he puts it, was not only ignor- ant "but — honest." Even this rare virtue might have proved harmless had not the Bishop broken down from overwork and thus been forced to desist from the ceaseless activity which had for years left him too busy to read, or study, or think, or indeed do anything but build and dedicate churches. In his retirement he picked up, at the suggestion of a physician, Darwin's "Origin of Species"; later on he found himself reading Karl Marx's "Das Capital." Thus within a few months he was brought suddenly, and without preparation, into contact with the two greatest intellectual revolutions in modern thought. In- stantly "the world that I had lived in up to that moment just disappeared. It did not merely fall into ruins," he says. "It collapsed, without leaving any ruins." It was not even dark- ness he was stumbling in. "The darkness was not there. It had popped into nothingness, as darkness is likely to do when the light is turned on suddenly enough." But the gulf must be bridged ! Men must be Christian and they must accept Darwin. "Could I not go ahead with my studies," queried the Bishop, "believing literally everything which I discovered to be literal truth, and interpreting sym- bolically every creedal statement which conflicted in any way?" His interpretation, as he finally formulated it in his sym- bolical creed, is one of the most moving religious documents of modern times. But it left not even the "ruins" of Christian doctrine. And the Bishop was cited for heresy! The resulting trial was one of the tragic farces of ecclesi- astical history. There was no question as to whether Bishop Brown believed or did not believe. He denied everything! But how much do you believe, he asked the lord bishops, his judges? Do you believe all the creed — "he (Jesus) descended into hell," for example, or "the resurrection of the body"? Not literally, of course, but symbolically! Which brought the whole thing straight down to the question, "How unorthodox can a church- man be?" It was a reductio ad absurdum of the whole case for the symbolical interpretation of dogma. Then, is a rule of common sense in this matter, says a recent apologist for the court. But ivhose common sense — Bishop Brown's or his accusers'? Never was there such an exposure of the utter bankruptcy, intellectual and spiritual alike, of organized Christianity. Here in this life story, told with utter simplicity yet with playful irony, piercing wit, and unfailing gentleness and good-nature, Bishop Brown "spills the beans," to quote his own words. Four things he makes plain forever: (1) That the church, in its secta- rian activities, is willing to use every standard of mere worldly success to attain its ends; (2) that Christian faith has no more place in the contemporary world than the cult of Dionysus; (3) that the symbolical method of saving the faith is a device which destroys what it seeks to save; (4) and that, in any final clash between spiritual sanctity and doctrinal conformity, it is belief and not life which the church finds important. During the famous trial the Episcopal bishops said with amiable contempt that their colleague was crazy. If there is a saner man than the author of this book, we have not found him; if there is an insaner story than this which the author has to tell of American Episcopacy, we can't imagine it. These bishops convicted their colleague on the charge that he had lost his faith. If what he lost, is faith, and what he found heresy, then God help the church! When Bishop Brown was a prelate, petted, pampered, and praised, he had no more real religion than a totem-pole. When he was a heretic, hated, hounded, and hunted, he had found a religion as genuine and terrible as the Sermon on the Mount. John Haynes Holmes (rod and Mammon Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. By R. II. Tawney. Ilar- court, Brace and Company. $3. |UR. TAWNEY is the author of "The Sickness of the Acqui- *■ * sitive Society"- -duly softened by his American publishers to "The Acquisitive Society," on the assumption perhaps that the element of sickness applies to Great Britain alone. That book impressed some of us as the most lucid and penetrating arraignment of capitalism ever written. In its pages critical intelligence was substituted for dogma, while the patient was diagnosed not from the basis of a set of ill-digested moral and ethical considerations, but from the clean-cut standard of a functional society. This bench mark remains an unforgettable quality of the book. In the present work Mr. Tawney undertakes to tell us how we got that way — how in the last 250 years property has come to take precedence over function, and the way of profit over the way of life. It is an absorbing story. To it the author brings a scholarship and a profundity of research seldom equaled in economic writing. There are no archives — early Christian, Medieval, Reformation, early Puritan, the economic Fathers — which he has left unturned. So thorough is his analysis of sources that the story largely tells itself. From St. Francis to Lloyd George the record runs. And the essence of the story seems to be this. The medieval church conceived of life as a whole as being subject to the moral principles of Christianity. "To such a temper, all activi- ties divorced from religion are brutal or dead, but none are too mean to be beneath, or too great to be above, since all, in their different degrees, are touched with the spirit which permeates the whole." To the lay world the church declared in no uncer- tain terms the sin of usury, of profiteering, of hoarding, of exalting property over living. The modern hard-boiled business man in such an environment would have been an object of hor- ror, loathing, and summary banishment — by means more or less painful — because of his total disregard and defiance of the ac- cepted Christian way of life. He would have shocked and out- raged medieval society much as a naked man making obscene gestures in the middle of Main Street would shock 1926 America. Puritanism, coinciding with the beginnings of the indus- trial revolution, broke this medieval unity. It introduced a philosophic, and a practical, dualism. It regards the secular and the religious aspects of life not as successive stages within a larger unity, but as parallel and independent provinces governed by different laws, judged by different standards, and amenable to different authorities. . . . Thus the conflict between religion and those natur il economic ambitions which the thought of an earlier age ha i regarded with suspicion is suspended by a truce which divides the life of mankind between them. The former takes as its province the individual soul, the latter the intercourse of man with his fel- lows in the activities of business and the affairs of society. Provided that each keeps to its own territory, peace is assured. They cannot collide, for they can never meet. With this fissure in the function of religion, with individual salvation substituted for social salvation, the whole attitude toward profit, interest, property, and even poverty underwent

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564 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 a rigorous revision. What had been wrong became right; what had been dereliction became duty. Poverty, instead of furnish- ing a presumption of virtue, began, after 1700, to furnish a pre- sumption of slackness, laziness, and refusal to make the best of one's opportunities. High profits were a sign of high dili- gence. Legislation for the protection of workers in those first awful factories was an impious defiance of the benign workings of natural law. What Tawney traces is one of the most interesting subli- mations that history has to record. With the dawning of new industrial methods, of new and appetizing ways of making money, the whole superstructure of religion was neatly shifted out. But lest such procedure should bear any mark of impiety, a new concept, the Puritan, was erected to canonize the change, with rituals, observances, devotions all of its own. No less strict and no less weighty were these observances, save that they left the lay world clear for the transactions of profitable business. Sunday belonged to God with three long sermons a day, but Monday saw an equal devotion to the counting house. With odds of six to one, the counting house won hands down. And still continues to win. It is more than possible that invention and science could never have come with the rush that they did, had not the grip of the church over secular affairs been broken. The industrial revolution might never have been more than a still birth. But the price that has been paid fur the economic freedom of the entrepreneur has been a grievous one; the underlying popula- tion has paid the bills, and the books are far, far from closed. The rise of capitalism has kicked the Christian way of life, as it was known for a Jiousand years, into a dustbin. Whether or not it belongs there is another question, outside the province of the specific research to which Mr. Tawney has so skilfully and so entertainingly addressed himself. Stuart Chase French War-Gold Facing Europe. By Frederick Bausman. The Century Com- pany. $3. JUDGE BAUSMAN'S book will be welcomed by those who ** are opposed to the cancelation of America's European debts, and it will convert some of the undecided. The main thesis is that Europe has behaved so outrageously as to for- feit any claim to our leniency, is so incorrigible that our sacri- fice w. uld do no good. The book has failings and errors, but the contentions are sound and the case is not overstated. Possibly Judge Bausman should not have called Sir Ed- ward Grey a hypocrite. Hamilton Fyfe considers him merely a muddle-headed, ill-informed, well-meaning English gentle- man unfit for his post and involved in a poisonous net of intrigue from which he was unable to extricate himself; and Bernard Shaw relates how he mentally raised his hands to heaven when some one called Grey a great statesman and a true friend of Germany. Judge Bausman drives a new punc- ture into the Grey myth. But the chapters that deal with Wil- son, Page, and House are the best. Here the author has found his stride. The evidence is well marshaled and there is keen analysis. Less good are the chapters dealing with war origins and propaganda. Judge Bausman does not seize all of his opportunities. He neglects Clemenceau, for instance, next to Northcliffe the greatest propagandist who ever lived. Clemenceau "ran" Caillaux's own foreign minister, de Selves, and Caillaux tells us that he likewise "ran" the French press. Maxse, the editor, tells us in so many words that Clemenceau "ran" the National Review, the sheet which did more than any other to poison the mind of the English against German; . Clemenceau likewise "ran" the Alliance Francaise, one avowed aim of which was to influence women in favor of France's national aspirations. The Alliance, according to its own statutes, was to act in place ^^9y£v55 "The essential objection to feudalism was that it imposed degrading acts and attitudes upon the vassal; the essential objection to democracy is that, with few exceptions, it imposes degrading acts and attitudes upon the men responsible for the welfare and dignity of the state." Says H. L. MENCKEN In His Most Important Book NOTES ON DEMOCRACY A devastating polemic on democratic government and an illuminating analysis of its practice in America. Second large printing $1.50 at all bookstores Just Out: PREJUDICES*. Fifth Series By H. L. MENCKEN Essays on Birth Control, Comstockery, Capital Punishment, and War: Conrad, Hergesheimer, Lardncr, and Masters, William Jennings Bryan, Beethoven, The Last New Englander, Edgar Saltus, etc. $1.50 Predjudiccs, Gift Edition r vols, boxed, $11.50 ALFRED A. KNOPF 7$o Fifth Avenue New York In Canada from The Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd., St. Martin's House, Toronto 1 i 1 1 1 I I 1 i When writing to advertisers, phase mention The Nation

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 565 of the French Government where there was danger of the Government's compromising itself. One should studj menceau's articles in the Homme Libre for the wink preceding the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. He sees war coming, and With an unholy joy he urges the French to be not merely heroes but conquerors. This in the week before the ultimatum to Serbia! Andre Cheradame is another neglected child of Judge Bausman's. Contributor to thirty-five newspapers and peri- odicals and author of fifteen volumes, Cheradame had a hand in every anti-German enterprise. Judge Bausman should give more study to French financial history in this period. A good book on the subject would he of the greatest interest. At every political juncture Russian aid was bought by huge loans. In L914 almost every Balkan state was being financed by France -Bulgaria, even, being promised a loan if she would conduct her policies "within the orbit of the Triple Entente." France would have been richer today by over a hundred billion francs but for her policy of cornering Germany. And we are to make good the deficit! In Cheradame's "Douze Ans de Propagande Balkanique" we can follow the French endeavors from year to year, can see their fruition at the Slavic Sokol Fest in 1912 at which f>:5,000,000 Slavs were represented. Cheradame is jubilant over the honors paid to the French delegation. The fame of the demonstration in France's favor has spread through the Slavic world, has "had an enormous effect on the Slavic countries." France has "merely to continue the work so well begun"; it is "destined to have the happiest results." Germans can simply be starved out by a boycott from on all sides. France has been waiting for Alsace-Lorraine these thirty years. Her sword is now forged; when will she draw it? "A political upheaval among the Slavs of Central Europe is of vital importance for the Triple Entente." In this same year appeared the third edition of a book by Ernest Lemonon, dedicated to Paul Cambon and with a preface by Paul Deschanel, which was crowned by the French Academy. It contains this passage: "To force Germany to adopt a policy based on the principle of European equi- librium to curb her appetite for world hegemony, not only must the Triple Entente constantly tighten the bonds that form it, not only must it increase its armaments ... it must in every way favor the formation of a Balkan League." . . . "Serbia especially must be given the means to arm and recuperate. For a strong Serbia would be a dagger in the flank of Austria." Later we find a loan to Serbia given preference over a French internal loan. Although Judge Bausman carries us far, and every one should read his book, he does not carry us far enough. Ernest F. Henderson A Friend of Labor A Son of the Bowery. By Charles Stelzle. George H. Doran Company. $3.50. A LTHOUGH born and bred in the poverty of New York's ■** Lower East Side, and devoted, in maturity, to the welfare of the workingman, Mr. Stelzle is not, as one might assume, anti-capitalist. Nor is he fanatically pro-Labor in his interest- ing autobiography. Rather does he picture the case for em- ployer and employee from the critical standpoint of the sociolo- gist, basing his observations on a study of social conditions during long personal contact with the masses as a factory hand and later as a church worker. His anecdotal and somewhat dis- cursive narrative gives one a new insight into the old problems of the welfare worker through the strength of character and purpose of the man himself. Mr. Stelzle is entirely free from the suspicion with which so many moral "uplifters" are re- garded: one cannot help admiring the courage of a man who left a promising career as machinist to tread the rough path of press agent for the laboring classes. The author will be best remembered as the originator of the Labor Temple in New York. In his narrative we an to the achievement of his ambition for "a church for the aver- age workingman" through such vicissitudes as his depressing discovery that "the mure intelligent workingmen became, the less they became interested in the church." ult of his varied experience leads to definite conclusions. 11. labor unrest largely to the idealism engendered by libraries, art galleries, universities, and, interestingly enough, t advertis- ing— the constant urge of big business to buy bigger and i things. The public schools be finds grievously at fault in char- acter training and industrial education. Hut the greatest men- ace to our American i as, he affirms, is in "the self- satisfied middle class, the standpatters," and in the most reac- tionary individual of all, "the retired farmer in the small town." II. S. Villard Simpleton and Saint Harmer John. By Hu^h Walpole. George II. Doran Company. $2. T I ALF Swede, half English, Hjalmar Johanson comes to the * * Polchester of which his mother had talked in exile, re- solved there to kindle that spark of beauty which will fire a new world. Once he took a plate of blue pottery to his room in Copenhagen. Its glow made the rug seem drab and dingy, so he bought a new rug. Then in turn the walls lowered about him, so he moved to a new room and made it all white and clean, with only lovely things. So, he dreams, an impulse of good-will may circle outward, stirring men to sweep away sordidness and misery. He will begin by making bodies beau- tiful, for he is a gymnastic instructor. Polchester of the narrow streets and towering cathedral takes him in, half foreigner that he is. So long as he talks of bodies — of excess pounds and flabby muscles — it can under- stand. But the soul is harder to stir, and its motion more painful. Like his prototypes in greater stories of the tragedy of unworldliness, Harmer John runs afoul of the malice and greed of the powerful few, the fear and distrust of the many. They cast him over the river wall of the disreputable slum for whose regeneration he has abandoned sweetheart, livelihood, and friends. And six years later they raise a tablet to his memory on a row of ugly, smug, but sanitary little houses which civic pride now sees as more suitable than the slum to Pol- chester's well-being. Thus in a garrulous, clubby, and often obscure first person Hugh Walpole retells a story of the mob and the messiah, as it might have been enacted in an English provincial town, A.D. 1907. His picture of simple uncerebral goodness will give com- fort to the hopeful, while his acid etchings of narrow spirits offer an entertaining opportunity to see the neighbors as others see them. Mary Ross Books in Brief A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. By H. W. Fowler. Oxford University Press. $3. To anyone who imagines that a dictionary of usage must necessarily be a commonplace, somewhat pedantic, perhaps some- times helpful work of reference, Mr. Fowler's latest book will come as an agreeable shock. It is miles above the meager and graceless "handbook of composition" thumbed by stenographers and college freshmen. No other work in its field presents such a mass of useful information about English usage. The longer articles, which are made readily accessible by a separate index, are especially noteworthy. Taken together, they constitute a treatise on literary taste that is fresh, vigorous, and sensible. Moreover, the book as a whole is entertaining; page after page can be read with unflagging interest, for the author has not only erudition but a vivacious style and a flair for satire.

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566 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 The Nations Poetry Prize rflHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for ± the best poem submitted by an American poet in a contest conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. This year in addition a second prize of $50 and a third prize of $25 will be offered. The rules for 1926 are as follows: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. 3. No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- cumstances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent from this office. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. 6. The winning poems will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation, to appear February 9,1927. 7. Besides the winning poems, The Nation reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted in the contest. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. Poems should in no case be sent to them personally. Art Brancusi IN 1913, when the Armory Show gave to America its first sight of the post-impressionist schools, two men attracted most attention : Marcel Duchamp, the painter of The Nude Descending a Staircase, and Constantin Brancusi, the sculptor of Mademoiselle Pogany. It was not by chance that the two artists were thus singled out for the indignation of the majority and for the enthusiasm of a very few. It is not by chance that they are associated again in the exhibition of Brancusi's work which Duchamp has organized and which is now on view in the Brummer Gallery in New York. As dif- ferent in temperament and method and result as they are, they represent the same tendency, that of expression by non-realistic means. Indeed they may be taken as the two exponents of the idea who have held to it the most consistently, for Picasso has made several excursions into naturalism, Braque seems completely to have resumed that formula, while Matisse and Derain show each year more clearly that their splendid ideal is bound up with the world of the eyes — their work with abstract forms having been done in a spirit partly of adventure, partly of discipline. Brancusi's ai-t has become increasingly clear and strong with the passing of the years. His exhibition includes an early work of that Rodinesque type with which the best men of his gen- eration began. Where are the Rodin followers who have held to the type? They exist, by the hundred, as every big Salon shows, but one is at a loss to recall their names; which does not prove that Rodin was bad; the present time is merely dif- ferent from his. By the very extreme to which he went, he made sure that his true successors should take a different course. What folly it is to see disrespect in the act of an original man! His is the truest homage to the greatness of the past: he has given new testimony to the essentially creative quality of the older artists, for incomplete work alone admits of perfecting; the work of the masters does not. And so, as rapidly as his medium permitted, Brancusi turned from the indirect methods of the impressionistic gen- eration to that more immediate attaining of the qualities of art which has characterized his own. Instead of a head, a hand, or a leg which, by fineness of observation and force of rendering, goes beyond the anatomical fragment into the realm of the idea, this sculptor by mass and volume gives a sense of largeness, of space, of mystery; by simple and yet infinitely subtle planes he carries you along in his mood of surprise at the unending diversity and harmony of the world. How he loves the good things it has to offer us! Even the most adverse of his critics, when they have some understanding of sculpture, will admit that there is no one equal to Brancusi in the handling of mate- rials: the stone has all the beauty of its grain, the marble is different from it and assumes a more suave accent and gesture, wood is warmer and suggests ideas connected with its growth and fiber; brass, being produced by man, may be used more freely according to his desires — now it flashes, now it is muted by a mat surface, again it becomes a thing almost freed from surface, like a flame which is everywhere and nowhere. And by some magic of his own, Brancusi uses all these qualities at once, and through them gives that affirmation of the greatness of our time which startled so many people in 1913, and has delighted so many people since then. "And what is to become of the Greeks and Michelangelo?" asks a troubled voice. They are not in the slightest danger. I cannot say as much for certain men who are decorating public buildings in various parts of the world with more or less skilful pieces of pseudo-taxidermy. However vehemently these persons claim to represent tradition, they have no letters of recommendation from the masters. And so my guess is as good as another when I say that the great ones on Olympus are enjoying the Brancusi show at this very moment and saying what old Galileo told the men who would have the earth stand still: "E pur si muove." Walter Pach Drama Nodding Homer THE fable of "Pygmalion" (Guild Theater) is obviously not one calculated to display the most important of Shaw's talents. In the first place this story of a practical phoneticist who made a flower girl into a duchess is (as a lady once said of "The Ancient Mariner") "improbable"; and in the second place it would not be fraught with any very profound sig- nificance if it were true. Even Shaw, whom nothing infuriates quite so much as the exculpatory statement "You can't change human nature," would hardly maintain that it can be changed so expeditiously or so completely as is here represented; and even if the play be considered as farce its implied moral — that Susan O'Grady and the Colonel's lady are sisters under the skin — can hardly be set down as one of the most original or important of its author's contributions to contemporary thought. A more than usually irrelevent preface on phonetics affixed to the printed play indicates that it was actually with this subject that he began, and the truth is that Shaw, like many lesser men, has been unable, on occasion, to detach the subject of a work from the thing which happened first to suggest it. Obviously what is done to Eliza Doolittle's soul is more im- portant than what is done to her vocal chords, but the plot is so arranged that the more significant things are only inci- dentally referred to, while the lesser ones are displayed at full

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 567 length. Shaw, in other words, though he wished to write a comedy which should analyze the meaning of manners, was betrayed into a farce which is often no more than superficial extravaganza. To say, however, that a play is not Shaw's best is far from saying that it is bad. Even when Homer nods he docs not actually snore and "Pygmalion" is always diverting, first, bo- cause it is one of the paradoxes of its author's nature that he enjoys clowning almost as much as he enjoys thinking and that his unfailing high spirits are always in evidence; second, because there are in it passages which transcend the general level of the piece and which show how impossible it is for a mind as strong as Shaw's to keep from soaring. Eliza's father is. for example, not strictly necessary to the plot. He is, indeed, a more or less gratuitous addition; and yet this bit of inspired caricature is the finest thing in the whole play and the speech setting forth the advantages and irresponsibilities attendant upon being one of the "undeserving poor" is as brilliant as any- thing of the kind which Shaw has ever written. So, too, the concluding passages in which the philologist mocks Eliza's ideal of "warm human relations" and caricatures her conception of a passionate lover as one who "spends half his time sniveling over you and the other half giving you black eyes" are intense beyond the real demands of the plot, but they are interesting as constituting one more defense of the author's austere intensity against those who believe that only a certain animality is "human." One has, to be sure, heard these things before and heard them, perhaps, in more appropriate connections, but they are always fresh because they are not the repetition of a formula but outbursts of passionate conviction. Passion is always new as long as it continues to be real. The Theater Guild has produced the play with all the skill acquired by long experience with Shaw's plays, and in a generally adequate cast two members — Lynn Fontanne and Henry Travers — stand out brilliantly. Mr. Travers has made the various incarnations of Shaw's "true-born Englishman" so completely his own that they are difficult to imagine apart from him, and Miss Fontanne, if not perhaps a powerful actress, has, beside her charm, a vitality which makes most of those essaying similar roles seem feeble. Incidentally it may be remarked that in "Pygmalion" Shaw showed himself a prophet even in minor things. When he made his flapper, mistaking Eliza's calamitous use of "bloody" for a new advance in smart uncon- ventionally, promptly imitate it, he wrote a scene which seemed as startling as Jules Verne. Now, I fancy, English maidens use the word with the sweet unconcern of an American flapper availing herself of that erstwhile tabooed vocable which happens also to begin with "b." The Provincetown Theater which last season devoted itself chiefly to disastrous experiments in expressionism has now pro- vided its hard benches with cushions and g -ne in for the Commedia dell' Arte. As its first offering of the season it is presenting a Russian version of "The Princess Turandot" which Carlo Gozzi wrote for an eighteenth-century band of im- provisatori. The company has a long way to go before it can equal the somewhat similar efforts of the Neighborhood Play- house with "The Little Clay Cart," but its high spirits give the air of a lark to the performance and make it good fun. "The Squall" (Forty-eighth Street Theater) is a deter- minedly sultry drama setting forth the havoc wrought in a respectable Spanish household when a gipsy dancer plays fast and loose with all the male members. It is not a profound drama but it combines obviously "dramatic" situations with a liberal supply of sex and is probably destined to considerable popularity. "Old Bill, M. P." (Biltmore Theater) provides for a return of Mr. Coburn in the role of the well-known cartoon character. "Gay Paree" (Winter Garden) presents little novelty but it does extremely well all the things which revues usually do. "Chic" Sale contributes some excellent character bits. Joseph Wood Krutch n THEATER □ — The Neighborhood PUyhouse,4^/?;;.^Dsr,;;.:i,7mY Evenings (Except Monday), Matinee Saturday The Hindu Classic THE LITTLE CLAY CART [ n r» a S* C r o Theatre, 18th St.. Weit of Broadway. Evening* 8:10 LUIIgatre Mntiiu«» Wednesday and Saturday at 2:80 A a THEODORE DREISER'S n American tragedy "A PLAY WHICH IS BOUND TO WRENCH A MILLION HEARTS." Journal. DRAMATIZED BY PATRICK KEARNEY. YIDDISH ART THEATRE 12th St. and 2nd Ave. Stuy. 7195 MAURICE SCHWARTZ PRODUCTION OF ABRAHAM GOLDFADEN'S "The Tenth Commandment" Evenings 8.30 Matinees Saturday and Sunday 2:30 CIVIC REPERTORY THEATRE T°j ZJt* &, EVA Le GALLIENNE Thursday, November 25, "La Locandiera." Friday, November 2ti, "Three Sist< rs." Saturday Matinee, November 27, "Three Sisters." Saturday Evening, November 27. "La Locandiera." Monday, November 29, "Three Sisters." 'lies. lay, November 30, "I. a Locandiera." Wednesday Matinee, December 1, "John Gabriel Borkman." Wednesday Evening, December 1, "La Locandiera." Thursday, December 2. "Three Sisters." Evenings & Saturday Matinees, 60c to $1.50. Wednesday Matinees, 35c-$l. rilEATRE GUILD PRODUCTIONS SIDNEY HOWARDS COMEDY Ned McCobb's Daughter TOI-IM mi nPN Thea., 58th St., East of B'way. JWniN UULUC1N Matinees THURS. and SAT. BERNARD SHAW'S PYGMALION "The most refreshing intellectual shower bath on Broadway, with the tingling drops of Shaw's wit to tickle the spine." Frank Vreeland, Telegram. PT TTT r» TUt, ATRPT 52nd St., W. of B'way. Evs. 8:30. UUli-.L^ 1 rlLrt 1 I\C Matinees THURS. and SAT., 2:30. □ LECTURES □ SPECIAL LECTURE Adjustments in the Family and Beyond Dr. S. Ferenczi of Vienna AUSPICES Child Study Association of America, Inc. Empire Room, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Thursday Evening, December 2nd, 8:30 Admission to members $1.00, to non-members $1.50 REAL ESTATE -If you have a house or property to sell or lease, try The Nation classified advertising section. -If the experience of other advertisers of real estate is a guide, your advertisement in The Nation will pay. -Write for rates to Dept. R., The Nation. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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568 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 WZL4T i^aiLL Z GIVE? Here is a happy solution to that ever- puzzling question: — A gift that is different — A gift that is stimulating- - A gift that is subtly complimentary — The American Mercury as a gift is always in good taste — formal enough to send to a business acquaintance, intimate enough to give to one of your own family. Just before Christmas we shall send to the recipient an antique green, deckle-edged card, appropriately inscribed, announc- ing your gift. Give a Subscription to THE AMERICAN MERCURY We will accept subscriptions at the following special rates for a limited time: — i years (or i subscriptions) for $ 9.00 saving $1.00 3 years (or 3 subscriptions) for 11.50 saving x.50 4 years (or 4 subscriptions) for 15.00 saving 5.00 One year for $5.00, as always. THE AMERICAN MERCURY % 73o Fifth Avenue % NEW YORK CITY Please send THE AMERICAN MERCURY to NAME ADDRESS . NAME ADDRESS NAM I ADDRESS NAME ADDRESS Sender's Name Address.. Canadian postage, 50c. Foreign, $1.00 per year ^^l^^^I^^^^^ ft V* ft ¥i ft V* ft ft VI ft V* ft V ft ¥ ft ¥ ft V ft V ft ^ ft V ft ft ¥< ft ft V ft V* ft V* ft V ft V* ft V ft V* ft v« ft VI ft VI ft VI ft V TO. JROT- JRW. jftJO. JC m Jll Hi. JftStt. JftJQ- Jtt 50. JRSl JJO Enclosed $ N n-i-16 I] 1 as 1 and 01 fourtl 1 bel if 1 Ho When -writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section Mongolia's Constitution IN accordance with interests of the broad masses of the people as revealed in the Revolution of the Eleventh Year (1921), when the people, revolting, banished the foreign oppressors, and on account of the death, on the seventeenth day of the Fourth Moon, of the Bogdo-Khan Damba Hutukhtu, wh to that date, had served as chief of the state, the Ministry elected by the revolutionary people has decided: 1. To put the seal of the Bogdo-Khan in the keeping of the Ministry; 2. To introduce a republican form of government, without a president, and to transfer the supreme authority to the Great People's Horaldan and to the Cabinet elected by the latter; 3. To celebrate the anniversary of the Mongolian People's Republic simultaneously with the anniversary of the creation of the Mongolian state on the sixth day of the Sixth Moon of each year; 4. To date the history of the republic by the years of Mongolia's independence instead of by the years of rule of the Bogdo-Khan, counting from this, the Fourteenth Year [1925]. ' The Great People's Horaldan, today assembled for the first time, confirms these decisions of the Government, and establishes the following basic law of the Mongolian People's Republic. This basic law is to be made public by the central and local authorities and displayed in all public institutions. The Great Horaldan instructs the Government to make the principles of this Constitution part of the instruction in all schools and military units. Article I Declaration of Rights of the Toiling People of Mongolia 1. Mongolia is proclaimed an independent people's repub- lic, all authority being vested in the toiling people. The people exercises its supreme authority through the Great People's Horaldan and the Cabinet elected by it. 2. The fundamental task of the Mongolian Republic is to abolish the remnants of the feudal-theocratic regime2 and to strengthen the foundations of the new republican order by complete democratization of the administration. 3. In order to establish the authority of the people in the administration and to maintain the national order here pro- claimed, the following basic principles are established: (a) All land and underground riches, forests, waters and their riches within the territory of the Mongolian People's Republic, in accordance with the existing common usage of Mongolia corresponding to the principles of the established order, are the heritage of all the people; pri- vate ownership of such is not permitted, and they are entirely at the disposal of the toiling people; (b) All international agreements and loan obligations concluded by the Mongolian authorities before the Revo- lution of the Eleventh Year3, being exacted by force, are considered annulled; (c) Owing to the fact that the indebtedness of private persons and institutions to foreign usurers, which had been incurred in the times of foreign supremacy, on the basis of a pledge of general responsibility, has been a heavy bur- den on the national economy of the country and on the mass of the people, the decision of the Cabinet adopted in 1 Mongolia refused to accept the Chinese revolution of 1911 and on December 1 of that year declared its independence. 2 Mongolia under the old regime was dominated by lama-priests, some of whom held large feudal estates in which virtual slavery was practiced. •In the Eleventh Year (1921) the Government established by bands under Baron Ungem-Sternburg, a White Russian leader, was driven out with the aid of Soviet Russian forces, and the present "People's Government" established in power. this, the Fourteenth Year, concerning the annulment of the remnants of said indebtedness, and that adopted in the Eleventh Year concerning the repeal of this system of pledges of general responsibility, are confirmed; (d) The economic policy of the country shall be con- centrated in the hands of the state and a monopoly of foreign trade established, as one of the conditions for 1 liberation of the mass of the people and for the assertion of the popular authority; NOTE: The monopoly of foreign trade is to be introduced gradually. (e) In order to insure the full power of the toiling people and to eliminate the possibility of a restoration of the power of foreign and internal exploiters, the arming of the masses, through the Mongolian National Revolu- tionary Army and through universal military training of the toiling youth, is confirmed; (f) In order to insure freedom of conscience for the toiling masses, the church is separated from the state, and religion is proclaimed the private affair of each citizen; (g) In order to insure real freedom of expression of opinion, the Mongolian People's Republic shall organize the press and place it at the disposal of the toiling people; (h) In order to insure real freedom of assembly, meet- ings, processions, etc., the Republic shall place at the dis- posal of the toiling people for popular gatherings halls with the necessary conveniences and equipment; (i) In order to insure freedom of association for the toiling masses, the Mongolian People's Republic shall give the poor of the country (the arats and artisans) every material and other form of assistance for association and organization ; (j) In order to insure the privileges of knowledge the Mongolian People's Republic shall make it its task to organize for the toiling masses the fullest, most compre- hensive, free education; (k) The Mongolian People's Republic recognizes the equal rights of all its citizens without discrimination as to nationality, religion, or sex; (I) The Mongolian People's Republic, in keeping with the interests of the toiling people, may deprive or limit the rights of separate persons or groups of persons, if they use their rights to the detriment of the Republic; (m) The titles and ranks of the former princes and noblemen, as well as the possessive rights of the Hutukhtus and Hubilkhans are abolished; (n) In view of the fact that the toiling masses all over the world are striving toward the abolishment of capi- talism and the achievement of socialism, the People's Republic of the toiling masses is to conduct its foreign policies in accordance with the interests and the basic problems of the revolutionary workers of all the world. Note: The possibility, in accordance with current events, of establishing friendly relations with various foreign Powers is not excluded; but any attack upon the independence of the Mongolian People's Republic must be met with decisive resistance. Article II The Supreme Organs of Authority 4. The supreme authority :>f the Mongolian People's Republic is represented by the Great People's Horaldan4, when it is out of session by the Small Horaldan; and when the latter is out of session, by its Praesidium and the Cabinet, jointly. 5. The scope of the supreme organs of authority in the Mongolian People's Republic includes: 4 A Horaldan is an assembly.

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570 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 (a) Representation of the Republic in international relations, the conduct of diplomatic relations, the con- clusion of political, commercial, and other treaties with foreign states; (b) Changes in the frontiers of the Mongolian Repub- lic, declaration of war and conclusion of peace, ratification of international agreements; (c) The contracting of foreign and internal loans, pay- ment of interest and capital on such loans, questions of remission or delays of such loans, and the granting of foreign loans; (d) Regulation of foreign trade and of the rules of domestic trade; (c) Elaboration of the plan of the national economy of the Republic; granting, changing, and annulling concessionary monopoly rights; (f) Organization of the transportation and post and telegraph systems; (g) Organization and leadership of the armed forces of the Mongolian Republic; (h) Adoption of the budget of the republic, determination of taxes and revenues; (i) Establishment of the monetary credit system, issue of paper currency, and decisions concerning the minting of coin; (j) Settlement of the general principles for the use of land, as well as determination of the borders of aimaks and hoshuns? establishment of the rules for the use of the subsoil wealth, fores* s, and other natural riches; (k) Regulation of judicial organization and procedure, as well as the criminal and civil legislation of the Republic; (I) Institution of the system of public education; (m) Institution of general measures for public health; (n) Establishment of a system of weights and measures; (o) Organization of the statistics of the Republic. 6. Confirmation of and amendment to the basic laws of the Republic are the exclusive province of the Great Horaldan. The Great Horaldan 7. The Great People's Horaldan is composed of the repre- sentatives of the aimaks and of the urban population, as well as of military units, in proportion to the population of the election districts; the deputies are elected for the term of one year. Note 1. If no convention is held by the aimak, representatives shall be sent from the hoshuns. NOTE 2. Elections to the Great Horaldan are conducted on the basis of the rules laid down in the special regulations. 8. Ordinary sessions of the Great Horaldan shall be convened annually by the Small Horaldan. 9. Extra sessions of the Great Horaldan shall be convened by the Small Horaldan either upon its own initiative, or at the demand of one-third of the population of the Republic. 10. The Great Horaldan shall elect the Small Horaldan, with a membership of 30. 11. The Small Horaldan is responsible to the Great Horaldan. The Small Horaldan 12. The Small Horaldan shall issue laws, regulations, and orders, coordinate the work of the highest organs of the Cabinet, and determine the scope of activity of the Praesidium of the Small Horaldan and of the Cabinet, fix the general direction of the activities of the Cabinet, and supervise the execution of the basic laws of the Republic and of the decisions of the Great Horaldan. 13. The Small Hoi-aldan shall assemble at least twice a year. 6 Outer Mongolia under the old regime was divided into four aimaks, each ruled by a Khan and including from 19 to 24 hoshuns each. 14. Extraordinary sessions of the Small Horaldan shall be convened upon decision of the Praesidium of the Small Horaldan, upon the recommendation of the Cabinet, or at the demand of one-third of the members of the Small Horaldan. 15. The Small Horaldan, at its sessions, shall elect its Praesidium of five members, the Cabinet, and, in case of need, working committees. 16. The Small Horaldan shall report to the Great Horaldan upon its activities, policies, and special questions. 17. The members of the Small Horaldan shall work in the Praesidium or in other positions as assigned by the Praesidium. Note: Rules and regulations concerning the rights of the members of the Small Horaldan shall be issued by its Praesidium. The Praesidium 18. The Praesidium of the Small Horaldan shall conduct the sessions of the Small Horaldan. 19. The Praesidium shall prepare material for the sessions of the Small Horaldan. 20. The Praesidium shall introduce draft decrees for the consideration of the plenum of the Small Horaldan. 21. The Praesidium shall supervise execution of the decisions of the Small Horaldan. 22. The Praesidium shall direct the activities of the Cabi- net in local and other questions, communicate with the corre- sponding institutions through the Cabinet, or, in important cases, directly. 23. The Praesidium shall decide questions of general and individual amnesty. 24. Between sessions of the Small Horaldan, the Praesidium shall confirm laws and decisions, return for revision or hold up decisions of the Cabinet, referring these to the next plenum of the Small Horaldan, appoint and discharge individual ministers. 25. Questions and conflicts between ministries or com- plaints against ministries shall be settled by the Praesidium. 26. The Praesidium is responsible to the Small Horaldan and shall report to it on its activities. The Call in ft 27. Within the scope of the Cabinet is the general admin- istration of the affairs of the Mongolian People's Republic. The Cabinet is made up of the Chairman of the Cabinet, the Deputy Chairman, the Chairmen of the Military and Economic Councils, the Commander-in-Chief, the State Comptroller, and the ministers of internal affairs, foreign affairs, military affairs, finances, economy, justice, and education. 28. The Cabinet has charge of the questions enumerated in the special regulations upon the scope of the Cabinet. The Economic Council 29. In order to coordinate all economic measures, the Economic Council of the Mongolian People's Republic is instituted within the Cabinet in accordance with regulations. Article III Local Self-Government 30. Local horaldans in aimaks, hoshuns, somons, bags, ten- households, and cities are organized on the basis of the local self-government law. 31. For current administrative and economic work the local horaldans elect from among their members the executive organs of the local authorities, for the term of one year. 32. The executive organs are responsible to the local horaldans which elected them. 33. Aimak-, hoshun-, bag-, and ten-household assemblies and their executive organs shall act in accordance with the local self-government law.

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 571 H. G. WELLS* MASTERPIECE In a Neu', Elaborately Illustrated Edition The New Outline o£ History "If you start at the first page and read slowly and sympathetically to the last, you will not only till in *i> in your ignorance, hut will al>o place what- ever you do happen to know in some relation to the rest of human life." — Walter Lippman in Vanirs Fair NEW TEXT: The original "Outline" has been com- pletely recast or rewritten and new material added throughout. The post-war chapters are entirely new. NEW ILLUSTRATIONS: The story of man is told in pictures as well as words — the author has searched the world to make the pictorial record complete. NEW PRINTING: The litho offset process of re- production makes this a beautiful book, easy to read. The format and binding arc new. Sec this Nrtu Outline at your bookstore; full description on request. 2 vols. $15.00 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY cw York Boston Chicago Atlanta Dallas San Francisco Conveniently located Modern fireproof Last minute efficiency Elaborate cafe Systematized operation Select accommodations Washington boasts many hotels, but the Brighton is unique in combining the best Quality of all. J?f is a mark of distinction to stop at the Brighton Hotel in Washington — the Brighton offers you real Southern hospitality plus every modern convenience of a beautifully appointed fire-proof hotel. Here you find an atmosphere you ex- pect at the National Capital. Each guest gets courte- ous personal attention under our system. The Brighton is within a few minutes of Government activities, parks, clubs, embassies, shopping district, golf courses, bridle paths, and the business section. Rates $2.50 and up per day. Booklet mailed on request. THE BRIGHTON HOTEL 2123 California St., N. W. Washington, D. C. 'A For Christinas — The Treasured Gift For a gift of permanent value; n tribute to the good tustc of the one who (Jives and the one who receives, Webster's Collegiate Dictionary is ideal. It is a gift to delight anyone who reads, writes, or studies, for it is u constant source of the infor- mation needed most frequently. This Christmas give the handsome Bible-Paper edition of WEBSTER'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY The Best Abridged Dictionary // Is Based Upon Webster's New International A fiift of lasting, everyday value with its vocabulary oi 10fi,000 words itsdictioiiaryofBiography its Gazetteer department r> rules of punctuation, use of capi- tals, abbreviation ;, etc. -its foreign words and phrases - — its wealth of other information. A handsome book with 1700 illustrations. 1256 pages: printed on Bible Paper. Full limp leather, $7.50; flexible fabri- koid. $6.00; art canvas, $5.00 Purchase of your bookseller; or send order and remittance direct to us; or write lor information. Free sample pages if you mention The Nation. G.&C.Merriam Company SpringSIeld, Mass. FIFTH AVENUE RESTAURANT 200 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK A LUNCHEON RESORT FOR THE DISCRIMINATING CLIENTELE — THOSE APPRECIATING UNEX- CELLED CUISINE AND SERVICE. EVENINGS— S PECIAL PARTIES ONLY. ANNIVERSARIES, BANQUETS, LADIES' NIGHTS, BEEFSTEAKS, SMOKERS, SUPPER AND DINNER DANCES. OUR BANQUET DEPARTMENT SPE- CIALIZES IN SERVING GROUP DINNERS UP TO 1000 AT $2.00 A COVER UP. Ownership Management by THEODORE KEMM GRAMERCY 4900 to 4907 When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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572 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3204 Article IV The Right to Vote and to Be Elected 34. The following citizens of the Republic of both sexes, who at the day of elections have attained the age of 18 years, are eligible to vote and to be elected to the horaldans (Great, Small, and Local) : ■ (a) Those who support themselves by their own work, or are engaged in work in their own households; (b) Soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army. 35. The following may not vote or be elected: (a) Persons supporting themselves exclusively through the exploitation of other persons for gain; (b) Traders and usurers living on the work of others or on interest from capital and earnings; (c) Former princes, hutukhtus, and members of the clergy living in monasteries; (d) Persons recognized as mentally diseased or insane; (e) Persons who have been convicted of vicious or profit-seeking crimes. 36. Elections shall be conducted in accordance with the special law on elections. [Article V deals with the budget.] Article VI The State Seal, Coat-of-Arms, and Flag 47. The seals of the Great Horaldan, of the Cabinet, ministries, and other institutions shall be quadrangular; in the center of the seal the symbol soyunba (representing inde- pendence) is to be carved, and on the two sides the name of the institution. 48. The national coat-of-arms consists of the symbol soyunba with, below it, the figure of the flower badmalinhova.' 49. The national flag is red, with the coat-of-arms in the middle. 50. The sessions of the Great Horaldan are convened in Ulan-Bator-Khoto7 (formerly Urga). This constitution was confirmed at 4:17 on the 30th day of the Tenth Moon of the Mongolian State at the 14th session of the Groat Horaldan of the Mongolian People's Republic. Chairman of the Horaldan, Dja-Damba Deputy Chairman of the Horaldan, Badarkho Secretaries GUELEXENGE Dhgarjantzan ' The badmalinhova is a kind of lotus, the sacred flower of Ruddhism. 7 City of the Red Chief (one of Mongolia's epic heroes of the past). Contributors to This Issue Lewis S. Gannett, associate editor of The Nation, spent last winter in the Orient. Jonathan Norton Leonard is a journalist who writes on scientific subjects. Charles Norman, a New York poet, is the author of "Tragic Beaches." John Haynes Holmes is pastor of the Community Church of New York and author of "Patriotism Is Not Enough." Ernest F. Henderson has made a study of war origins, particularly in connection with Sir Edward Grey. H. S. Villard is a young journalist of the third generation of his name. Mary Ross is associate editor of The Survey. Walter Pach, painter and critic, is author of "The Masters of Modern Art." The author of The Making of a Militant is a well-known novelist and writer of short stories. The Training School for Jewish Social Work offers a fifteen months' course of graduate study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Centers. Several tuition scholarships and maintenance fellowships are available to especially qualified students. For further information, address the Director, THE TRAINING SCHOOL for JEWISH SOCIAL WORK 210 WEST 91st STREET NEW YORK CITY True food is the foundation of Good health Jrufbod, Fresh Vegetables Whole Wheat Products Satisfying Diet for Diabetics i npcTai |ITJ No animal fat used 153 W. 44th St., East of Broadway Get out your smocks and boots for the NEW MASSES Workers' and Peasants' Costume Bali Friday, December 8, at 9 P. M. Webster Hall, 119 East 11th Street Tickets now $1.60 — at the door $3.00 On sale at Jimmie Higgins', 127 University Place Rand School. 7 East 15th Street or by mail New Masses. 39 West 8th Street Tel. Stuyvesant 4446 DINNER OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF SLEEPING CAR PORTERS YORKVILLE CASINO, 210 E. 86th ST., NEW YORK Tuesday, November 30th, 1926 PAUL ROBESON, famous baritone, will sing several songs SPEAKERS will include Samuel Untermyer, James Weldon Johnson, Eugene Kinckle Jones, Hugh Frayne, the Rev. A. Clayton Powell, Robert L. Vann. Make reservations, $2 a cover, at the office of the Brotherhood, 23 11 Seventh Avenue. A MOSCOW DIARY A graphic human-interest story ot toe life of the people in Soviet Russia today, by Anna Porter. Cloth. $1.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. OHAKLiES II. K ! ,KK & GO. 847 East Ohio Street, Chicago REAL HARRIS HOMESPUNS Direct from the Maker* at Manufacturer's Price Suit Lengths Cut to Order. Price $2.20 per Yard. Postage Paid NEWALL, 150 Stornoway, Scotland. Write for pstterna slat in f shades desired When writing to advertisers. GENERAL DRUG CO., please mention The Nation 94 N. Moon Street, New York

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The Nation FOUNDED 1866 Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER - No. 3205 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS f.73 EDITORIALS: Nonsense 675 Storm Signals in Mexico r. 7 1> mnia Still Rules 577 Midway in the Season's Books ">77 Ghosts at the Horse Show 578 WHY I EARN MY OWN LIVING. Anonymous 579 Till-'. HALL-MILLS CASE IN THE NEWSPAPERS. By Silas Bent 580 RSON'S DISCIPLES— 1926 MODEL. By Harry S. Bressler ... 582 JEFFERSON1SM IN DENVER: DEMOCRACY RECEIVES A QUEEN 583 TOWAltn THE ARCTIC OCEAN. By Lewis S. Gannett 584 BASLESS AMERICA. By Stuart Chase 586 nil. m \\ GENERATION. By Mather A. Abbott IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter r»8S CORRESPONDENCE 588 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The British Commonwealth of Nations HOLIDAY BOOK SECTION THE IMPORTANCE OF PAUL VALERY. By Rene Lalou 597 REDISCOVERING THE SPIRITUALS. By Abbe Niles 598 THE CRITIC'S ANSWER By Eliseo Vivas 600 NOT TO YOU ONLY. O PYTHIAN. By Mary Austin 601 ROOKS ' First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 601 The Complete Die-Hard. By Keith Hutchison 602 Mr. Mencken's Best. By Joseph Wood Krutch 603 State and Government. By Harold J. Laski 603 Seeinp Things. By Donald Douglas 601 Mr. Eddison's Second. By Abbe Niles b05 Fremont Older and Jack Black. By R. L. Burgess 605 What Price Happiness ? By John Haynes Holmes 606 A Philosophical Poem. By Mortimer J. Adler 606 Below Par. By William MacDonald 607 Disraeli and Gladstone. By J. A. Hobson 607 Man versus Nature. By Alice Beal Parsons 608 Thick and Thin. By Lenore G. Marshall 608 Deep as First Love. By Donald Douglas bit Why Women Are Scabs. By Paul Blanshard ; -i Harsh White Noon. By Gerald Carson t>J4 N,w England. By Alice Beal Parsons . bl4 Religious Problem in Mexico. By Carleton Beals bib Mostly Fudge. By R. F. Dibble bljj Once More the Impossible. By Sidney R. Packard bl ' The Nation's Poetry Prize ''}* A Library List of Children's Books b j J Books in Brief • • ■ • • • • • • • • ■ •;;••: ' ' Music : Music and Common Sense— I. By B. H. Haggin 621 Drama : "The Witch." By Joseph Wood Krutch b-.s OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH MANAGING EDITOR LITERARY EDITOR FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, 56.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address : Nation, New York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England. THE MORAL CRISIS OF PROHIBITION" is the title of an editorial in the Christian Century, which comes close to being the most Christian church periodical in America. This paper attacks the political methods of the Anti-Saloon League, saying: If the churches are to continue to support prohibition as a moral issue they cannot do so on a basis which is itself morally questionable. Prohibition is a moral issue, not the moral issue. It does not transcend nor fuse into itself all the other moralities. . . . Almost without know- ing how it happens they [the churches] find themselves walking arm in arm with the Ohio gang, with a Len Small- Frank Smith gang, with that most cynical, most sinister of American figures, the "political Dry". . . . While the church is being maneuvered into alliance with political in- famy, laws may stand or laws may fall, but the moral authority of the church cannot survive. This is refreshing candor, and indicative, perhaps, of a new awakening. Since the Christian Century's editorial was written we have had two more exhibits of "political Dry- ness." The first came in the story of the arrest of the Governor of Alabama at a liquor-drinking party. The dis- patches report that a Negro servant, after receiving a promise of pardon from the Governor, long an ardent po- litical Dry, assured the court that the liquor was his and that he was giving it to the Governor and his friends. The other and more encouraging exhibit is a speech by Governor Pierce of Oregon, who is said to be personally as well as politically Dry: he calls for a new campaign of education, charging that the attempt to browbeat people into Dryness has failed. "We cannot legislate people into being moral and temperate," he says. And he is right; this country has had too much political and not enough personal Dryness. ANOTHER ELECTION SCANDAL has bobbed up to bother the Republicans — this time in their own State of Maine, where Arthur R. Gould, a rich Republican, was elected as United States Senator against Fulton J. E. Red- mond, Democrat. The first charge was that Mr. Gould went far beyond the legal limits of primary expenditures in his recent campaign. This was declared unproved by the Secre- tary of State. Worse than this, his Democratic op- ponent has brought out the fact that Mr. Gould in 1918 paid $100,000 to the then Prime Minister of New Bruns- wick, Mr. Flemming, during the construction of the St. Johns Valley and Quebec Railway, of which Mr. Gould was the leading spirit. This was termed an act of bribery by Chief Justice Harrison A. McKeown of New Brunswick and, because Mr. Gould had been held personally guilty of this bribery, he was non-suited in the effort made by him and his associates to recover $335,000 which they claimed was due them from the Province. Mr. Gould ad- mits that the $100,000 was paid, but asserts that it was done against his protest by his associates, that it was not a bribe but a political assessment demanded by the Premier as the price for the continuance of this American enter- prise. Subsequently, Mr. Gould declares, another demand was made for $50,000, and when this was refused his com- pany was put out of business. Since he adds that every American enterprise in New Brunr/wick was similarly held up by politicians, it is evident that we have here a first- class scandal which should be investigated by the authorities in Canada as well as by the Senate of the United States. SECRETARY HOOVER rejoices, and well he may, that in the fiscal year 1925-1926 prosperity in the United States reached a point never before attained in the volume of production and consumption, in the quantity of exports

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574 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 and imports, and in the rate of wages. He admits that there are three or four bad spots — the New England textile industry, the bituminous coal fields, and, "in two or three sections," the agricultural industry. On the whole, he declares, "the country was able to maintain the highest standard of living in its history — a standard far above that in most other countries of the world at this or any other time." Since the close of the last fiscal year, however, the agricultural distress, which was never confined to only two or three sections, has grown steadily worse, particularly among the cotton growers. In Iowa the situation is alarm- ing; no less than nineteen banks failed there in one week, all in agricultural sections. In North Dakota, where 600,000 persons inhabit a State larger than New York, conditions are equally harassing, while in the East the farmers are just about able to hold out, though making no money. On the same day that Mr. Hoover declared that agricultural conditions were improving, Senator Brookhart of Iowa declared that "America's much-vaunted prosperity means sheriff sales for the farmer." A million farmers, he asserted, have lost their homes during the Coolidge and Harding Administrations. Laws, he added, have created this situation and only new laws can remedy it. As a matter of fact, the worst offenders are the tariff laws; we are seeing now the fine flowering of the protective tariff system which has exalted manufacturing at the expense of agriculture. Perhaps the Business Men's Commission on Agriculture, which has so wisely chosen Charles Nagel as its chairman, will see and recognize this truth. THE REVOLT OF THE JUDGES will doubtless result in the modification of some of the more hysterical provisions of the Baumes laws in New York. Designed to reduce crime they are succeeding most effectively in reduc- ing justice. They have so completely robbed the courts of their discretionary powers in sentencing offenders previously convicted for felonies that one judge after an- other has protested. Judge Taylor's refusal to give a life sentence to a Negro with three previous convictions, who had been induced by the District Attorney's office to plead guilty as a first offender, will be reviewed by Justice Lewis of the Supreme Court. Following Judge Taylor, but em- ploying opposite tactics, Judge Collins in the Court of General Sessions sentenced a man to life imprisonment and then publicly denounced the Baumes laws as "inflexible, arbitrary, mandatory" and plainly suggesting "mob philos- ophy in the enactment of legislation." The prisoner had been sentenced to five years for the offense in question — an assault with a knife during a drunken brawl — but had been remanded for resentence when a third conviction was found in his record. A few days later Judge Allen simi- larly increased the term of a prisoner from eighteen months to life imprisonment with reluctance and a vigorous attack upon the mandatory features of the laws. Even a few district attorneys, including Love of Monroe County and Banton of New York, have expressed disapproval of the mandatory life sentence for offenders who have already committed three felonies. When the rest of this hard-boiled brotherhood suffers a similar change of heart we may hope for a reversion to justice. WE HAVE LONG been skeptical about the alleged superiority of Jersey justice, as our readers who have followed our comments on the Passaic strike must be aware. Now, having watched the conduct of the Hall- Mills murder trial, we are emphatically of the opinion that whatever the verdict another severe blow has been dealt to the judiciary in that State by the conduct of the case. In common, we are convinced, with multitudes of people, we have found ourselves disgusted by the antics of the prosecuting attorney, Mr. Simpson, who has only himself to thank if the aveiage newspaper-reader considers him a mountebank, a play actor, and a low-grade politician with no regard for the standards and ethics of his pro- fession. But what shall one say of the judges who per- mitted this prosecuting attorney to turn upon Henry Stevens and ask him whether his mother was a virtuous woman and whether his brother was not the bastard child of a mulatto? No one can pretend that these questions had the remotest connection with the guilt or the innocence of the Stevens brothers. No judge who respected his ermine would have permitted them to be asked. Such a happening would have been unthinkable in an English courtroom. The tables are turned when well-to-do and cultivated people thus suffer the treatment accorded to Negroes, radicals, and friendless folk in general, but the dignity of the courts is not enhanced nor is the cause of justice served. IN OUR ISSUE of February 18, 1925, we told how Roth- schild Francis, editor of the Emancipator of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, had been prosecuted for libel because of a criticism — which to us seemed quite within bounds — of the local police force. He was declared guilty by Judge George Washington Williams, sitting without a jury. When in a subsequent issue of his newspaper Mr. Francis took excep- tion to this conviction he was again haled before Judge Williams, who sentenced him to jail and a fine for contempt of court. Mr. Francis took an appeal from both convictions to the federal courts in this country, where the conviction for libel was overthrown but the sentence for contempt was upheld. A. A. Berle, Jr., carried the latter decision to the United States Supreme Court in behalf of Mr. Francis, but that tribunal recently refused to review the case. When news of this action reached the Virgin Islands Judge Wil- liams clapped Mr. Francis into jail for the thirty days to which he had been sentenced and, as the editor did not pay the $100 fine which was a part of the punishment, 100 more days in prison were imposed on that account. With fine courage and appreciation of the principles involved, Mr. Francis refused to ask the Governor for a pardon or commutation of sentence. THAT A MAN of such mediocre abilities and tempera- mental unfitness for the bench as George Washington Williams should occupy the highest judicial post in the Vir- gin Islands is clue to their remoteness from our continental press and a lack of local democratic control. That Judge Williams should be able to vent his spleen upon so devoted and unselfish a popular leader as Mr. Francis — who had incurred judicial displeasure by opposing the reappointment of Judge Williams — should be an argument in Congress for ending the anomalous and autocratic "temporary govern- ment" by naval officers that has spelled political dissatis- faction and economic disaster for the islands since we ac- quired them almost ten years ago. Incidentally the sen- tence of Mr. Francis calls attention to the unfairness of compelling a man to work out a fine at the rate of $1 a day. The extreme penalty for contempt of court in the

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 575 Virgin Islands is thirty days in jail, but to this may be added a fine of $200, which if not paid means 200 days' additional imprisonment. The era is far in the background when even the humblest worker's time could be rated at $1 a day. Prisoners ought to demand a more adequate rate. If necessary to obtain it, they would be justified in walking out. THE SALE OF THE WHITE STAR LINE to the Royal Mail Steamship Company interests consummates a deal which will be of considerable value to that lame duck, the International Mercantile Marine, an organization to dominate the North Atlantic trade formed by the elder J. P. Morgan on an economically unsound basis. It has been at- tacked from the beginning as an organization inimical both to American interests and to British interests, for it lias meant the operating of ships under three flags by one com- pany. For a long time past the sale of the White Star ships has plainly been called for, but for some mysterious reason the bargain arrived at between the International Mercan- tile Marine and the Furness-Withy interests, outlined in our editorial of May 12, 1926, failed to go through. The ac- quisition of the White Star vessels makes Baron Kylsant the world's greatest shipping operator, controlling, as he now does, 538 ships — he bought his first steamer in 1889. Since he became chairman of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in 1902 it has acquired the fleets of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, the Glen Line, the Shire Line, the Lamport and Holt Line, the Forwood Line, the Shaw, Savile, and Albion Line, the great Union Castle fleet of fifty vessels, the Elder, Dempster Line, and now the White Star Line. If Baron Kylsant continues absorbing fleets we may yet see almost a monopoly of British shipping in one man's hands. IN 1895 A MARRIAGE was contracted and solemnized at St. Thomas's Church in New York City. In 1920 the marriage was dissolved and each of the divorced pair mar- ried again. In 1926 the original marriage was annulled, declared never to have existed, by the Rota, high court of the Roman Catholic Church. This apparently superfluous formality was carried out in order to regularize in the eyes of that church the second marriage of one of the per- sons involved, whose Catholic husband was not permitted to marry a divorced woman. If the existence of the second marriage was to have religious recognition the non-existence of the first marriage had to be established. And so the court at Rome annulled, on the ground of coercion, the mar- riage performed in New York by a Protestant Episcopal bishop. A case of bad professional manners, no doubt, and a silly business all around. But when the ministers of various sects in the United States, from John Haynes Holmes and Harry Emerson Fosdick to John Roach Straton, support Bishop Manning in his denunciation of this in- fringement of Episcopalian and American rights we are astonished. If Consuelo Vanderbilt, in order to satisfy the demands of her present marriage, finds it necessary to have a previous marriage wiped off the ecclesiastical record why should anybody regret that the legal system of the Church of Rome permits so elastic an interpretation of the marriage vow? But we cannot accept the optimistic belief of the Living Church (High Church Episcopalian) that "marriage standards in Rome and Soviet Russia appear to be approaching a common plane." N on sense OLD China, struggling to give birth to a modern nation, is in a Stage of spasmodic convulsions. She has begging the Powers to leave her alone, to stop dosing her with their medicine. And at a moment when she s< to have some hope of pulling herself together, when the Canton group is at last uniting the country, the Powers, deaf these many years, suddenly present their report, which says in effect: We will not change our tactics until you ret well. The Extraterritoriality Commission, with Silas Strawn as chairman, having spent some months studying China, notes her chaotic condition and coolly concludes, if the preliminary summaries are to be trusted, that this is no time to change medicine. In the future, maybe, if conditions mend, perhaps, the Powers will consider, pos- sibly, local changes in their claims of extraterritoriality. This is nonsense. It exhibits an appalling lack of sense of proportion. Here is a solemn report, signed by the representatives of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, the British Empire, and the United States — the "Treaty Powers." Italy, Spain, and Portugal are ruled by military juntas, Japan by a despotic clique; Britain holds India by force alone; Belgium and Italy have compounded their debts, but France is simply stalling, with no apparent intention of paying her debt to the United States; and the United States seems utterly incapable of solving its own gunman and lynching prob- lems. Yet the representatives of these nations presume to sit in judgment on China, to complain that she is gov- erned by military leaders, that her treasury is depleted, that "the extension and protection of the new legal and judicial systems are being retarded," and smugly demand that China reform herself. Before the Powers withdraw their claims to separate jurisdiction in China, they assert, China must reform her police, her prisons, her commercial code ("in- cluding negotiable-instruments law, maritime law, and insurance law"), establish modern detention-houses, and so on through a long string of requirements to the condescending conclusion that After the principal items thereof have been carried out the Powers concerned, if so desired by the Chinese Govern- ment, might consider the abolition of extraterritoriality, according to such progressive schemes (whether geo- graphical, partial, or otherwise) as may be agreed upon. Preposterous as this is on the face of it, it is even more ridiculous in view of the facts of the Chinese situ- ation. China is in civil war; but in her attitude toward foreigners she is united. "The gravest situation since the Boxer uprising," British dispatches call the present patri- otic effez-vescence. The Powers are in no position to dictate to her, partly because there is no government to dictate to, stih more because they have no power to coerce four hundred million people scattered along the river val- leys of a nation as big as a continent, feeling, thinking, and acting — toward the foreigners — as one. One American diplomat put it thus: "We Westerners are like a man tied to the rear platform of a moving train and trying to keep his footing." China, huge, apparently chaotic, is driv- ing powerfully toward independence. Bit by bit she is destroying the shackling treaties. The Powers can accept gracefully now or, later, yield clumsily; to attempt to refuse is to ignore dynamic facts.

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576 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 Storm Signals in Mexico NO, not Mexican signals, but United States signals, and for the fourth time in 1926. Secretary Kellogg has broken loose again. He has, first, inspired a vicious press attack on Mexico apropos of Nicaragua, so that for several days our highly reliable dailies were filled with assertions that from Mexico, that hotbed of Bolshevism, a most dan- gerous communistic and anti-American propaganda was going all through Central and South America. This he followed up by similarly inspired suggestions that if Mexico persisted in her course in regard to her constitution and land laws there was every prospect that there would be a rupture of diplomatic relations. Simultaneously with this appeared the stories of various minor revolts and of im- pending revolts in Mexico to which we have already referred. Never was there a clearer case of government-inspired propaganda, and, to our regret, we must record that the Associated Press lent itself to this outrage by carrying the sensational anti-Mexican matter without citing the source. Hitherto it has been Associated Press policy, according to our understanding, to state the origin of a story in order that no charge of being used for propaganda purposes might lie against it. We regard these developments as serious despite the fact that this is the fourth flurry in this year and that the English oil companies in Mexico have announced their acceptance of those provisions of the Mexican petroleum laws which have so excited our State Department under Messrs. Hughes and Kellogg. Our anxiety is due to the fact that the foreign policy of the United States is in the hands of two exceptionally weak men, Mr. Kellogg and Mr. Coolidge, the latter of whom has, if Washington dispatches are to be trusted, about made up his mind to attempt to break the third-term tradition by becoming a candidate for the Presidency in 1928. Weak men are more to be feared in our foreign affairs than strong men — witness the readi- ness of William McKinley to plunge this country into war with Spain purely for partisan reasons, to which fact the historian James Ford Rhodes is the latest witness. We are well aware of the high-sounding words used by Presi- dent Coolidge in regard to our foreign affairs, to which the New York World calls attention in this connection. He said to Congress that for a hundred years we had been pledged "to the peaceful settlement of controversies between nations; by example and by treaty we have advocated arbi- tration." He also told Congress in his last message that "the policy of our foreign relations, casting aside any sug- gestion of force, rests solely on the foundation of peace, good-will, and good works." But coming from Mr. Coolidge these sentiments are nothing but the ordinary politician- bunk. They mean nothing. They afford not the slightest guaranty that our policy toward Mexico and Nicaragua will be decent or humane, for Mr. Coolidge is the tool of big business and what big business wants he will do. If our capitalists who have investments in Mexico do not desire to be reasonable and sensible, like their British brethren, we shall undoubtedly have a rupture of diplo- matic relations and a policy based upon force— perhaps even a nice little war. We therefore urge all who have the interest of both countries at heart to rouse themselves once more to make it known in Washington that they do not propose to have the United States play the bully and put itself in the position of attempting to dictate to Mexico what her laws and her constitution shall be — a policy we should never dare to assume toward any country of our own size. Right now is the time to make those protests felt in Washington, not after the breaking off of relations. This time those who deliberately seek strife with Mexico are reinforced by many thousands of our countrymen of the Catholic faith who, not without some reason, feel themselves outraged by the policy of the Mexican Government toward the Catholic faith. President Coolidge wisely refused to make this reli- gious issue the basis of a remonstrance to the Mexican Government — a fact we are glad to record to his credit even though we cannot help suspecting that he was more afraid of the Catholic issue than inspired by a desire to keep his hands off a purely domestic Mexican issue. But multitudes of Catholics will stand behind Congressman John J. Boylan of New York in his announced determination to compel the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House to act upon his resolution for the severance of diplomatic relations with Mexico. Fortunately Senator Borah has spoken out well and refuses to be stampeded in this direction. Again must we call attention to the deliberate propa- ganda to get us into war with Mexico. The worst offenders are the owners of the Chicago Tribune and Liberty, men who in their callous disregard of justice and right-dealing are constantly urging upon the United States the forcible annexation of Mexico upon the purely materialistic ground that the Mexicans are not exploiting their natural resources and that therefore we should. Liberty has just been caught printing a picture which purported to portray "Catholics Withdrawing Deposits from the Bank of Mexico in Pro- test Against the Seizure of Church Property," whereas it was a picture taken and published eleven months before the attempted boycott, in fact before the troubles with the Catholics began, and represented persons depositing instead of withdrawing funds. It is thus that feeling is aroused against Mexico, and always these inciters to strife assume that the United States is inevitably and invariably right, and that we have the power, the right, and the duty to supervise her conduct of her own affairs and even of her foreign relations. The assertion that Mexico is bolshevik and is spreading bolshevist propaganda is the merest nonsense. Under President Calles, as we have repeatedly pointed out, there is being carried on a progressive, social policy in the interest of the Mexican masses, which the United States in some respects ought rather to be imitating than criticizing. Least of all should there be criticism of her oil laws at the moment when Fall, Sinclair, and Doheny are on trial for alienating part of the birthright of the American people. If certain Mexicans choose to supply arms to revolutionists in Nicaragua, they are merely imitating what United States citizens have been doing in most of the republics to the south of us for the last hundred years. Blustering against Mexico and the threats against her can have only one effect — the rousing of all the Central and South American republics against us.

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 577 Britannia Still Rules THE British Empire has been indulging in a mild ses- sion of psychoanalysis. The result is a document which indicates no profound change in the relations of the component parts of the empire, but a considerable gain in self-knowledge. The assembled imperial statesmen admit on paper conditions which already existed in fact. They prove themselves true to the British tradition of writing constitutions only after muddling them out in practice. We print in the International Relations Section this week the first part of the report of the Inter-Imperial Rela- tions Committee of the Imperial Conference. It has not yet been accepted by the governments concerned, but in view of the fact that the prime ministers of every Dominion participated in its sessions there can be little doubt that the report may be accepted at face value. It declares that "Great Britain and the Dominions" are autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British commonwealth of nations. This recognition of the independence and sovereignty of the Dominions is essentially a mere formulation of a fact made evident by the separate membership of the Dominions in the League of Nations, by Canada's independent nego- tiation of a treaty with the United States, and Ireland's and Canada's appointment of their own ministers to Wash- ington. But it is new as a formulation of a principle which had been growing without definition. To realize how new is the acceptance of that formulation it is only necessary to recall the furore aroused by General Hertzog's speech at Stellenbosch last May (reprinted in The Nation for July 14), when the South African Prime Minister said: Each Dominion is, by virtue of its self-governing constitution, created a free, independent state, with the right to international recognition by foreign Powers; but with a common connecting link between itself and Great Britain, centered in the King. . . . All unity among the Dominions themselves and between the Dominions and Great Britain must originate in agreement and cooperation. For that speech General Hertzog was denounced by the British in South Africa as a traitor to the empire, and at the opening of the Imperial Conference he was treated by the London press as a dangerous wild man. It was not yet permissible to assert in plain words what was already in fact the practice of half the Dominions. Yet after weeks of earnest study the committee has reached a formula which can scarcely be differentiated from General Hertzog's. It must be recognized that the British Empire is still a dual organism. Recognition of the independence of the Dominions, with a home population essentially similar to that of Great Britain itself, does not alter by one iota the far-flung structure of the great red empire on which the sun never sets. Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Suez, Aden, India, Singapore, Borneo, Hongkong, the Sudan, East and West Africa, Kenya, Rhodesia, the Falkland Islands, the British West Indies, and the rest — they remain as before, outposts of an empire which rules them primarily in its own interest. Nowhere in the report is that harshest of imperial problems, the color line, touched upon. South Africa may. conceivably, have a little freer hand than before in holding down hei natives and barring the Hindus; India remains precisely where she was. Some of these domains may be conceived, as .Mr. Zimmern optimistically paints them, as part of a parade of colonies marching upward toward dominion status, self-government, and < tial independence; hut the Imperial Conference cha their status only in so far as it alters the position ol Dominions, which may be regarded as their ideal. While this long report deals with the intricate ques- tions of independent and semi-independent treaty-making, of dominion merchant marines and of dominion consuls in foreign countries, of conflicts of dominion legislation and of appeal to the Privy Council as a sort of Supreme Court for the empire (characteristically sidestepping this stumbling-block by a thoroughly ambiguous form of words), it nowhere touches upon the questions of imperial pref- erence and of imperial economic unity. The emphasis has shifted since the early post-war days. Then there was talk both of preference and of a joint imperial foreign policy for which the Dominions would share responsibility. ^imes have changed; the Dominions have in practice worked out their salvation, and in the main this document accepts their independence. It is an impressive object-lesson in political evolution without the rumble of threatened armed conflict. Since the war the Dominions have grown mightily, and Britain, with some anguish of soul, has had the good sense freely to recognize their new stature. The chief troubles of empire have come not from those regions to which the greatest autonomy has been granted but in those where the ruling country still tries to sit on the lid. Midway in the Season's Books THOUGH only one-half of the books announced by Ameri- can publishers in their fall lists have yet been issued, it is now possible to survey the season with a degree of understanding which will justify generalizations. The first of these is that the much abused two-volume biography is holding its own, at least with the publishers. Poe gets two long biographies almost simultaneously, Hervey Allen and Mary E. Phillips entering into competition for the honor of having written the most exhaustive life of that unhappy man. John Wanamaker, as will be seen in the literary sup- plement to the present issue of The Nation, gets another without exactly deserving it; it remains to be seen whether Joseph Conrad is worth the two volumes promised by G. Jean Aubry. There can scarcely be a doubt that Asquith and Ex-Secretary Houston in their memoirs, and H. A. L. Fisher and Francis Hirst in their lives of Lord Bryce and Lord Morley, and Sidney Lee in his continuation of the "Edward VII" will make contributions to the history of politics and political theory. Cobden-Sanderson and Rider Haggard, lately dead, have left copious autobiographies. Rupert Hughes's recent volume on George Washington was only the first, presumably, of several which he will publish; and there is still to come an extensive work on Washington — a "pictorial biography" — from Joseph Dillaway Sawyer. Then Walter Edwin Peck will devote two volumes to Shelley, and Percy MacKaye two more to the life of his father in the American theater. The two-volume form, it would seem, is still anything but vanquished.

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578 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 In the department of literary criticism two develop- ments are particularly noticeable. The American critical renaissance bears fruit this season in three anthologies of contemporary reviews and articles prepared by William A. Drake, Lewis Worthington Smith, and James Cloyd Bow- man. The range of theme and skill exhibited by the three volumes will surprise any reader who has not been aware of the strides made within the past five or six years by the Tenth Muse in the United States. In the second place there is a notable increase in the number of volumes devoted to figures in French literature. W. F. Giese's "Hugo," Cleve- land B. Chase's "The Young Voltaire," E. B. D'Auvergne's "Pierre Loti," Rene Benjamin's "Balzac," John Garber Palache's "Gautier and the French Romantics," and Ernest Boyd's and Robert Sherard's studies of de Maupassant— no such attention is being paid just now to any other foreign literature; and while this list may be more or less an acci- dent of the current season, it seems that the younger American writers are set upon making themselves ac- quainted with both past and contemporary France. The newest idol of all, Paul Valery, succeeding, as it seems, Anatole France and Remy de Gourmont, is represented by "Variety," a collection of his essays. Anatole France him- self, though he is honored with one more volume of remin- iscences in the worshipful vein — Kemeri's "Rambles with Anatole France" — hears this year the first echo in America, in a book by Barry Cerf, of the detraction which has been his fate in France almost from the day of his death. In fiction and poetry we find, as always, old names rid- ing the top of the wave and new ones rising into recogni- tion. This season brings novels or stories from Anderson, Bennett, Cabell, Willa Cather, Zona Gale, Dreiser, Hamlin Garland, Ellen Glasgow, Hergesheimer, Kipling, Maugham, May Sinclair, Van Vechten, Walpole, Wells, and Elinor Wylie. And that might seem to be the whole story — except for the certainty that among the novels by less known per- sons there are a few which will one day be considered as having made the literary history of 102G. Some of these, it is likely, have received little notice or none; and guessing who of all the newcomers will survive longest is extremely hazardous business. Will it not be, however, one of the fol- lowing: H. E. Bates, E. R. Eddison, "H. D." (as a novelist), Ernest Hemingway, Frances Newman, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, E. H. Young? As to poetry, the crop is the poorest in years — collections and selections predominating in the list and thus attesting better than anything else could do the lack of current enterprise. New publishing houses continue to spring up over night. Most interesting this fall are the John Day Com- pany and the Vanguard Press. The first, in accordance with what has come to be the conventional practice, drew much of the talent for its staff from older houses; and its program, so far admirably carried out, is to issue only a few books each season, to see that as many of these as may be are good, to print them well, and to keep their dust-jackets innocent of meaningless superlatives. The Vanguard Press will sell all of its books at cost; and its aim will be to fur- nish cheaply the means of a radical education. Its reprints from Karl Marx, Ruskin, Tolstoi, Lenin, Kropotkin, Wells, Henry George, Thorstein Veblen, William Morris, Upton Sinclair, Edward Bellamy, Benjamin R. Tucker, Darwin, Haeckel, Buckle, and Lecky promise much in this direction; of the volumes which contain new material time and criti- cism will have more to say. Ghosts at the Horse Show THERE were ghosts at the forty-first annual exhibition of the National Horse Show Association of America, Limited, held in New York the week of Thanksgiving. There was the ghost of Eohippus, rabbit-sized, five-toed, monkey-toothed, tapir-nosed, scurrying about under the flat- backed draft horses. There were the ghosts of Orohippus and Mesohippus and Parahippus and Merichyppus, tossing their fossil heads and prancing on feet which in one stage after another came nearer to the hard, single hoofs of Equus caballus. There were the ghosts of the descendant horses which men learned first to eat, then to draw on the walls of smoky caves, then to ride, then to hitch to carts and plows and chariots and wagons and carriages, and finally, as at the Horse Show, to make the playthings of prosperous leisure. There were the ghosts of chargers screaming on battle-fields, of ponies deep underground in laborious mines, of stallions matched in bloody conflicts for the sport of Vikings, of wild horses sweeping over wilder plains in swift freedom, of mangy, beaten plugs, and of philosophical Houyhnhnms. The two thousand actual horses which trod the neat floor of the arena were but a handful to the ghostly tribes which drifted through and over it. Not even the elaborate specialization which always marks the Horse Show could drive the ghosts out of mind. Officers' chargers, horses suitable to become hunters, hack- neys in harness, novice saddle horses, artillery teams, four- in-hands, ladies' qualified hunters, novice five-gaited saddle horses, thoroughbred hunters, geldings under saddle, tan- dems, hunt teams, pairs of roadsters, pairs of wagon horses, polo mounts, children's ponies, green hunters other than thoroughbreds — what were all these but the heirs of Eohippus? And what was the intense, patient curiosity of the spectators but a survival of the centuries of interest in man's most diversified servant and pet? Perhaps acquired characteristics are not inheritable, and perhaps a fondness for horses has not really been handed down from father to son in the human cells them- selves. And yet the feeling for horses has so long been so profoundly a part of human culture that a generation of automobiles has only begun to root that feeling out. Even when the last man who ever rode or drove a horse is dead there will still be literature and oral memories. In the meantime, plenty of horses still live to preserve the ancient tradition. They keep to the side of the road while motors rush by them. They have given over to steam and gas the work of drawing the heaviest loads. But on soft ground they have no serious rivals; on the hunting field and the race course they have no rivals to speak of; and in a large department of human affection and concern they have no rivals at all. They are the most splendid playthings ever used by men. If horses should become entirely useless, there would still be men who could not be quite themselves away from stables and paddocks. "The first money I laid out," said Lemuel Gulliver on his return from his travels, "was to buy two young stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable, and next to them the groom is my greatest favourite." Those ghosts at the Horse Show were not merely shadows out of history. They were strands woven into the complex constitution of mankind itself.

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 579 These Modern Women Why I Earn My Own Living ANONYMOUS [This is the second of a series of anonymous articles giving the personal backgrounds of women active in profes- sional and public life. Our object is to discover the origin of their modern point of view tenvard men, marriage, chil- (//•</(. and jobs. The next article is by a lawyer who was brought up in the South.] FOR thirty years I walked primly, directing my course by the social guide-posts set up in a New England town for the direction of well-born, well-bred little ladies. Then I broke loose. My former friends consider me a sort of wild woman because I earn my own living, do not take my husband's name, and have been known to live in strange, dirty neighborhoods where the rents are lower. To myself I seem much the same person who used to leave properly engraved visiting-cards on proper occasions at proper houses. I earn my living as a matter of course now, but the habit started from a childish sense of guilt at making my parents so much trouble. My mother took life rather hard. She was extremely sensitive to responsibility; she hated routine duties, but her conscience forced her to perform them scrupulously. Again and again she gave up the nerve- racking struggle and took to her bed, discovering nervous prostration long before it was recognized by the medical profession and taken up generally by distressed gentle- women. Both she and I thought that taking care of me was what made her sick. Like all children I was a complete egoist. My world revolved around myself and when it was a clouded world I assumed that I was to blame. There was always in the foreground some naughtiness like screaming against bed- time, demanding a toilet where there was none, refusing to wear a certain dress, or being impertinent. I could not comprehend that my parents' gloom came as much from being married to each other as from being my father and mother. Early in life I figured out that the least I could do for two people who had done so much for me was as soon as possible to earn my own living. I hoped thus to lessen my sense of guilt in living at all. Some of my playmates, now middle-aged, have tried to assuage a simi- lar feeling in a different way; they have continued in their childhood homes instead of forming independent ties and their parents have become their children. Later on, I carried over into my marriage the old, illusive sense of guilt and a passionate desire to be no trouble to my husband. I had the naive belief that men loved best women who were no bother to them. I had the curious idea that my husband would admire my power to earn money and be proud of my standing in my profession. The working- for- wages habit was well established before I turned critical eyes on the courtship, engagement, and marriage customs of my town. In the large city where I had received a school appointment after graduating from college, I "poured" at "receptions," played atrocious bridge, went to dances, taught in Sunday school, and expected to marry a pleasant house with steam heat, electricity, and a husband. Until 1 was more than thirty years old I re- trained from thoughts about sex because "there is time enough for that alter you are married." Through the printed word 1 escaped the dreary com- monplace. The verses of Hovey, Carman, and Le Gallienne were my creed. I soaked up the saccharine art of the Pre- Raphaelites in English galleries and mooned about the English Lake district, tested life by the philosophy of Hall Caine and Marie Corelli, adored Maude Adams and Sothern (before he took to Shakespeare), and wrote diluted love lyrics. The girls of my little group of young folks were all weltering in sentimentality, but they were mostly able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. The other girls didn't try to make an apple-pie by the rule for a sonnet. They wrapped their affections about young men who had what was called "character" in distinction to "personality." After marriage they discarded romantic fancies and stag- nated in mild discontent. But I had only one foot firmly planted on solid respectability; the other was sliding round on romance. You recognize this situation as what we now name "a conflict of desires." The romantic side of my nature led me to pick out a charming man in the city where I was teaching. Or did he pick me out? I do not know; it was love at first sight; and, looking back, I would not have missed it for the world. The practical side of my nature compelled me to take him home to my parents to be approved. They refused their approbation. The man had been divorced, he was a Socialist, and had been brought up as a Catholic. My home circle was monogamous, Republican, and Protestant. One marriage, one political party, one church were the portion of one individual in those days. My parents declined to accept my man as a son-in-law. I would not marry him without their consent because "a bad daughter makes a bad wife"; yet I wouldn't give him up because life without him was too utterly dreary. The outcome was that he went back to the city to make a fortune as a substitute for "character," while I returned to teach school in my home town. In those days an engaged girl stayed with her parents during her engagement because she was so soon to leave them. I spent my leisure filling my Hope Chest. All my lingerie was made by hand. It took longer than we expected for my fiance to make a fortune and I watched myself grow older. My man actually did make a fortune. But he married a woman who, I afterward learned, had been working and living with him during his long, hard pull. Everyone was satisfied but me. I was mad clear through. I had been a good daughter and had lost my lover thereby. I had no desire to be anything but good, but I did not want to be punished for it. Reviewing the affair, I could not see that anyone was to blame. The code had let me down. Then and there I renounced allegiance to ready-made codes. I again left my home town and went away to work

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580 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 out my salvation or destruction. I had to be free to study what had happened to me and to figure out a working plan for my life. Being self-supporting I was able to move about. Even now I do not like to recall the suffering of that period. For several years the world was a gray fog spinning about me. Every guide-post by which I had directed my course had been swept away. I had lost, not a lover but a universe. Intense curiosity awoke in me. Always I had re- pressed questionings because they led to criticism of the fundamentals of society. The brain cannot function if it is not allowed to question, and my intelligence was as weak as that of a new-born babe. I got a job reading in libraries, gathering material for a writer. Seven hours a day I put in on the assigned subjects and the rest of the time I read about anarchy, sex, votes-for-women, edu- cation, divorce, and similar topics. I read till my eyes puffed out and my head was splitting. I went to university lectures and also met soap-box orators. I gobbled ideas. Books were not enough. I went in for people, plunged headforemost into crowds. I lived in a tenement, worked in factories, and went to meetings and meetings and meet- ings. The sweat, the vulgarity, the commonness of humans in the bulk were both a horror and a pleasure to me. I experimented conscientiously with being "wicked," and was keenly disappointed to find so little excitement in sinning and so little sense or guilt. The driving emotion of that period of my life was curiosity. I was insatiable concerning every subject with which I came in contact. I even got jobs to investigate wages, prostitution, fire-escapes. Because I had known so little I wanted to know everything. I prowled the world like a cat on the housetop. Along with curiosity went pity. My own suffering had opened my eyes to the suffering all about me. Working conditions, living arrangements, the general social code seemed to me extraordinarily stupid. I discovered that I was not the only woman uncomfortable in the world. The office charwoman's cracked hands were dyed brown from washing filthy floors; growing girls lugged heavy babies about the playgrounds; prostitutes complained because they had to hand over their earnings to pimps; virtuous women shriveled at their desks; men got the good jobs. I flung my puny strength into the fight for social legis- lation. Occasionally the group with which I worked got some well-intentioned law passed, but immediately a new condition arose which was different but quite as intolerable. My reaction to the suffering which I could not assuage was similar to my attitude toward my broken heart; since I could do nothing about it, I would pass on. I reacted violently at that time against all established institutions, like marriage, spanking, meat diet, prisons, war, public schools, and our form of government. The mere fact that a condition existed was evidence to me that it was wrong. Yet as I watched the lives of those radicals who dared live their rebellion, the rebels appeared to get no more satisfaction than did the conformists and smug- ness seemed equally common among both extremes. I did some experimenting myself, and never have I found any completely satisfactory arrangement of financial, social, or personal relationships. The wise course now seems to me to decide what one wants, whether one can get it, whether or not it is worth the price that must be paid, and then to go after it. "Will it work?" is my moral code. Although I supported myself in the beginning because I thought it was my duty it has become a matter of course. I have no principles on the subject but I prefer money- earning to being dependent on a father, a lover, or a hus- band. Dependent women seem hampered even more than wage-earning ones. Likewise I hold no brief for or against marriage, having tried celibacy, free union, and marriage. I do not know what woman's job in life is, any more than I know what man's job is. And I feel it is rather silly to drag sex into the matter. My journalistic career, the fact that I have turned to account in printed word and cold cash the curiosity that drove me in my groping middle years, is the source of a certain pride and self-confidence which is the springboard for my future. Now, at forty-odd, I stand where the young man of thirty stands, with enough solid achievement behind me to nourish an ambition to do still bigger things. I see quite plainly that it is the fact of my being a woman which has delayed me fifteen years in reaching this point. It is nobody's fault; I was born in cir- cumstances which our generation has helped to destroy. The younger women seem able to get away to a start without so much muddling. The Hall-Mills Case in the Newspapers By SILAS BENT NOT since Harry Thaw killed Stanford White has the American press found crime news so much to its taste as the Hall-Mills mystery. Tons of white paper have been covered with trivial details about clothes, with personalities and highly colored descriptions of individual deportment in the courtroom. Somerville, N. J., is by journalistic consent the news center of the world. The New York Times has already devoted to the trial (which is by no means com- pleted as this is written) more words than Theodore Dreiser needed for the development of his monumental novel, "An American Tragedy." The others have not been idle. Enough words have been sent out of the Jersey village to fill nine volumes of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." A giant telegraph switchboard, incorporating 120 "po- sitions," has been rigged up in the basement of the court- house. The daily capacity by Morse code is half a million words, and the telephone company has imported eight addi- tional operators to help move the spoken load. A noteworthy aspect of this trial is the variety of "trained seals" who are helping to report it. The daughter and widower of Eleanor Mills, one of the murder victims, are signing stories for a syndicate, but do not write them. Mrs. Henry Stevens, wife of one of the defendants, is writing for Cyrus H. K. Curtis's papers, which have also assigned to the case Doro- thy Dix, their staff counselor and consoler of the lovelorn. The reverend fundamentalists, Billy Sunday and John Roach

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation r»si Straton, are moralizing for the public benefil on the .sudden death of their fellow-clergyman, Edward \V. Hall. For a time former Police Commissioner Enrighl contributed stodgily to the Hearst string; but the brunt of this work is now being done by Rita Weiman, a playwright; Louella Par- sons, a movie reviewer, and Damon Runyon, a sports writer. (Reporters are in the minority, apparently.) 'The Hearst papers are also represented by specialists on "heart inter- est," legal aspects, features, defense, prosecution, anil so on. The number of employees, counting photographers and mes- sengers, is seventeen. The News, which serves also its elder brother, the Chicago Tribune, has a stall' of nineteen on the job, anil is signing half a dozen names. The reams printed in the Times are ground out by anonymous dru The Hall-Mills case affords an excellent opportunity to observe the methods and practices of metropolitan news- papers. I have measured the space given to news and pic- tures of the trial in three representative journals: the Times, which advertises that its circulation is "among intel- ligent, thinking, substantial persons, a quality of readers not equaled by any other newspaper"; William Randolph Hearst's American; and New York's most widely read tab- loid, the Daily News. These three have a combined average morning circulation of more than a million and three-quar- ters, and they are not overlapping circulations. A tabulation of the three for twenty days (including three Sabbaths, Armistice Day, and one suspension on account of a witness's illness, when no court sessions were held) shows the follow- ing results in column inches for news and illustrations, and in total number of words: News Pictures Words Times 4,893 290.5 338,000 American 4,656.5 1,903 232,800 News 2,991.5 2,138.5 149,000 The American ran second to its picture paper competitor in the space accorded to photographs, drawings, and maps, and second to the Times in the number of column inches devoted to news. The Times used fine type plentifully, and squeezed 'n more words to the column inch than any of its com- petitors. The News was chosen for this examination in- stead of the competing tabloid picture paper, Hearst's Daily Mirror, because the Mirror, having turned up the case, and having gathered practically all the evidence on which the prosecution relied, had the inside track. The News plunged knee-deep into the story with unblushing gusto; both the Times and the American honored it with editorial clarifica- tion—or justification. "It is to the public interest," said the Times, in a dignified half-column editorial, "and not merely because it is a 'celebrated case,' that there should be a full report in the newspapers of the trial of Mrs. Hall and her brothers. . . . His [Special Prosecutor Simpson's] inquiry- was conducted with all the help he could get from the press, because it was Mr. Simpson's theory that publicity might encourage witnesses to come forward." And so on. (The Mirror had found the witnesses.) The American came out flatly: "If ever publicity was warranted, it is here. Human interest is instinctively keen over money, sex, and religion." Arthur Brisbane, in his signed first-page editorial column, saw no need of defending the journalistic ethics involved. "This horrible case," said he, "will again remind men that whoever stirs up jealousy stirs up danger." The Times ran no first-page head more than three col- umns wide, but used eight-column streamers inside. The tabloid ran a streamer across the lop of its I'irst page every- day, whether or not there was any D( did the Ameri- can, except that the streamer uetimes only six umns wide. After the Armistice Day interlude the Times led Page One with a sympathetic forecast of the defense, although there were still seven days to come of testimony for the ■ution. The first object of attack, the i said, would be a calling-card found at the clergyman's feet. bearing a finger-print identified by Stale witm Willie Stevens's. The Times spoke of the finger-print as a "black smudge, a vague and partly obliterated mark." The News devoted less than one hundred words to the testimony of Philip A. Payne, managing editor of the Mirror, who took the stand for the prosecution and who was responsible for damaging its rival's circulation and prestige. It is impossible to accord the palm for thrilling narra- tive to any one of the three papers I have been studying. Take your choice, for example, of these selections from the news of a single day, the day an effigy of Mrs. Mills's, head was exhibited: From the Daily News: Mrs. Hall went to a matinee yesterday. The rich widow who is battling for her life . . . attended a hideous exhibition staged for her benefit. . . . But she could not look at it. Her brothers looked. The show fascinated them. From the American: Ah, yes, this Mrs. Frances Noel Stevens Hall is human, after all. . . . Human — and a woman! She showed it yesterday afternoon. The proud, stoical front she has been presenting to the world as she sits in the little chapel-like courtroom in Som- erville . . . was shaken by a distinct shudder. From the Times: Shudders passed along the rows of spectators as the doctor marked in red crayon the entry point of the bullets, or in a sweeping motion of the crayon showed how the choir singer's throat had been cut. . . . Mrs. Frances Stevens Hall had shot a second's glance at the exhibit and had averted her eyes. When it was placed on the witness stand railing, directly in her line of vision, she reached quickly into her pocketbook and began to examine the documents. She dropped coins, one by one, into the black leather purse; she looked fixedly at the back of the room, then her eyes traveled to one of the small galleries. She seemed to be counting the spectators. The tabloids are reviving an obsolescent form of jour- nalistic activity. In the days of the Guldensuppe case, for instance, the Times and World and Sun did their own inves- tigating, and murder mysteries were solved. How much real newspaper work was done on the Elwell murder mys- tery? It remained unsolved. The standard-sized news- papers appear now to be too lazy or too respectable for that sort of thing. They wait for a "privilege of publi- cation." They wait for dunderhcaded policemen to do the work, and apparently the work aoesn't get done. Perhaps the despised and irrepressible tabloid has more to its credit than we suspected. Whether right or wrong in its facts, the Mirror followed a long journalistic tradition. If the ac- cused were innocent, they should have been cleared four years ago; that the case came so late to trial is due not only to the defects of "Jersey justice" but to the change in the press.

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582 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 ; fey \ \\n / /// — 6j/ Harry S. Bressler Jefferson's Disciples— 1 926 Model

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 583 DENVER WELCOMES QUEEN MARIE L GIVEN GREAT OVATION BY CITY THRONGS Auditorium Is Filled j At Reception for Sovereign visitors Delighted en, MwitF.srr Miimv , B ONi Denver 'j) ira*l« Kuv II It i ila I* kill rHw ih* He tho** ft**. TW Sap)ft«-«r ar* Nitrrn. hut alao GOOK-REFUSES TO TELL WHAT QUEEN I ATE FOR BREAKFAST ide- in tbe Queen. ■ the same hearty weit- :.-.o Denver baj always given the guests it il ihji lime it was tempered by a doc regard for the reg.il position of the viiltor. Colorado sunihine awoke lb« Of twelvo can in whxh ihe. hi i ■ on. Prince d the o'.aers of their numerous I ■ from Seov.er, Colo, whtre it bad stood on a siding since 'J o'clock after the run from Carper, Wyo. Marie, ifl •carttral. and hj(* hydrophobia. So. ■ ■ hrr» and Ibtn, ttirj r*trtv-atp -die h«aUn{ w*rk.~ In Hyewo dMri.l rr- ••ecUor. hand an-i the q r*« »rro rMitded op and M1W ■ >»ma 'triple. Ihlrt) Duddhkt pri«i» '■(11.-1411:14. Culiim, Ihe original »Ur»lfi( iJ-ttm uith no milk f.jr Iwr an*»nt mo- f pilOfOSTaahet TTia • • rah Ia m hla S:«*j Tl»r >cd happll). In Oikac". wtirn a fpnrral tiaa**^ Dart* [or* a fill* New* irt.ler. iml •Wn a blnb b rrrordrd ti-ev ur. 'Hen rwifi another C'hi- earo Ainrrtraii mdrr." Ttul ex- ^JTofT"'" rlilr.t mhy Hriffll'l Cblear* Arotrl ran'* rlrtoUfion at 3 ernta a copy ei- (Tom to Page 2 — Col 3.) ~u my fraelw. lo u,, ^r.^, TO f?U/>f A/VIA >S GLQRSOUS QUEEN: ALL DENVER WILL CELEBRATE EIGHTH ARMISTICE ANNIVERSARY Monster- Parade to Feature Day— City to Observe General Holiday and Period of Silence To Honor War Dead. P0A entering our country, with outstretched arms r.nil . I, you avrved for tor our affecttott and friendship. In the short time you hate "jern among us you hate ;c.in all of this an Men make kings and qucenx and rulers, but only God Himself makes real men and women, and God must have si*-'rd at lla handiwork u-hen He created you. ,\o man or woman, no king or queen, or potentate, has created such an enthusiastic and spontaneous wove of lore and respect in the I'mted States as you hare. }'0U are the American ideal of tchat a queen should he — beautiful, *graeiouK, rC' nponsice. intelligent and loving— and so Colorado and the great Rocky Mountain regions welcome you today to their territory uith tf lasting satisfaction and advantage to both our great nations. ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ path mm lio'rt .Tar nuw and n ive m*d' Jut rv .1 ihf no«»t.r« r Denrer will celebrate, Thursday, the eighth anniversary or the armistice which ended the World wax. The boy* who came back will parade in celebration of the trace which stilled the guns and stopped the slaughter The whole city will pay tribute to the heroes who were left "over there'' — victim; of the blood Inst of tbe gods of war. Lvfl\*r i* to he ih" main L, heroism wh FIFTEEN CMS-DREW DIB AS TORNADO LEVEES SCHOOL CORONERS JURY BRANDS ROSSI WIFE MURDERER 'Shot Her Five Times as ' She Begged for Mercy, Attorney Says. . lUrSdn* "ill IV ■> liu n, rubitc oKice*. ■ i to Page 8— CoL 4.) Twister Cuts. 500-Yard'- Wide Path Thru Small Town in Maryland. L& Plata, Md., Nov. 10.— (By Associated Press.)— This little town of 500 souls stooped in sor- row Wednesday to take cp .".gain the usnaJly placid threads of its existence, which were sheared , suddenly Tuesday afternoon by: the wrath of a tornado that) wreaked havoc and along- a path at tunes 600 yards. wide thru a portion of southern Maryland, killing fifteen and in- juring two score, mostly school children, here, and severely ih- iouriern miles northeast of here. ■ .'f 4)114/5. Tk*1 i M*r«httU rturr (Turn to Page 2 — poL 14 ■>M.h r-mdudrd-*!!- tn- qu.-t I., 1- M - death m the rrault - ha;id »Kh iJiuidrr&uii Intent DENVER PLANE SETS NEW ALTITUDE MARK ■ ■ PK1N. rttFTTY As h AIKY BOOK LAD1 ■ ■ / . ■ 0ffion*!Iy ■ ; impressions of her Denver visit aad of those ■ n I ■ As tho qnecn wjitas her vmd and brilliant ar'.i Port receives them thru the North America Newspaper / They are tin DC directly from I her ; the la not permitted by royal custom to give interviews ».nd conaeqnently her Post-Allianc* articlea are of Lncalcttlablf in ■ . .. ■..'■■■■ ...■ read hr.r uapre . Jeffersonism in Denver: Democracy Receives a Queen

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584 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 Toward the Arctic Ocean By LEWIS S. GANNETT [This is the last of a series of three articles describing the author's trip across Mongolia from the Chinese to the Trans-Siberian Railway.] THREE days were usually needed to obtain permission to leave Mongolia, but Nikiforoff, the Russian Consul, was eager to be rid of a troublesome visitor, and sent his secre- tary with me to make the rounds of the magnificent collec- tion of secret-service, passport, and police departments with which the would-be modern Mongols toy. Cars started for Siberia, so read the announcement in the Russian news- paper of Urga, every Saturday at nine. At 9:30 a boy came to inquire whether I really wanted to leave that day. They v ould rather, he said, wait until Monday. I explained that I wanted to catch the weekly Trans-Siberian express on Wednesday. The boy took the message; an hour later he returned to say that the ice on the rivers was breaking, and it was doubtful whether we could make the Wednesday train anyway. I replied that I was more than ever con- vinced that we had better start at once and be sure of the next week's train. And finally, after long discussions, it was so agreed. The nine o'clock car called for me at half past two. The chauffeur, Mikhail Vassilievich, was an American-type lad, clever with his hands and quick at in- vention; the other passengers were his sister, returning to Moscow; Bajin, a merchant, and a peasant who lived eighty versts from Urga. None of them spoke any West- ern language but Russian. Down the side-valleys into Urga thousands of ox-carts were pouring — long caravans of two or three hundred, each cart loaded with a huge section of tree-trunk, or with chunks of charcoal, the last two or three with hay to feed the oxen on the long trek from the forest to the city. The Holy Mountain across the river is tree-covered with the only trees for forty miles, but the wood of the sacred moun- tain may not be cut. Until dark we tugged up through one rolling bare valley after another, lifeless except for a single covey of ptarmigans. The brown sweep of the hills reminded one of those magnificent pictures of more West- ern hills in "Grass." We crossed three passes before dark, always to find new mountains opening before us. The road was a camel-track, sometimes barely wide enough for a car, sometimes broadening hundreds of yards wide across the meadows where camels and ox-carts had sought fresh routes in place of trodden mire. Sometimes it disappeared in hard hummocky meadows or hillsides of jagged rocks. The driver, who had never been over the route before, kept his eyes glued on the ruts of a previous car. It was nine o'clock when we came to a river — and the tracks were lost. The ice was broken; melting snow had swollen the current. Passengers piled out; we hunted the valley up and down for a possible ford, or for tracks of the preceding car. But it had done as we — crawled to the edge of the river at a score of points, and then backed out. At one point the ice seemed safe; our peasant-passenger tried it — and broke through, above his waist in ice-water. It was midnight before we finally found automobile tracks that entered the river; we tested the depth with a stick, slipped gently into the stream, and roared safely up the opposite bank with a cheer. And it was after midnight when we routed out the Chinese keepers of a lonely moun- tain inn and had a belated supper. We rose at four the next morning, and were off soon after five, with tea and bread inside us. About ten we came to the home of our peasant-passenger, a lone pioneer log cabin away up in one of the high Mongolian valleys. He had hauled his wood thirty miles, built his own house and barns, and was enormously proud of his work. Even his furniture was home-made, except for an American Singer sewing machine! He gave us fresh boiled eggs, and fresh milk, and soft home-made bread, baked from his own wheat flour. There are scores of such Russian frontiersmen push- ing their way into Northern Mongolia, and a few Chinese farmers; but the Mongols, desperately afraid that their grazing-land will be lost, oust them on any excuse. The mountains lay cold and bare to the south but warmly birch-wooded on the northern slopes. We ran smoothly from one valley to another, then down to the ford of the Khara-gol River. But the ice was out at the edges and the water flowing swiftly. A lone Mongol on horseback made his way through the water and across the ice, but there was no hope for a heavy car. We backed off and tried again, and again. But the spring warmth was against us, and the black water turned us away. Twenty miles down- stream, the Mongol told us, was a wooden bridge — almost the only bridge in Mongolia. We found the bridge but could not get to it. One route after another across the soggy meadows proved impossible. The road for a mile short of the bridge was a canal of deep, soft, moving mud. We tried it once, and worked for an hour to back the car out of the slippery ooze. Deep ditches three feet wide, with swirling water, ran on either side of it, and shallow mud-lakes lay beyond these. Finally Bajin and I, prospecting on foot, worked out a route which lay across meadows part of which were under water but at least seemed snow-covered or grassy, not mere mud. The car maneuvered into position, attacked the course, ran half way smoothly, then stopped, up to the hubs in ice-water. There was nothing to do but push — not a living soul within twenty miles; not a service-station within three hundred. Bajin and I rolled our trousers to the knees, which was sometimes not enough, took off shoes and stockings, and for the next two hours waded among ice-cakes, adding our feeble man-power to the sturdy engine of the car. By mid- afternoon we were within a few yards of the bridge — with the swirling ditch still in front of us. We spent the rest of the afternoon tearing up a corduroy road and building a bridge across the ditch. Almost at sunset we rolled blithely across the river, and sped, at a perilous angle, along the edge of the mountain, across the valley, the road being deep in water; then turned north again, over more Alpine passes. I have seldom seen a lovelier sunset than that night, the sky's fire reflected from a thousand pools in the river-bottom — but the chauffeur, who knew that the road lay through those flaming pools, was utterly unmoved when I pointed to the reflections.

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 585 Four more rivers we crossed the next day. The ice was gone from the first, and the stream was too deep for a Dodge unaided. We unlashed the bags from the running- boards and piled them high inside the car, took out the carbureter, greased the rest of the engine, and hired two horses to haul us through. The second river we boldly forded. The third, alter long hesitations and testings, we crossed on the ice — safely. The fourth, the Ura, was a longer story. The ice was out and the river ran free along both shores, but the center ice seemed solid. From the near shore the Mongols had built a log bridge out to the solid ice; on the north side the ice came so close to the sloping shore that it seemed safe. We reinforced the log bridge; the car gently slid across it, raced across the ice for the far shore, when — crack! the Dodge plunged through, whirred a moment, and lapsed into discouraging silence. And there it sat, in the river above the hubs, water flowing through the bottoms of both my bags. For- tunately, we were close to a Mongol village, and they had a boat. We were ferried to dry land; again we rolled up our trousers and waded in; we hitched a do/en ropes to the car, and Mongols, Russians, and American slowly hauled the car out of the river and up on the sand. Toward evening I saw mountain-peaks to the north which looked blue instead of brown; and suddenly I be- came aware that their skylines were fuzzy, like the sky- lines of the wooded iin.'ui,.*.a'"s at home. The ranges flat- tened out and the country softened. Aspens, birches, and pines mingled with one another — occasionally we ac- tually ran through forest, as one never does in lowland China or in high Mongolia. We passed tiny villages of Russian pioneers — pushing into the wilderness, build- ing their own houses, and con- triving their own machinery, self-de- pendent and re- sourceful — the Americans of the next century. That third night we reached Troit- skosavsk, the fron- tier town, and slept, with an army of cockroaches, in a Russian inn. Customs offi- cials cannot be hur- ried. It was easy A pro-Russian Mongolian poster showing England reaching over the Himalayas, knife and telegraph in hand to ensnare and threaten Tibet; the Chinese colonizer enters from the East; Mongolia tends her sheep; and Red Russia stands guard. enough to get out of Mongolia, but it took most of a day to get into Russia. Every parcel and paper was pried into. With some difficulty I conveyed the idea that 1 still hoped to catch the weekly train next afternoon, and at length we set out again. .More rolling birch-and-pine country that evening, ami more deep sand. It seemed strange but friendly I lonal bits of plowed land and ■ fences. Toward midnight, just short of the great Sell River, we roused a peasant village and found a family willing to take us in for the night and give us tea. The air struck one in the face as the door opened— it must have been carefully preserved all winter and eleven people were more or less asleep on the floor, including a sick baby; but when I attempted casually to lea; the door and keep it open for a minute they came to me and pointed out that the malinka was ailing and must not sutler fresh air. I slept in the car, and got four and a half hour's better sleep than 1 had had since Urga. Mongol huts have one advantage over Russian — they leak air. The great Selenga River lay ahead, a big navigable stream, to be crossed twice. But the Selenga ice was stronger than we knew. It had broken a bit at the edges, but log bridges had been laid, and we were past the first crossing before six. We passed Selenginsk — a little one- story town dominated by two huge green-roofed, blue- bulbed churches — and then wan- dered miles out of our course. But finally we came upon the new road which marks the route of the future Trans-Mon- golian Railroad, and while it was soft and unfinished, most of the lesser bridges had been built and were usable. Wind drove the loose sand into our faces, but we were covering the miles. Our long detour and the bad roads, however, had cost us so much gas that the chauffeur was doubtful whether we could get through. At 1:30 we were only thirty versts from the goal, the meter showed one and a half gallons of gas, and we stopped to eat. Five miles short of the rail- road the meter showed zero, but the car puffed on, and we caught the

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586 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 weekly train with half an hour to spare! And that is the route over which some say Russia ships great quantities of munitions to her friends in China! Six days crossing the snowy plains of Siberia — endless, half-cultivated, still in the log-cabin stage, but looking for- ward to a boundless future with a boundless self-confidence. Siberia is American in its spaciousness, its optimism, its faith in its future. Four days in Moscow, where Henry Ford and Lenin are enshrined as twin gods, where a cult of American mechanism is arising, along with new skyscrapers, electric sky-signs, and even talk of a subway, and mingles its familiar jargon with the lingo of communist ideals. Two more days, and I was back in Western Europe, where frontiers huddle on frontiers, where men bathe and talk familiar languages and wear familiar clothes — a land achingly nostalgic, living on memories of the good old days before the war, praying for restoration, reconstruc- tion, rebuilding, always looking backward. A continent where the great races of the nineteenth century do not know that their moment of history is done. China still slumbers, perhaps — but she has never lost faith in herself, and today, with the weapons of the West in hand, retains her ancient pride in the power of her four hundred million citizens; Mongolia is an interlude, a dy- ing race that once ravaged a continent awakening, as all Asia will awaken, and rubbing its eyes in a new dawn; Russia is a bridge between East and West, enormous, a young people four times as numerous as America was a half century ago and as sure of an infinitely expanding future — and the little crowded countries that have made history on that Western plain of Europe, blinking behind their customs frontiers and separate armies and diplo- matic staffs and mutual hates and jealousies, seem pitiful, lost, unimportant in comparison with these mighty peoples. China, Russia, America — these are nations of the future. They are none of them meek, but they will inherit the earth. Gasless America By STUART CHASE OUR culture complex — as the anthropologists say — is changing, nay, has changed. While England and Ger- many still remain coal civilizations, the United States has become, with unheard-of rapidity, a gasoline civilization. The acid test of a culture complex is the nursery. In Amer- ican nurseries the choo-choo gathers dust on the topmost shelf while the red racer holds the position of honor on the floor. Little Archie can tell you on the nail the make of every car that passes him. The grocer boy will call it a day any time to help you change a tire. Where is the urchin who has not mastered the calisthenics of the traffic cop? Of a Sunday, in front of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Pittsburgh one may behold an impressive ceremony. One by one, all day long, motor cars draw up before the church door. A priest sprinkles each with holy water and pastes upon the car a seal which insures auto- mobile, driver, and passengers the protection of St. Christopher, lately appointed the patron saint of motor cars. Ten years ago the consumption of gasoline in the United States was 300 million barrels; today it is 800 million bar- rels. Ten years ago there were two million cars in the coun- try; today there are over twenty million. It is gasoline which has girdled the country with 300,000 miles of mag- nificent highways; decreased distances between communities as no other form of transportation has ever done ; and with the shrinkage, stamped identical habit patterns upon the citizens of Boston, New York, Atlanta, New Orleans, Kan- sas City, Salt Lake, Los Angeles, and Seattle. It is gasoline which now propels, in motor trucks, more gross tonnage of freight than the railroads move. The Florida boom would have been unthinkable without gasoline. In the last few years has appeared the strange phenomenon of gasoline gipsies — uncounted thousands of families on the march from one automobile camping ground to the next, the coun- try over. It is gasoline which has made possible the mass production of week-ends — the synthetic gin is only a by- product— which has made the reclamation of abandoned farmhouses by city folks a major industry; which has quad- rupled the radius between the skilled worker's home and his job; which has built golf courses and demoralized the work- ing schedules — to say nothing of the pantaloons — of practi- cally the entire business world above $7,500 a year; which has in the guise of the tractor revolutionized farm;"g meth- ods; which has created the road house, the night club, put the hot-dog industry on its feet, added stupendous efficiency to the art of banditry. No saxophone blows without a faint whiff of gasoline behind it; no silver screen can flicker with- out its parking lines outside. It is gasoline, not cosmetics, which has given the flapper her final polish, and made the boy friend what he is. Which brings us to the folkways of courtship. No longer do we love by dim gaslight but by dimmed headlights — and gasoline. Cruise around the outskirts of any city or town on a summer night and note the parked and silent mon- sters up every lane, before every vista where moonlight sparkles on the water; tail lights glowing, and kisses warm above the steering wheel. Dr. Watson holds, not without some show of reason, that what chiefly marks off man from the other animals are language habits. The influence of gasoline on the American language is profound. A whole new dialect of slang has been created, much of which in due time will force its way into accredited forms of speech. Coming down Tuckerman's Ravine on Mount Washington the other day, we overtook a girl in riding breeches, resting on a rock. "Pretty stiff drop," said we, obeying the courtesies of mountain trails. "Tough on the brake bands," said she with equal courtesy. "Step on it, kid"; "park your hat here"; "I've been goin' it on high for a month"; "aw, put it in reverse"; "a regular self-starter"; "fliwered out"; "throwing the Rolls Royce"; "you've got water in your mixture"; "a six-cylinder guy." Gasoline will start the next war; gasoline in airplanes carrying poison gas will win the next war — or end the career of homo sapiens — it is not quite clear which. And now comes this aggregation of flat tires, the Fed- eral Oil Conservation Board, and wants to conclude it all by giving us only six more years of gasoline production at the

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 587 present rate in America. The threat is grotesque, inconci able. A law must be rushed through Congress prohibiting it. From the roar of the gusher and the shrieks of the spec- tators to the last flying explosion in the muffler, gasoline runs — the heart's blood of the nation. Six years and then a gasless America! The mind reels at the contemplation of it. What? No taxis, traffic cops, Dixie highways, one-way streets, better Buicks, Standard Oil companies, filling sta- tions, schoolgirl complexion billboards, airplanes, football stadia (for how could they be filled?), five-ton trucks, Klaxon horns, 25,000 new gravis a year, Saturday Evening Post advertising, Fifth Avenue buses, road maps, dash-board architecture, lubricating oils, four-wheel brakes, Diesel en- gines, instalment selling, "Punkville -1 miles, Goodrich Tires," Tumble Inns, submarines, Ye Okie Antique Shoppes, gunmen in Packards, back-seat driving, back-seat kisses? America without gas is a pipe without tobacco, a hearth without a fire, a suit without trousers. . . . Death rather! yThe^ New Generation) By MATHER A. ABBOTT [An address delivered by the headmaster of Lawrencc- rille School before the Rotary Club of Trenton, New Jersey, on Armistice Day, 1926.] AS I looked over my boys this morning, when we were celebrating Armistice Day in chapel, I said to myself: "The war is an ever-present evil with me. I suffered so much during my three years in the navy — we all suffered so much — that we can never forget it. But not one of these fellows knows anything about it. The oldest boys were only ten years old when the Armistice was signed." Then I saw a picture. I saw a picture of myself at eighteen, and the world as it was then, and a picture of this maelstrom of a world in which our boys are now placed. Think of it, and remember your youth. In the last eight years we have had : 1. Prohibition and all it entails. 2. The ubiquitous automobile. 3. The cheap theater, especially the movies, with its sex problems. 4. The absence of parental control. 5. The ignoring of religion. 6. The emancipation of womanhood, combined with the modern dance. There are just six things. Now, when we were eighteen, liquor was hardly thought of. We knew there were certain boys that used to drink and we did not often associate with them. As for carrying a pocket flask, it was practically un- known. When we took a girl out for a drive, we had to hire a one-horse rig and we were all properly chaperoned and looked after. We had no cheap theaters and no movies. Our parents were addressed as "sir" and "ma'am," and their word was absolute law. God was an ever-present power, whom we held in deadly awe. Imagine our feelings if a lady, with a cigarette in her mouth and drinking a cocktail, should have shown herself at one of our dinner parties thirty years ago ! That sort of thing we relegated to certain streets which had red lights. And the modern dance I saw first in 1902, when I went up the Nile, in certain Ethiopian villages where the tomtom was no louder than the present- day drum ! Into this maelstrom the modern youth has come, knowing nothing else, and you and 1 and all the mi : this parental generation are absolutely responsible if youth is going to the devil. Hut it is i 1 have been in the business of teaching boys for thirty years. 1 have at present under my charge ~>b> boy lected from nearly every State, and 1 have never known a more truthful, clean-living, honorable set of young men. They are different from the boys of my youth as the sun is from the moon full of nonsense, full of passion, headstrong, mischief-loving, but live times as decent, as truthful, and as manly. Let me describe them to you: In the first place, their leading characteristic is that they must prove everything by trying it. They do not begin where we leave olT, as we want them to do; they must ro through every experience themselves. They take nothing for granted. They want facts, not camouflage. They can see the false through a ten-inch board. They have an almost devilish intuition — I say "devilish" because I have been caught so often! They will have nothing of what they call "bull" on the part of an older person. I would rather talk to five thousand people of your age than I would to my five hundred boys. I have to be so abominably careful that I can prove every word I say! Secondly, the absence of religious instruction in their youth. Unfortunately, the mothers are too busy to give the fireside and bedside talks that they used to give the little fellows, and the fathers are too busy in business even to tell them the truth about the sex problem. Now you cannot prove the other world and you cannot prove God, and the modern generation will not accept anything you cannot prove. So, though "the fear of God is the beginning of wis- dom," the modern generation is practically without it. Since the great fear which held us is absent, these boys, having the spiritual longings that all boys have, are restless. Unwilling to face the deep questions of life, they try to seek happiness in the material, and most of this desire that we hear so much of for a thrill, for breaking the law, and so on, comes from an unanswered longing within, which they think they are going to satisfy with material things, only to find that the material things cannot satisfy. So these lurid tales we hear are usually caused, not by any evil in the boy or girl, but by the untrammeled pursuit of truth which is so evident in all the young of our generation. They want to realize everything and, of course, you and I, in our maturity, know that very few things in this world can be realized. In this connection, I wish to use a place nearby as an illustra- tion. This town has suddenly become notorious, but I be- lieve there are 20,000 people in it who are not notorious, who are living lives that are decent and straight and true. But the news of a certain family in the town blackens every paper every morning. So it is with these stories of the youth of today. They are frightful stories, absolutely true, most likely, but I do not believe that 10 per cent of our youth could be thus characterized. If we looked upon the notorious happening in that town as the rule, where would America be going? But it is the great exception. So with these lurid stories; they, too, are the great exceptions. Now, lastly, the equalization of the sexes: When you and I were boys, woman was on a pedestal; we worshiped her. There was pursuit; there was mystery; there was worship. Did we worship that which was true or that which was false? The worship has gone, disappeared, and I am told that modesty, too, has gone. Perhaps it has, but we are getting at facts ; we are getting at companionship ; we are

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588 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 getting at the truth. The double standard has vanished. Of course, there are terrific calamities, terrific failures, but out of them there is going to come something remarkable. To sum up, therefore, what do I find? First, a truth- lover. Second, a word of honor that is never broken. Third, a reasonable being that will not take a rule as final until it is approved. Fourth, and most astonishing, on the whole, a clean-minded individual. And then — what will always hap- pen where God is not regarded as supreme, what has hap- pened throughout history where a nation has given up its God — a restlessness that is always unaccountable, a dissatis- faction of mind which makes the youth probe into things we never thought of going into, which we took on faith. Also, many failures, many disasters, as there always are in a great upheaval, where freedom gets confounded with license. No, gentlemen, the youth of the present generation, as far as I know, and I know five hundred of them very intimately, are on the way to great discoveries, have made a step toward happiness and a step toward self-government far ahead of anything we had in our youth. They need very careful handling. They need all the love and affection that a man can give them, and they are going to bring this old world of ours one step nearer heaven in the end. In the Driftway THE death of Leonid Krassin of pernicious anemia in London last week sent a pang of regret through the Drifter's breast. He recalled Krassin's first appearance in London as a Soviet envoy when the Drifter, too, happened to be sojourning in London. Krassin was in looks anything but the typical Bolshevik. Quiet, reserved, unassuming, and obviously in delicate health, he seemed the student and teacher. Yet many people then, as now, expected that be- cause he was a Bolshevik he must have the mustachios of a pirate, long, flowing and unkempt hair, a bomb in one hand and a dirk in the other. Instead, he was a modest, accessi- ble diplomat who differed in no wise in his personal appear- ance from the conventional Russian gentleman. * * # ■>:■ # NATURALLY Mr. Krassin's first appearance in London was not altogether easy nor without uncomfortable happenings, even beyond the nasty editorials in the con- servative press. But sometimes there were rays of light and little experiences which greatly smoothed the road for this representative of the Soviet. Thus, the Drifter recalls Kras- sin's experience when he undertook to give a dinner to which he invited some of the men most prominent in British public life, including Lloyd George. He was at first at a loss to know where to give the dinner, but finally decided to try one of the great hotels in the Strand. He interviewed the maitre d'hotel with distinct uneasiness. He explained that he wished to give a large dinner party, but desired to have it understood in advance that if the hotel agreed to take the dinner it would give its word to live up to its agree- ment and to let nothing interfere. The puzzled maitre d'hotel, piqued, declared that his hotel did not break its word. "Wait a minute," said Krassin, "you do not know who I am. I am the Bolshevik envoy, Krassin. I do not wish you to say you will serve me and then have your managing director tell me three days before the dinner that you cannot serve Bolsheviks." The maitre d'hotel smiled skeptically. "You are not Krassin?" "I am," replied the envoy, and reinforced his statement with his passport and other official documents. The maitre d'hotel looked at them and turned upon Krassin. "Do you mean to say that you wish this hotel to serve a dinner for youl Well, Mr. Krassin, I wish you to know that I shall consider it the greatest honor I have ever had." ***** DESPITE this welcome Krassin felt uneasy until the repast was over. Afterwards he told the Drifter that never had he eaten so fine a dinner, and never had he dreamed that a dinner could be so perfectly served. "The most interesting thing about it," he added, "was that we had a new set of waiters for every course. Later I asked the maitre d'hotel why that was. He laughed and said 'So many of them begged the privilege of serving you that I had to compromise by letting a new crew serve each course!' " And then comes the most remarkable part of it. Mr. Krassin confided to the Drifter that he could not prevail upon a single waiter to accept a tip ! There is no doubt in the Drifter's mind that that incident brightened life for Krassin for many a day and offset some of the coldness he encountered when he was first received as a diplomat and people did not know whether to regard him as a wild animal or an escaped convict. If what has since been widely re- ported is true, Krassin steadily made his way wherever he went, because of his ability and his modesty and his quiet devotion to his job. And that is also the belief of his acquaintance, The Drifter Correspondence In Defense of Fascism To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Able and efficient government can never be attained through the head nor through the heart, but only through the hide. Even your distant proteges in Russia have been compelled to see the wisdom thereof, and, chop as much logic as you will, you cannot disprove it. Force, brute force, is the one and only method toward efficacious government. How can you dare to assert that Fascism and its philosophy are inferior to our much-mooted democracy and liberty? Pray, where is that democracy, that liberty? In Prohibition, perhaps, or the Teapot Dome, or the crookedest Cabinet in the history of the American Presidency? By what heavenly sign has the divine right of the majority been established? Why the right of the majority any more than the similar right of kings? It is evident (to me, at least) that our theory of govern- ment is fallacious as well as inefficient. We rule, not by the ablest, but by the most popular. At election time it is not the man who can best fulfil the desires of the voters, but the man who spends the most money in advertising, who brays the loudest, that wins. The record of Congress scarcely dis- plays any signs of intelligence, let alone of brilliance. Granted that free speech is denied in Italy — what good does it do us here? Has it helped with Prohibition? Has it pre- vented such outbreaks of delirium as were witnessed in Tennes- see and, more recently, in Boston during the Mencken-Mercury altercation? It is much like having an expensive automobile when you haven't the money to buy gasoline. In brief, Fascism places the needs of the nation above all — above the individual, above the group, above the interests of either capital or labor. When, in 1921, all industry, all pro- duction was at a standstill in Italy, because of the bickerings of the laborers and the manufacturers, the Fascists, the middle class of Italy, rose and forced the workers to work and the capitalists to pay. Then why this outburst? New York, November 12 Victor Zorin

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation That Glorious Word Damn To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your symposium on profanity is of groat Once Lord Tennyson discanted to me at great length on the silliness of profanity — its "feebly-forcefulness," etc. Then, after a silence of half a minute, or more, his whole face lit up and he exclaimed enthusiastically: "But that word "Damn" is a fam- ous word, is'nt it? Often, nothing else can take its place, or express the exact shade of your feeling"! Columbia, S. C, November IS Y. S. And What About Europe? To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Have you ever considered the tremendous target offered by the City of New York to an enemy's attack'.' It would be impossible to miss such a mark. It is close to the sea: it is almost as high and wide as a mountain; and it is as destructible, for modern artillery, as a glass house, or a china shop. A single first-class enemy ship could destroy the city on Manhattan Island, in half an hour, from a distance of twenty miles. Each high-explosive shell would pass clean through the skyscrapers, and blow them into ruins of twisted steel and shat- tered concrete; and every shot would cost us thousands of lives and millions of dollars. Fire would complete the work of destruction. The City of New York is the heart of America, and should be defended, as men defend their own heai-ts. The approach of an enemy by sea or by air should be made impossible. An attack from the air, with the use of poison gas, might be even more disastrous than a bombardment. America should not disarm. America should double her armaments by sea and by air. She should have a navy and air forces capable of stop- ping the combined fleets of Europe in mid-Atlantic. Chicago, October 26 Bertrand Shadwell Mr. Bruce Spills To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: In an interview obtained recently by the New York Evening Enquirer, W. P. Bruce, a geologist of Boston, spills the beans. Mr. Bruce has been seeing Venezuela, and what he has seen puts Mr. Bruce fearfully in the dumps. Was Mr. Bruce moved by the sardonic mischief-making of those who put up innumerable monuments to Simon Bolivar and put down with iron heels the consequences of Bolivar's passion? Was he stirred by the realization that Venezuela through all the days of Gomez's dictatorship has been suffering an unending Santa Marta? No, it is oil that afflicts Mr. Bruce so pro- foundly— oil and the bad state of health of that humanitarian, Juan Vicente Gomez. Here are Mr. Bruce's own words: Yes, General Gomez is failing in health, and I fear Is fail- ing fast. It is said that he has Bright's disease, or nephritis, and you know what that means. However, credit must be given him for the way he has developed Venezuela's natural resources, especially her oil fields. What will happen down there if he should happen to pass out, the future only knows. I rather dread to think about it, because there is no one quali- fied at the present time to step into his shoes. Just how capital views the situation, I am really at a loss to understand, be- cause all the oil concessions have been granted by the Chief Executive himself, and therefore are illegal under the laws of Venezuela, and will necessarily be subject to future revision. Here is a problem confronting not only American capital in- vested there, but British as well. I really see nothing but chaos ahead. It is perhaps bad manners, but what makes Mr. Bruce sad gives us uncommon joy. Imperialistic capital in Venezuela is coming to an impasse, and it is aware of the fact. It is con- and brought to . "AH the oil ei i have been granted by the Chief Executive, and therefi under tin- laws of Venezuela, ami will necessarily be subj revision." Indeed, they will be, Mr. Bruce And other things will be subj,',- tic change. And on that purgative day Simon Bolivar will return to i to a new birth! Brooklyn, N. )., On. Maim in Feinstein, English Secretary. nezuelan nion Encouragement To the Editor of Tin; Nation: SIR: I have read "Music and the External World" to a number of visitors; it always provokes discussion, and it is in- teresting to see just where the individual begins to remonstrate. I hope B. II. Ilaggin will continue. Went Medford, Mass., November 1 !t E. II. Contributors to This Issue Silas BENT was formerly associate editor of the Nati II us in ess. Lewis S. Gannett, associate editor of The Nation, spent last winter in the Orient. Stuart CHASE is the author of "The Tragedy of Waste." Mather A. Abbott is headmaster of the Lawrenceville School. Rene Lalou, author of "Contemporary Literature in France," is engaged upon a study of Paul Valery to be published soon in Paris. Abbe Niles, coeditor with W. C. Handy of "Blues," has made a special study of Negro folk-music. Eliseo Vivas was the author of the anonymous article, The Unknown Critic, which closed the Critic's series in The Nation two years ago. Mary Austin, author of "The American Rhythm" and many other books, now lives in Santa Fe. Keith Hutchison is the author of "Labor in Politics." Harold J. Laski, of the London School of Economics, is the author of "The Grammar of Politics." Donald Douglas is the author of "The Grand Inquisitor." R. L. Burgess is on the staff of the San Jose News, San Jose, California. John Haynes Holmes is pastor of the Community Church of New York. Mortimer J. Adler is a member of the department of psy- chology, Columbia University. William MacDonald is the author of "A New Constitu- tion for a New America." J. A. Hobson, the noted British economist, is a frequent contributor to The Nation. Alice Beal Parsons is the author of "Woman's Dilemma." Paul Blanshard is a trade-union organizer and author of "Outline of the British Labor Movement." Gerald Carson is a New York business man and literary critic. Carleton Beals is the author of "Mexico — an Interpreta- tion." R. F. Dibble's most recent biography is "Mohammed." Sidney R. Packard is a member of the department of his- tory, Smith College. B. H. Haggin, a musician of New York, is contributing a series of articles to The Nation. Tlie author of Why I Earn My Own Living is a well-known magazine writer.

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International Relations Section The British Commonwealth of Nations WE print below the opening sections of the report of the Inter-Imperial Relations Committee of the Im- perial Conference, issued November 19, as cabled to the New York Times. I. — Introduction We were appointed at a meeting of the Imperial Con- ference, October 25, 1926, to investigate all questions on the agenda affecting inter-imperial relations. Our discussions on these questions have been long and intricate. We found on examination that they involved con- siderations of fundamental principles affecting the relations of the various parts of the British Empire inter se as well as the relations of each part to foreign countries. For such an examination the time at our disposal has been all too short, yet we hope that we may have laid a foundation on which subsequent conferences may build. II. — Status ok Great Britain and the Dominions The committee are of the opinion that nothing would be gained by attempting to lay down a constitution for the British Empire. Its widely scattered parts have very different char- acteristics, very differe't histories, and are at very different stages of evolution, while considered as a whole it defies classi- fication and bears no real resemblance to any other political organization which now exists or has ever yet been tried. There is, however, one most important element in it which from a strictly constitutional point of view has now as regards all vital matters reached its full development — we refer to the group of self-governing communities composed of Great Britain and the Dominions. Their position and mutual relation may be readily defined. They are autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. A foreigner endeavoring to understand the true character of the British Empire by the aid of this formula alone would be tempted to think that it was devised rather to make mutual interference impossible than to make mutual cooperation easy. Such criticism, however, completely ignores the historic situ- ation. The rapid evolution of the oversea Dominions during the last fifty years has involved many complicated adjustments of old political machinery to changing conditions. The tendency toward equality of status was both right and inevitable. Geo- graphical and other conditions made this impossible of attain- ment by way of federation. The only alternative was by way of autonomy and along this road it has been steadily sought. Every self-governing member of the empire is master of its destiny. In fact, if not always in form, it is subject to no compulsion whatever. But no account, however accurate, of the negative relations in which Great Britain and the Dominions stand to each other can do more than express a portion of the truth. The British Empire is not founded upon negations. It depends essentially if not formally, on positive ideals. Free institutions are its life- blood; free cooperation is its instrument. Peace, security, and progress are among its objects. Aspects of all these great themes have been discussed at the present conference. Excel- lent results have been thereby obtained, and though every Dominion is now and must always remain the sole judge of the nature and extent of its cooperation, no common cause will, in our opinion, be thereby imperiled. Equality of status so far as Britain and the Dominions are concerned is the root principle governing our inter-imperial relations. But principles of equality and similarity appropriate to the status do not universally extend to the function. Here we require something more than immutable dogmas. For example, to deal with questions of diplomacy and ques- tions of defense we require also flexible machinery — machinery which can from time to time be adapted to the changing cir- cumstances of the world. This subject also has occupied our attention. The rest of this report will show we have endeavored not only to state political theory but how to apply it to our common needs. III. — Special Position of India It will be noted that in previous paragraphs we have made no mention of India. Our reason for limiting their scope to Great Britain and the Dominions is that the position of India in the empire is already defined by the Government of India Act of 1919. We would, nevertheless, recall that by resolution of the Imperial War Conference in 1917 due recognition was given to the important position held by India in the British Common- wealth. Where in this report we have had occasion to consider the position of India we have made particular reference to it. IV. — Relations Between Various Parts of the British Empire Existing administrative, legislative, and judicial forms are admittedly not wholly in accord with the position as described in Section II of this report. This is inevitable, since most of these forms date back to a time well antecedent to the pres- ent stage of constitutional development. Our first task, then, was to examine these forms with special reference to any cases where want of adaptation of practice to principle caused or might be thought to cause inconvenience in the conduct of inter-imperial relations. A— Title of His Majesty. The title of His Majesty the King is of special importance and concern to all parts of His Majesty's Dominions. Twice within the last fifty years has the royal title been altered to suit changed conditions and constitutional developments. The present title, which is that proclaimed under Royal Titles Act of 1901, is as follows: George V, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions Beyond the Seas, King, Defender of Faith, Emperor of India. Some time before the conference met it had been recog- nized that this form of title hardly accorded with the altered state of affairs arising from the establishment of the Irish Free State as a Dominion. It had further been ascertained that it would be in accordance with His Majesty's wishes that any recommendation for a change should be submitted to him as a result of the discussion at the conference. We are unanimously of the opinion that a slight change is desirable and we recommend that, subject to His Majesty's approval, necessary legislative action should be taken to secure that His Majesty's title should henceforth be: George V, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions Beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India. B — Position of Governors General. We proceeded to con- sider whether it was desirable formally to place on record a definition of the position held by the Governor General as His Majesty's representative in the Dominions. That position, though now generally well recognized, undoubtedly represents a development from an earlier stage when the Governor General was appointed solely on advice of His Majesty's Ministers in London and acted also as their representative. The Governor of Newfoundland is in the same position as the Governor General of a Dominion.

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 591 Here Selfishness and Unselfishness Go Hand in Hand. ^OR your benefit we have here gathered together many suggestions for Christmas gifts to yourself, your family and your friends. \\7T have the good fortune to be alive during an important * * and one of the most interesting ami fastest moving periods in the history of the world. We all want to relish it and to comprehend it as fully as possible. Tin: World Tomorrow is for people who want to live fully and act intelligently on opinions formed from facts and reflection. It supplies data for examination of the ele- ments of our political and social life. Under the topical plan of arrangement, The World Tomorrow covers in each issue the important material of one particular subject. Twelve care- ful studies of the more vital problems of our times are thus made each year. January — "The Mind of Youth," in which we publish the eight prize winning essays of our Youth Contest. February — " The Philippines" . * * * ' I "'HERE must be many of your friends who want Tun: -*■ World Tomorrow during 1927 and would appreciate your thoughtfulness in giving it to them for Christmas this year. And you may have been wanting one of these several books. You can subscribe to The World Tomorrow for your friends and get the books for yourself and at the same time save a great deal of money. An appropriate card will announce your gift. THE WORLD TOMORROW r;^r ?£. with George Washington, the Image and the Man, by W. E. Woodward $6.00 $4.50 with The Story of Philosophy, by Will Darard . . 7.00 5.50 with Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, by R. H. Tawney 5.50 4.25 with The Man Nobody Knows, by Brace Barton. 4.50 3.50 with Collected Poems of Carl Sandburg, by Rebecca West 4.00 3.25 with Her Son's Wife, by Dorothy Canneld Fisher. 4.00 3.25 with The Time of Man, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts 4.00 3.25 with The Second Book of Negro Spirituals, by James Weldon Johnson 5.50 4.00 with Education and the Good Life, by Bertrand Russell 4.50 3.50 with An Old Man's Follv, by Floyd Dell....: .. 4.00 3.50 with Preface to a Life, by Zona Gale 4.00 3.50 with Fire, a quarterly devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, premier issue 3.00 2.25 "V7"OU may have a subscription to Tin: World Tomorrow and you want a subscription to one or more of the maga- zines listed here. Why not send The World Tomorrow to one or more of the many friends who would enjoy having it and get the other magazines for yourself? An attractive Christmas card will announce the gift and the name of the giver. THE WORLD TOMORROW R^[" °£t with The Bookman $6.00 $5.00 with St Nicholas 5.00 4.0* with Harper's 6.00 5.00 with The Intercollegian 3.25 2.00 with The American Mercury 7.00 6.00 with The Atlantic Monthly 6.00 5.00 with The Century 7.00 6.08 with The Christian Century 6.00 4.00 with The Dial 7.00 6.00 with The Nation 7.00 6.00 with The New Republic 7.00 6.00 with Survey 7.00 6.00 with The Survey Graphic 5.00 4.00 with The Youth's Companion 4.00 3.50 T NSTEAD of Christmas cards, which can not carry your whole thought and affection, we suggest that you send six months' subscription to ten or more of your friends. These you can have for $1.00 each and secure "Preface to a Life," by Zona Gale, for yourself or as a gift for someone else. These Christmas card subscriptions will be announced appropriately. THE WORLD TOMORROW, Inc., 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York City. For the enclosed $.. please enter my order for your special combination offer checked above. I enclose in addition names and addresses for the books and magazines I want sent as Christmas gifts to my friends. Name Address, | N 12-8-26 When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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592 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 In our opinion, it is essential in consequence of the equality of the status existing among the members of the British Com- monwealth of Nations, that the Governor General of a Dominion is a representative of the Crown, holding in all essential respects the same position in relation to the administration of public affairs in a Dominion as is held by His Majesty, the King in Great Britain, and that he is not a representative or agent of His Majesty's Government in Great Britain or of any department of that Government. It seemed to us to follow that the practice whereby the Governor General of a Dominion is the formal official channel of communication between His Majesty's Government in Great Britain and his governments in his Dominions might be regarded as no longer wholly in accordance with the constitutional position of the Governor General. It was thought that the recognized official channel of com- munication should be, in the future, between government and government direct. The representatives of Great Britain readily recognized that the existing procedure might be open to criti- cism and accepted the proposed change in principle in relation to any of the Dominions which desired it. The details were left for settlement as soon as possible after the conference had completed its work, but it was recognized by the committee as an essential feature of any change or development in the channels of communication that the Governor General should be supplied with copies of all documents of importance and in general should be kept as fully informed as is His Majesty the King in Great Britain of Cabinet business and public affairs. C — Operations of Dominion Legislation. Our attention was also called to various points in connection with the operation of Dominion legislation which, it was suggested, required clarification: The particular points involved were: (1) The present practice under which the acts of the Dominion Parliaments are sent each year to London and it is intimated through the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs that His Majesty will not be advised to exercise his powers of disallowance with regard to them. (2) The reservation of Dominion legislation in certain circumstances for the signification of His Majesty's pleasure which is signified on advice tendered by His Majesty's Government in Great Britain. (3) The difference between the legislative competence of the Parliament at Westminster and the Dominion Parliaments in that acts passed by the latter operate as a general rule only within the territorial area of the Dominion concerned. (4) The operation of legislation passed by Parliament at Westminster in relation to the Dominions. In this connection special attention was called to such statutes as the Colonial Laws Validity Act. It was suggested that in the future uni- formity of legislation as between Great Britain and the Domin- ions could best be secured by the enactment of reciprocal statutes, based upon consultation and agreement. We gave these matters the best consideration possible in the limited time at our disposal, but came to the conclusion that the issues involved were so complex that there would be grave danger in attempting any immediate pronouncement other than the statement of certain principles which, in our opinion, underlie the whole question of the operation of Dominion legis- lation. We feel that, for the rest, it would be necessary to obtain expert guidance as a preliminary to further consid- eration by His Majesty's Governments in Great Britain and the Dominions. On the questions raised with regard to disallowance and reservation of Dominion legislation, it was explained by the Irish Free State representatives that they desired to elucidate constitutional practice in relation to Canada, since it was pro- vided by Article 2 of the articles of agreement for the Treaty of 1921 that "The position of the Irish Free State, in relation &®& $ax Pant (EiirtHlmaH (Simng ^^ THEY STILL NEED YOU The Passaic Textile workers are still on strike. They are waging a courageous battle against in- dustrial autocracy. They look to you, the readers of THE NATION, to support them in their struggle for decent Ameri- can living conditions. Will you continue your support of these fighters for democracy and help their children have a happy Christmas by sending your contributions to H. S. RAUSHENBUSH, Treasurer Emergency Committee for Strikers' Relief ROOM 638, 799 BROADWAY NEW YORK CITY Special Milk Fund Committee Norman Thomas, Chairman Forrest Bailey N. Baldwin Harriot Stanton Match Susan Brandeis Mrs. Geortte Hurnham, Jr. Rev. Edmund B. Chaffee Stuart Chase Herbert Croly John Dos Bassos Mary E. Driier Elizabeth Glendower Evans Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Elizabeth Ciilman Arthur Garfield Hays Rev. John Haynes Holmes J. A. H. Hopkins Florence Kelley Paul U. Kellogg Dr. Henry R. Linville Rev. J. Howard Mellish Dr. Henry Neumann Mrs. Gordon Norrie Amos Pinchot Evelyn Preston Samuel Untermyer Oswald Garrison Villard Lillian D. Wald James P. Warbasse Bertha Poole Weyl Mrs. Stephen S. Wise And Others Emergency Committee for Strikers' Relief 799 Broadway, Room 638, New York City Enclosed is check for dollars for the Passaic strikers and their children. Name Address Endorsed by The Nation When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 593 $100 WORTH of BOOKS for $5 IN THE FIRST SIX NUMBERS OF TWO WORLDS MONTHLY ULYSSES h AMES OYCE which cannot be purchased for less than $50 in the Paris Edition, is appearing serially in TWO WORLDS MONTHLY; MAGGIE : A GIRL of the STREETS Stephen. Crane's great novel, obtainable in hook form only in a set of 12 volumes (the author's collected works) selling for $90, appears complete in the 4th number of TWO WORLDS MONTHLY. BROKENBROW: ap****.* S is obtainable only in a Nonesuch Press Edition selling for $5 — it appeared complete in 3rd number of TWO WORLDS MONTHLY. 60 SHORT STORIES by „eh distinguished writers as D. H. Lawrence, Norman Douglas, Arthur Schnitzler, Giovanni Verga, T. F. Powys, Hugh de Selincourt, Frank Wedekind, T. S. Eliot, Ludwig Bird and Cunninghame-Grahame. 75 DISTINGUISHED POEMS by Carl Sandburg, Richard Le Gallienne, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, A. E. Housman, A. E. Coppard, E. Powys Mather, Ezra Pound and others — making two remarkable anthologies — one of r— - — i 1 u 4- o + ^oo +1^ '. TWO WORLDS PUB. CO., the best modern short stories, the i 500 5th Av (Suite m_8) other of the best modern poems. If New York City. yOU hurry yOU Can Still begin your Gentlemen: For the enclosed $5 kindly put me , . . .,, XT i r\„~ V^i-i I down as a subscriber to the tirst 12 issues of TWO Subscription With Number One. YOU WORLDS MONTHLY, beginning with No. 1. will not easily forgive yourself if you Name fail to get a complete set of TWO WORLDS MONTHLY. Address When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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594 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 to the Imperial Parliament and Government and otherwise shall be that of the Dominion of Canada." On this point we propose that it should be placed on record that apart from the provisions embodied in the constitutions or in specific statutes expressly providing for reservation, it is recognized that it is the right of the Government of each Dominion to advise the Crown in all matters relating to its own affairs. Consequently it would not be in accordance with constitutional practice for advice to be tendered to His Majesty by His Majesty's Government in Great Britain in any matter appertaining to the affairs of a Dominion against the views of the Government of that Dominion. Appropriate procedure with regard to projected legislation in one of the self-governing parts of the empire which may affect the interests of other self-governing parts rests on previous consultation between His Majesty's Ministers in the several parts concerned. On the question raised with regard to the legislative competence of members of the British Commonwealth of Nations other than Great Britain and in particular to the desirability of those members being enabled to legislate with extraterritorial ef'ect, we think that it should similarly be placed on record that constitutional practice is that legislation by the Parliament at Westminster applying to a Dominion would only be passed with the consent of the Dominion concerned. As already indicated, however, we are of the opinion that there are points arising out of these considerations and in application of these general principles which will require detailed examination, and we accordingly recommend that steps should be taken by Great Britain and the Dominions to set up a committee with terms of reference on the following lines: To inquire into and report upon and make recommendations concerning, first, existing statutory provisions requiring the reservation of Dominion legislation for assent of His Majesty or authorizing disallowance of such legislation; second (a), the present position, as to competence, of the Dominion Parlia- ments to give their legislation extraterritorial operation; (b) the practicability and most convenient method of giving effect to the principle that each Dominion Parliament should have the power to give extraterritorial operation to its legislation in all cases where such operation is ancillary to provisions for peace, order, and good government of that Dominion; third, principles embodied in or underlying the Colonial Laws Validity Act of 1865 and extent to which any provisions of that act ought to be repealed, amended, or modified in the light of existing relations between the various members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, as described in this report. [Sections on Merchant Shipping Legislation and Appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council arc here omitted.] V — Relations with Foreign Countries From questions especially concerning the relations of vari- ous parts of the British Empire with one another we naturally turned to those affecting their relations with foreign countries. In the latter sphere a beginning had been made toward making clear those relations by resolution of the Imperial Conference of 1923 on the subject of negotiation, signature, and ratification of treaties. But it seemed desirable to examine the working of that resolution during the past three years, and also consider whether the principles laid down with regard to treaties could not be applied with advantage in a wider sphere. A — Procedure in Relation to Treaties. We appointed a special subcommittee, under the Chairmanship of the Minister of Justice of Canada, the Honorable E. LaPointe, K. C, to con- sider the question of treaty procedure. The subcommittee, on whose report the following paragraphs are based, found that the resolution of the conference of 1923 embodied, on most points, useful rules for the guidance of the governments. As they became more thoroughly understood and established they would prove effective in practice. Some phases of treaty procedure were examined, however, The Training School for Jewish So- cial Work offers a fifteen months' course of graduate study in Jewish Family Case Work, Child Care, Community Centers, Federations and Health Centers. Several tuition scholarships and maintenance fellowships are avail- able to especially qualified students. The winter quarter begins January 3, 1927. For further information, address the Director, THE TRAINING SCHOOL FOR JEWISH SOCIAL WORK 2 ro West 91st Street, New York City FIFTH AVENUE RESTAURANT 200 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK A LUNCHEON RESORT FOR THE DISCRIMINATING CLIENTELE — THOSE APPRECIATING UNEX- CELLED CUISINE AND SERVICE. 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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 595 in greater detail in the light of experience in order to consider to what extent the resolution of 1923 might with advantage be supplemented. B — Negotiations. It was agreed in 1923 that any of the governments of the empire contemplating the negotiation of a treaty should give due consideration to its possible effect upon other governments, and should take steps to inform ernments likely to be interested of its intention. This rule should be understood as applying to anj tions which any government intends to conduct so as to leave it to the other governments to say whether they are likely to lie interested. When a government has received information of the inten- tion of any other government to conduct negotiations it is incumbent upon it to indicate its attitude with reasonable promptitude. So long as the initiating government receives no adverse comments, and so long as its policy involves no active obligations on the part of other governments, it may proceed on the assumption that its policy is generally acceptable. It must, however, before taking any steps which might involve other gov- ernments in any active obligations, obtain their definite assent. Where by the nature of a treaty it is desirable that it should be ratified on behalf of all the governments of the em- pire the initiating government may assume that the government which has had full opportunity of indicating its attitude, and has made no adverse comments, will concur in the ratification of the treaty. In the case of a government that prefers not to concur in the ratification of a treaty unless it has been signed by a plenipotentiary authorized to act on its behalf it will advise the appointment of a plenipotentiary so to act. C — For»i of Treaty. Some treaties begin with a list of the contracting countries, and not with a list of the heads of states. In the case of treaties negotiated under the auspices of the League of Nations adherence to the wording of the annex to the Covenant for the purpose of describing the contracting party has led to the use in the preamble of the term "British Empire," with the enumeration of the Dominions and India if parties to the convention, but without any mention of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the colonies and protectorates. These are only included by virtue of their being covered by the term "Brit- ish Empire." This practice, while suggesting that the Dominions and India are not on a footing of equality with Great Britain as participants of the treaties in question, tends to obscurity and misunderstanding and is generally unsatisfactory. As a means of overcoming this difficulty it is recommended that all treaties (other than agreements between governments), whether negotiated under the auspices of the League or not, should be made in the name of the heads of the states, and if a treaty is signed on behalf of any or all of the governments of the empire the treaty should be made in the name of the King, a symbol of the special relationship between the different parts of the empire. British units on behalf of which a treaty is signed should be grouped together in the following order: Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and all the parts of the British Empire which are not separate members of the League; Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State, and India. A specimen form of treaty as recommended is attached as an appendix to the committee's reports. In the case of a treaty applying to only one part of the empire it should be stated to be made by the King on behalf of that part. The making of a treaty in the name of the King as a sym- bol of the special relationship between the different parts of the empire will render superfluous the inclusion of any provision that its terms must not be regarded as regulating inter se the rights and obligations of various territories other than that on behalf of which it has been signed in the name of the King. In this connection it must be borne in mind that the ques- tion was discussed at the Arms Traffic Conference in 1925, and BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS The (un of giving with none ot the drudgery. Hook Kilt* in imported decorative wrap your friendi i>om free anywhere. Scn.l for our illus- trated Christmai catalog, THE POST-BOX BOOK SERVICE Inc. . 15 Wul 44th Street, New York GOOD CHEER, COMRADESI Daca icll. you all books 20 lo 80% of list: Durant, Cabell, Schnilzler, Mencken, etc. Many unumal item*. Come on over to THE NEW DOOR, 4 Chn.topher St. (W. of 8th St. and 6th Ave.). N. Y. C„ where Maseheld worked. Open eveningi. GERMAN BOOKS IN NEW YORK ALL KINDS, LITERARY, ARTISTIC, SCIENTIFIC B. WESTERMANN COMPANY, Inc. 18 WEST 46tb STREET, NEW YORK BOOKS A MAN'S GIFT eense of "Women haven't it ; it's the chiefeet of the virtues- humor." Encourage itl The TOASTER'S HANDBOOK and MORE TOASTS are collections of "well selected" bits of humor classified by subjects. "Christmas Gifts." Little six-year-old Harry was asked by his Sunday-school teacher: "And, Harry, what are you going to give your darling little brother for Christmas this year?" "I dunno." said Harry ; "I gave him the measles last year." Humor is just as catching. Give a man TOASTER'S HANDBOOK and MORE TOASTS — $1.80 per volume, only $3.60 for both. Another handbook commended by The Harvard Review is SELEC- TION AND CARE OF SOUND INVESTMENTS, by Arthur Herschel. This book, written by an investor for investors, is of particular "use as a handbook by the individual who wishes to gain a concrete knowl- edge that will assist him to make his investments in an intelligent manner." — Harvard Review. 400 pages, price $4.00. THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY 971 UNIVERSITY AVENUE NEW YORK CITY ArVylOCifV 1\A/ rilADV A S"»Phtc human-inieresi »u>rj of the IVaWOV^V VT *^1AX\. I tjfe ot tDe people ;„ Soviet Ru»»ia today, by Anna Porter. Cleth. $1.00 postpaid. Ask for book catalog. CHARLES H. KERR & CO. X47 East Ohio Street, Chicago INSTINCT IN THE CELL AND ORGANISM (Descriptive Table of Contents Free) THIS volume of NEANDER P. COOK is a survey of the instinctive reactivities of the living organism. Based upon the most recent biological discoveries, it is an amazing revelation of the hidden powers that drive the living world onward and upward, from its lowliest beginnings in the Protozoa to its highest achievement in man. Though written for the scientific investigator, it comes in language and illustration so simple, that any intt'ligent reader, desiring first-hand knowledge, need not miss a page of it. $5.00 postpaid. THE WEIMAR PRESS, Alhambra, Calif. REAL ESTATE -If you have a house or property to sell or lease, try The Nation classified advertising section. -If the experience of other advertisers of real estate is a guide, your advertisement in The Nation will pay. -Write for rates to Dept. R., The Nation. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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596 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 that the Legal Committee of that conference laid it down that the principle to which the foregoing sentence gives expression underlies all international conventions. In the case of some international agreements the govern- ments of the different parts of the empire may be willing to apply between themselves some of the provisions as administra- tive measures. In this case they should state the extent to which and the terms on which such provisions are to apply. Where international agreements are to be applied between the different parts of the empire, the form of treaty between the heads of states should be avoided. D — Full Powers. Plenipotentiaries for the various British units should have full powers issued in each case by the King, on the advice of the government concerned, indicating and cor- responding to the part of the empire for which they are to sign. It will frequently be found convenient, particularly where there are some parts of the empire on which it is not contemplated that active obligations will be imposed, but where the position of British subjects belonging to these parts will be affected, for such government to advise the issue of full powers on their behalf to a plenipotentiary appointed to act on behalf the gov- ernment or governments mainly concerned. In other cases pro- vision might be made for the accession by other parts of the empire at a later date. E — Signature. In a case where the names of countries are appended to signatures in a treaty different parts of the empire should be designated in the same manner as is proposed in regard to the list of plenipotentiaries in the preamble to the treaty. The signatures of the plenipotentiaries of the various parts of the empire should be grouped together in the same order as is proposed ab Signature of a treaty on behalf of a part of the empire should cover territories for which the mandate has been given to that part of the empire unless the contrary is stated at the time of signature. MOTION PICTURE □ P, ARMORED CRUISER &§§" The Sensational Russian Film which has taken all Europe by storm. "GREATEST MOTION PICTURE EVER MADE" Say DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, EMIL JAMMINGS and MAX REINHARDT 7 oivers above all other films." — Evelyn Gerstein — New Republic. BCHANIN.S T* 47th St., W. I Twice Daily, 2:30-8:30 I All Seats Reserved SLTPrlORIj of B'way | Sunday, 3 and 8:30 | Tickets Now on Sale P LECTURE OPEN FORUM The Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th St., New York City, Sunday. Dec. 5. at 8 P. M. Frank Taiincnbaum on "MEXICO" and SUNDAY, DEC. 12, AT 8 P. M. "Tendencies in the Modern Theatre" SPEAKERS. HENRY G. ALSBERG, Translator of "The Dybbuk" adaptor, with Isaac Don Levine, of "Turan^ot." JAMES LIGHT, of the Provincetown Playhouse, Director of "Hamlet in Modern Dress," "Beyond the Horizon." etc. Questions and Discussions Publir is invited Reserve your places now ation Dinners 'December PROHIBITION Clarence Darrow "The Duty of Civil Disobedience" Major William B. Wright, Jr. Chief Enforcement Officer of Prohibition in Pennsylvania. "The Obligation of the Law" Chairman: Arthur Warner, Associate Editor, The Nation •January 11 < "CENSOR THE STAGE?" Elisabeth Marbury, Joseph Wood Krutch Frank Gillmore Executive Secretary, The Actors' Equity Association Chairman: Lewis S. Gannett, Associate Editor, The Nation February 15 "MEN— WHAT OF EM?" Ruth Hale, Lorine Pruette Chairman: Freda Kirchwey, Managing Editor, The Nation March 8 Songs and Dances by American Indians Speakers to be announced on "THE ART OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN" Chairman: Mark Van Doren, Literary Editor, The Nation •April 12 "WHO IS CALVIN COOLIDGE?" Frank R. Kent, William Hard Chairman: Oswald Garrison Villard, Editor, The Nation ALL DINNERS WILL BE HELD AT THE FIFTH AVENUE RESTAURANT 200 Fifth Avenue, at 7 P. M. $2.75 per plate. $12 for the series of five. Tickets may be bought only by Nation subscribers, although each subscriber may bring as many guests as he wishes. — If you arc not a Subscriber — You may have The Nation for a year (regular price $5) with a ticket for the first dinner for $6.25, or with a ticket for the five dinners for $16.00. The Nation 20 Vesey Street, New York Send me The Nation for a year Reserve places for me at The First Dinner □ The Series □ Name Address Tickets will be mailed a few days before the dinner. Whin writing to advertisers, please mention The Natic

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Holiday Book Section The Importance of Paul Valery By RENE LALOU PAUL-AMBROISE VALERY was born in 1872. A friend of Pierre Louys, he contributed several poems tn tin' symbolist reviews from L889 to L895; and he was then considered as the most promising disciple of Stephane Mal- larnie. He also published two prose works, "Introduction a la methode de Leonard de Vinci" (JS'.'.")) and "La Soiree gvec M. Teste" (1896), whose importance was to be fully realized only twenty years later. At that early time nobody seemed to understand that he had given in the two books both a clue to his problem and an explanation of the silence which was to ensue for more than fifteen years. Van Bever and Leautaud, the authors of the best symbolist anthology, found much difficulty in accounting for what they thought to be mere perversity. "Paul Valery," they wrote, "has given himself for several years to extra-literary researches which it is not easy to define, as they seem to be grounded on a premeditated confusion of method between exa< ences and artistic instincts." This definition was not quite clear; yet there was something in it, as will appear hereafter. In 1917 Valery published "La Jeune Parque," a poem of some five hundred lines which created a stir in literary cir- cles; others followed till 1922, when they all were collected in a volume significantly called "Charmes" (Carmina). Each of them was hailed as a masterpiece; Valery's old work in prose and verse was studied anew; and he now offered sev- eral essays, two Socratic dialogues, and some fragments of his notebooks. His fame was spreading rapidly, not only as a poet but also as a master of French thought and as one of our intellectual leaders. His election as a member of the Academy honored that institution rather than added new glory to his name. The reason for Valery's extraordinary success must be sought in those very researches which perplexed his former critics. His problem is the highest problem, the problem of the mind. He has stated it unequivocally : "The things of the world interest me only in their relation to the intellect. Bacon said this intellect is an idol. I agree, but I have never found a better one." From his youth Valery has been busy answering that ever-recurring question : What can man accomplish? What is he master of? His intellect be- ing his only weapon, where does that lead him? Can the unity of the mind prevail over the diversity of things? Can the mind form that "decisive image" to which it aspires and classify things "according to their facility or their diffi- culty"? The aim of the intellect is an infinite extension of continuity; can it create a continuous universe? The struggle, at first glance, seems best exemplified in those we name our great men. The "Introduction" is the study of a great man who stands as "a complete system in himself" and who possesses the secret of "recovering rela- tions between things whose law of continuity escapes us." For we must notice that genius is something logical, not at all mysterious: "Where others had not yet seen anything, he had already looked, combined, and did no more than read in his mind." In the note he added in 1919 to his "Introduc- tion" of 1894, Valery explains why he chose Leonardo for his hero: "I felt that this master of his means, this pos- ■ of drawing, of imaj arithmetic, had found the central attitude starting from which the enter] knowledge and the operations of art are equally possible." He elected Leonardo for his champion becau nardo had proclaimed: "It is easy to make oneself universal." Too easy, indeed, in such a conception; hem new scruple. Once he had reached that central point in the mind where all its powers, scientific or artistic, p;i or creative, are united. Valery was entitled to write: "Genius is easy, fortune is easy, divinity is easy. 1 simply mean I know how they are conceivable." .me uni- versal is not difficult; the hardest task is to remain so, never surrendering the relentless ideal of precision. Is that the case with our famous men? Of course not. As Valery writes in "La Soiree," "every great man is tainted with an error, . . . the initial error which made him famous." The "great man" belittles his greatness in order that the crowd may perceive it. This led Valery to imagine that the great- est among mortals are not the acknowledged great men but some unknown individuals who will die without having ever confessed their superiority. To embody that truth Valery invented Edmond Teste. "La Soiree" is the intellectual biography of Edmond Teste, a solitary man whose dwelling is "analogous to the any-point-whatsoever of the theorems." There he reaches the highest degree of consciousness, the most refined sense of liberty: "He was the being absorbed in his variation, the man who becomes his system, who gives himself entirely to the dreadful discipline of the free mind, who makes his joys kill his joys, the weakest murdered by the strongest." M. Teste "defeats everything except the suffering of his body beyond a certain intensity." He can do everything, but he would lose that universal power if he attempted to do anything. A lordly, comprehensive inaction was the last word of Valery's second witness, the testis of his desperate distinctness, of his murdering lucidity. The same ob- stacle had blocked his way both as a writer and as a thinker : "Whenever I began throwing the dice on paper, I produced only words witnessing the impotence of thought: Genius, Mystery, Profound. ... I replied so promptly with my piti- less sentences to my nascent propositions that the sum of my exchanges, at each instant, was nothing." Silence was the only issue left. In his retirement, however, Valery kept faithful to "the obstinate rigor" of Leonardo; he could then notice that "once rigor has been instituted, a positive liberty becomes possible." He studied the exact sciences, which brought him the certainty that the human mind cannot err as long as it confines itself to the arbitrary systems of its own mak- ing. A correct mathematician is infallible provided he strictly obeys the laws of the abstract game. Cannot a poet do the same, work on relations only, thus reaching an equal degree of immaterial reality? The "mechanical sieve" which Teste was demanding Valery found in language with its two uses, practical and poetical, and its two values, intel- lectual and sensuous. What Valery has called "pure poetry" (a much-misunderstood expression) requires two conditions: a perfect lucidity excluding all instinctive enthusiasm and a coherent "language-machine." Firmly convinced that "learned poetry is a profoundly skeptical art," Valery planned his "Jeune Parque" as an exercise and cast it in the molds of the classical language-machine. The writer, he as- serted, must feel himself at the same time "source, engineer,

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598 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 and agent of constraint." As a source, he must use his inspiration without ever allowing himself to be carried away by it. As an engineer, he must proceed to a kind of mental alchemy, creating both the work and the emotions that the work will suggest to the future reader. As an agent of con- straint, he will augment the power of his fire by submitting it to a system of coherent contrarieties. For a French poet such a system is not to be invented over again; our classical prosody offers it, strengthened by the efforts of several cen- turies. "The obligatory numbers, the rhymes, the fixed forms, all these arbitrary elements once for all adopted and opposed to ourselves, have a certain philosophical beauty of their own." That philosophical beauty is always present in the work of Valery. His poems rank already among our most precious treasures. Even those romantics who complain about a haughty disdain of sensibility in his pure poetry willingly agree that his dialogues and essays make him a master of French prose, not only for the strength of his argument but also for the matchless grace of his style. Valery indeed is a Mediterranean; if he is always painting the incessant strug- gle of the mind, he embodies it in beautiful images. Beauty with him is not an abstract idea but a sensuous form. Edgar Poe and Mallarme taught him the charm of music; from the Greeks he has learned the splendor of architecture; his crea- tion aims at the combined beauty of the two arts. He knows what danger threatens the intellect. "Nothing," he says, "leads us to absolute barbarity more surely than an exclu- sive love for pure mind." That is why he honors the human body, which holds the soul "as the anchor holds the ship." If we are allowed to use as convenient landmarks the names of Plato and Keats, we may say that Valery is the equiva- lent of either and covers the interval between. During the war some people discovered that, twenty years before, Valery had contributed to the Nctv Review an article which William Henley had published as The German Conquest. The article of 1895 looked so much like a prophecy for the readers of 1915 that it was reprinted under its true title, A Methodical Victory. In 1919 the Ath- ( naeum printed La ('rise de l'Esprit, another essay by Valery. It opened with impressive words: "We, civiliza- tions, know henceforth that we are mortal. . . ."It con- cluded with a solemn query. Would Europe, Valery asked, keep her place at the head of the civilized world or would she become in every regard what she is geographically, "a small cape of the Asiatic continent"? Most of his admirers will declare that he is the answer to that question, that Europe has lost nothing so long as it remains capable of giving birth to men like Valery. No one will deny that there is something typically French in his personality, in the way his art harmonizes symbolism and classicism, his thought reconciles the intellect with the senses. But the French tradition he revives is that of the seventeenth century, when French thinkers often were the leaders of European opinion. In every European country where he has been invited to lecture, Valery has been revered as a kind of unofficial ambassador, standing for the most exhaustive analysis of the human mind that has been at- tempted since the days of Rene Descartes. At a time when what we call, on this side of the Atlantic, Western civiliza- tion is reacting against all the Asiatic mysticisms as well as looking somewhat distrustfully at the industrialization of the mind in business-like America, the importance of Paul Valery in European thought can hardly be exaggerated. Rediscovering the Spirituals* By ABBE NILES LIKE a poor congregation's church, the now general recognition of the Negro's contribution to American music through his religious songs was a long time building. Mr. Fisher1 seems correctly to credit H. T. Burleigh2 with ushering in the good day when in 1916 he published "Deep River," but fails to note that not this, but certain of the examples in Krehbiel's3 study of two years earlier, consti- tuted the first arrangements of spirituals for solo voice and piano; nor does he mention the part played by Homer Rode- heaver4 in introducing some of these songs to Billy Sun- day's hundreds of thousands, scarcely habitues of concert halls. For the rest, thank an already waning fad which leaves behind a solid body of knowledge and beauty for the constant. Several myths have been dispelled; others are tottering. Item : that the Negro merely filched, say, from the pale and flabby "gospel hymns." Krehbiel commenced and Ballanta5 has completed the demolition of this absurdity; Mrs. Burlin6 has summed up the facts: . . . the characteristics which give to his [the Negro's] music an interest worthy of particular study are precisely those which differentiate Negro songs from the songs of the neighboring white man; they are racial traits, and the black man brought them from the Dark Continent. It is becoming less and less easy to pirate the aesthetic product of the blacks and simultaneously dub them "the most imitative race on earth." Item: that the spirituals were "group compositions," each a sort of monstrous coinci- dence. Not the accumulation of collections will dispel such a fallacy, but the repetition of even such qualified dissents as James Weldon Johnson's7 : My opinion is that the far greater part of them is the work of talented individuals influenced by the pressure and reaction of the group. Some, indeed, are too elaborate to have been born otherwise than in solitude. Item: such expressions as Henry O. Osgood's* : The spirituals have a great vogue today, one that is hardly justified by the aesthetic value of any except a very small group of them. today indicate merely that the speaker has not taken the little trouble necessary to acquaint himself with more than a small group. More can be asked from no body of folksong than may be found among the spirituals. More, by the way, need not he aspired to by their admirers. Specifically, it is difficult to appreciate Mr. Johnson's'' concern that Negro themes should be commonly employed in this country as materia] for music in the larger forms; an anxiety under- laid by the idea which comes out in grosser form in Paul Whiteman's10 What folksong would have amounted to anything if some great writer had not put it into a symphony? Dvorak's use of Negro themes doubtless helped the spirituals toward recognition, but the weaving of an integral living thing like a folksong into the structure of a symphony may place, even invigorate, the latter only at the expense of * This is the first of several articles which will appear in the book num- bers of The Nation on contributions to American literature and art from other than Nordic sources.

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nati on 599 the former; it is by no means written that the "New World Symphony" will outlive "Go Down, Moses." Item (hut this one still debatable): the theory gently questioned by Mi-. Fisher: Writers (usually not musicians) speak of preserving the "original harmony" of the spirituals. Is there any to preserve? The truth, as the writer then points out. is that two collec- tions which painstakingly record the four parts as sung by Negroes exhibit except for a few features the mosl ventional harmonizations, contrasting with the many and often striking peculiarities of the melodies themselves. Hut Mr. Fisher does not discuss in this connection the har- monies recorded with equal care in the new compilation from the little South Carolina island of St. Helena; these indeed are often both alien and stirring in a harsh wild way, and coming from this isolated spot they help suggest the answer "some" to Mr. Fisher's question. And while the possibly opportunist Snyder collection11 demonstrates that the simple i-and-piano settings will pass, Mr. Fisher's is a dangerous question, for future arrangers may read in its implied negative an unmeant permission not merely to discard such racial earmarks as are available, but to produce 'spirituals" suggesting Les Six, or another blonde smiling at the front rows over her manuscript. Not every accom- paniment in his own volume avoids such a horror. On the constructive side, through Krehbiel we have acquired as illuminating an analysis of this body of song as could be hoped for from a white man; in particular, the classification of over five hundred specimens which revealed that the oft-mentioned effect of "sadness" derives not from the use of the minor mode (actually uncommon) but from the raising, flatting, or studiously avoiding certain tones of the scales familiar to us, intensifying by strangeness to West- ern ears a melancholy otherwise dependent on deeper secrets of melody, rhythm, and form. Krehbiel's illustrations are a treasury of the weird, and while comparatively few, assay higher (see "Dig Ma Grave," the passionate and somber "You May Bury Me in de Eas'," and "Come Tremblein' Down," anomalous for its triple time and uncannily suggest- ing a primitive English carol) than any other substantial collection. Krehbiel's method has now been applied to new material by Mr. Fisher, whose volume', with its historical and critical introduction, bibliography, and notes to every song, is a model for future editors. The songs themselves — the several work of no less than ten musicians — are natur- ally of uneven merit as arrangements, but many are excel- lent and a number new, while particular attention is due the heavenly "Sail Over Yonder" (Grant-Schaefer) ; Mr. Fisher's versions of "Give Me Jesus," "Don't Be Weary, Traveler," and "Troubles Gwineter Weigh Me Down"; the majestic "Ride On, King Jesus" (Gaul) and "Walk Together, Children" (Rosamund Johnson) ; and two notable new- comers from Tennessee splendidly arranged by Charles Fonteyne Manney. With Krehbiel's and Fisher's must be considered a third work', in reviewing which a well-known sociologist (himself coauthor of a volume on Negro songs containing no note of music) permits himself to say: Ballanta's foreword is hardly the kind of foreword which the average person who is interested in Negro song could comprehend. His ultra-technical discussion of rhythm, scales, and tones, his theorizing on the characteristics of and differences between African and American Negro music are hard enough for a musician to digest, much less the ordinary devotee of Negro song. A few words about the people of St. Helena Island, their songs, customs, and the like would have been much more appropriate for the llection which Ballanta made. a winningly naive exposure of the mind of the specialist ontemplating an original and momentous excursion in field A(2). It is true that this explanation by a native African of the racial concepts hack of the rhythmical and melodic phenomena which Krehbiel merely noted and cl tied is abstruse, hut any inquiring musician would well it though tacked on to a seed catalogue. Moreover, the hun- dred-odd songs in this book are presented in a form more adapted for students and prospective arranger mind Johnson has already used a dozen or more to great advan- tage) than for the "ordinary devotee." With a few e: tions their poetry is below tin1 average; the accompaniments uncompromisingly follow the parts in which they are sung Helena; this is a musician's collection and most appro- priately prefaced, although "I'm a Runnin' Fo' Ma Lifj it stands would bring shouts of joy from most audiences, and though no arranger's finger is needed to point out the stern beauties (what bassoes must inhabit this islet!) of "Eagle's Wings, foo Late," "Way By-and-By." The first Johnson volume' has had the lion's share of public notice and lias deserved it as the first token of an attempt at something definitive, though as such both it and its successor exhibit the inexplicable defects of omitting any disclosure of the birthplaces and histories of the several songs. Mr. Johnson's forewords are too nearly briefs — very excusably so, but the spirituals are their own best advocates and one grudges the space which might have gone to supple- ment such authoritative portions as the general discussion from the poetical viewpoint, with definite information about the tunes and poems themselves. Here must be confessed a disappointment with the arrangements in the first volume which may be largely due to the difficulty (alone, at the piano) of combining these accompaniments with the airs; at any rate the writer found these settings, while always competent and sometimes — as par excellence in "Jacob's Lad- der"— brilliant, often thin or distracting, while he found his judgment reversed as to almost every one he heard played and sung by the arranger himself and Taylor Gordon. In the second volume'1, on the other hand, the keenest private pleasure is to be found, and it is unreservedly recommended to the voiceless pianist, especially for such examples of un- earthly melancholy and charm as "Chilly Water" or "Death's Gwineter Lay His Cold Icy Hand on Me," such a creation (the word is advised) as "Daniel Saw de Stone," for the gloomy agitated rhythms of "I Want to Die Easy," the tem- pestuous brief cry "My Lawd Says He's Gwineter Rain Down Fire," the finality of perfection in the version of the St. Helena Charleston-spiritual "Same Train." Emmett Kennedy's12 text is not informative; his arrangements are distinguished and uniformly imaginative and original. His material — found in Louisiana — is mostly unpublished else- where (though it is amusing to find that our old friend "Frankie and Johnny" takes for Mardi-Gras the mask of "My Baby in a Guinea-Blue Gown" and deceives Mr. Ken- nedy himself) ; and at least one song, air and setting, touches the heights: "If You Can't Come Send One Angel Down." But too little, if anything, has been written about the two modest paper-covered Frey collections13, one the first of all the recent company. Mr. Frey, best known as the com- poser of such witty and melodious ragtime as "Shakes- pearean Love," "Havanola," "Calicoco," thus meets one of two near-requirements: color, and a term served writing

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600 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 for Broadway (Mr. Johnson, writer of "My Castle on the Nile," meets both). If his work is properly light-footed, it displays also the feeling and understanding necessary to convey no less of dignity, sorrow, or exaltation than his sub- ject requires, and while space permits mention here only of that free deep flow of rueful grace, "The Lonesome Valley," i ms to the writer the outstanding collection by any man, and his the happiest guises in which a number of these gracious airs have found themselves. Edited and with a Foreword by William Arms ■ipany. $2.50. published many arrangements of spirituals not yet form. . By Henry T. Krehbiel. New edition. and with a lor, -word by N. G. J. B $1.60. • -H ! wilh N,,"'s l)y irlin G $2. By .1 Rosamund .1 I and t^, Weldon Johnson. Viking Press. $3.50. Is J&Z-L." ' imund John- ion . t Jazz." .lack Snyder Company. 75 \ & C. Boni. $5. By Hugo The Critic's Answer1 ELISEO VIVAS CI RANTING that the American artist can be productive J here and nowhen most important qurk publishing I o be con- production which i the war v. ming a rushing torrent has already become d. and that it grows with time. But if we arc to of art in America, we musl first in difl erms from i ho: e in already been answered. For what we really to know is wl nditions of life in America j way hind' irtist's expression. And tin's we cannot find out until we have ascertained whether that which the art een creating in this country in modern ■■eat. If it is, we must ask how, then, do< pare with the product of the ag< '.' Further, if if do compare favorably, why not'.' And in the answer to this 1 think, we have the key to the whole question. answer such questions, however, one must }ro much further than the personal and limited experience of the ui, I believe, the critic should be al- lowed to have his say. for one has to study questions and conditions with which the artist is seldom concerned, and which may seem to him, in fact, little relevant to his own creative process. One must investigate ideals, . philosophic and spiritual currents playing on the . and one must seek to discover exactly what influences institution- exert on him and on his material. It mu dy have become apparent that in order * This is the eleventh of -■' l »y American wH*prsp ng in the li^h' of their general experience the question : Can an n fre<ly in the United States Mary Austin. Theodore Dreiser. Sherwood Anderson. Zona Gale, Edgar Lee Masters, Ludwig Lewisohn, Sinclair Lewis. Floyd Dill. Irwin Edman, and Raloh M. Pearson have hitherto contributed. to answer the question fully it is not sufficient to point out, | as Mr. Dreiser and Mr. Masters have pointed out, that the American scene is varied and rich enough for any art — none richer today. Of course it is, to the American artist. The truth is that the scene of life, no matter in what country, at what date of its history, in life's eternal flux and in the paradoxical recurrence of permanent yet seemingly ever new manifestations, never for one instant ceases to bo a fitting subject for the artist. The artist who says (if any such ever existed) that the life of his age has ceased to interest him, that he would like to have been born in another age, and that the dulness which he encounters around him is the reason why he does not create, is simply and obviously shifting the responsibility for his own sterility. Nor may we escape this truism by speaking of a period of decadence. Decadence is too vague a term and no one has yet successfully defined it. Decadent in what? Do we mean that the human spirit, at certain periods of history, enters info a lethargy? The idea of decadence with which we love nowadays so much to toy has no scientific validity. It. seems rather more plausible to say that the human spirit (relatively constant in its power', for we have absolutely no data on which to rest the belief that the Periclean are had more brain content than that of 700 A. D. or our own) meets occasionally with conditions and circumstances so complicated, so utterly I ii control, that it cannot grapple with them. Now here, indirectly, we have conic to the crux of our problem. The question we have asked is really whether conditions in our limes in America are such as to allow the birth of great ail and what greatness they do allow. I do not. alone mean by "conditions" such obvious and superficial manifestations of our age as industrialism. These can be easily recognized and evaluated. I mean also conditions emanating from the philosophic structure of the age: the dogmas, the prejudgments, Hie spiritual as well as intellectual or material force:; which govern us. Dog] and currents from which the age draws its color and acquires its temper. And which draw the artist into their vortex more violently than he ever know and mi inexorably than he would be willing to admit. The answer to the question, I may say immediately, is a negative one. Greal art, thai is to say, art which can ipare with that of Aeschylus or Euripides, with that of Shakespeare or Rabelais or Cervantes, is not possible in America today. And I saj today because I do not yield ■ nd place to any one in my faith for the potentialities which lie hidden in the soul of this empire. I may further point out, before I attempt to defend my belief, thai the art, of America today is of importance, and perhaps will live, not. as art, intrinsically, but as an index of an impor- tant civilization in its early stages of development. We may here without, danger of confusion or vagueness yield to the popular cliches and say that the ..nil of Europe is impotent, that, such strange and indefinable products of its genius as "Ulysses" and "A la recherche du Temps Perdu" are the last rich fruits of an arbor already dying. For though these phrases do not explain much in reality, they bear a sediment of demonstrable truth. But my contention that we cannot produce art of the first magnitude should need no defense, nor can I here furnish an elaborate one. Yet if we take our contemporary masterpieces it will be easy for us to see that, messured by the criteria with which we judge those of the they fall into the category of minor works of art. There

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 601 is no doubt that Edgar Lee Masters has written in the "Spoon River Anthology" something which will baffle the efforts of oblivion. One feels something in it which is of permanent and universal human interest. And the same is also true of "Winesburg, Ohio," and, in spite of its slip- shod form, of "Sister Carrie." It is not as apparent, per- haps, of "Jurgen." But shall we say that these, the great- est works of art of contemporary America, compare with "Hamlet" or with "Don Quixote"? With "Rabelais" or with "King Lear"? Are they as significant, as profound, as unmistakably works of genius — so that it can be said that they will live as vigorously as they do now outside of the peculiar material and ideal conditions which saw them born? And why not? Not, it seems to me, because their creators are smaller than the masters. Again such a facile answer leaves everything to be explained. Nor should we enter into futile and perhaps even odious comparisons of the moderns and the masters. On that score I would not venture an opinion. But whatever their relative merit, it must also be borne in mind that our artists are laboring under circumstances which they cannot, for the present, expect to control, of which they are, and must for some time yet remain, the victims. Exactly what are these conditions? It will be suf- ficient for our purpose to say that the artist here is not able to create great works of art because, no matter what degree of detachment he could achieve from the contem- porary scene, no matter how far he could recede from the crazy pageantry which constitutes his material, even under the most auspicious circumstances he could not expect to digest that scene totally, he could not expect to see it, that is to say, steadily and wholly under the light of a unifying principle. The confusion of our age is too great, too loud is its din and too quick its tempo, for us totally to master its intricate pattern. And without the mastery of the de- tails of life and a complete cognizance of the forces that guide it, we can never hope to express it fully. We may today, it is true, take a small section of existence and say of it, it is thus and so, we can perceive such and such forces playing in it for good or evil, such forces carrying it hither or thither. In so far as we are able to do this we will dimly foreshadow, as Dreiser and Masters and Anderson have already foreshadowed, some qualities of life which justly appear to us to be permanent and radical characteristics of existence, independent of superficial mani- festations and impervious to superficial pressures. But until we are able to see the whole phenomenon of life as a unit, and until our understanding of the forces which move it becomes so thorough as to play freely, the cre- ation of great masterpieces — the advent of Hamlets or Quixotes, of Gargantuas or Fausts — will be denied us. Our age obviously does not lend itself to such an under- standing. Are we not proud of its confusion? And to believe that one could express confusion is to fall into a sad contradiction in terms, to say the least. For to express is to define and limit something in the phenomenal world first, that is to say, to understand it and then to render it symbolically. But how can we express contemporary life if its most radical characteristic is its confusion, if it is not amenable to be understood and defined and limited? That is to say, how can we express it if we cannot analyze it, and, having analyzed it, we lack a concept — philosophical or religious or moral — through which we can achieve a synthesis? Not to You Only, O Pythian By MARY AUSTIN Not to you only, 0 Pythian, Out of rock crevices, Out of earth's sacred middle Where the ancient spore of the Sun Still works in her, Comes madness. Here, out of Arroyos Hondos, Between the prevailing Stiff stems of the junipers, Dream shaping vapors set back the moonlight, Here from the wine red rift of the rim-rock, Weighting the eyelids, Out of the Grand Canyon's motionless unreality, Visions prophetic. Not to you only, the wish-colored Word Hieratic, Not solely at Delos, 0 Pythian, But here at the desert's fire new edges, Inebriate of the earth, to the Sun corybantic, The god with my voice declaring What I discern not. Books First Glance BENEATH the organized vivacity of our American communities, who is not aware of a blankness, a sterility, a boredom, a despair?" Lewis Mumford asks this question at the end of "The Golden Day: A Study in Ameri- can Experience and Culture" (Boni and Liveright: $2.50), and does not wait for an answer. He does not wait for an answer because he has given one in the form of an explana- tion. His book, which starts from a feeling that life in America is unsatisfactory today, is an investigation of our past undertaken with a view to discovering in the first place whether we ever were happier than we are now and in the second place whether, if there is a reason for our spiritual condition, that reason can be followed back to its roots. Mr. Mumford did something of the same sort of thing in "Sticks and Stones," taking his departure there from architecture as it has revealed, generation in and generation out, our weaknesses and our occasional strength. Here his material is literature. In appearance a series of essays on Ameri- can authors who would be significant in such a study, "The Golden Day" is in reality all one essay, all one cry of hope mingled with despair. It is intensely unified — wherefrom comes its charm and wherein lies its error. Mr. Mumford's error is that he too much suffers in the presence of error — which he defines in too strict terms. Like Van Wyck Brooks, from whom as critic he stems, he makes too fine a demand upon both books and men; and though there is certainly nothing amiss in a beautiful idea — Mr. Mumford's central idea is a veritable gem, polished

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602 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 and radiant — it is permissible to point out that history needs to be written with a rougher hand. Mr. Mumford for evidence that America once possessed a literature which expressed the single portion of her soul he likes to This is the mystical portion — the portion hav- do with those states of being in which the whole is transformed in the mind and made to there with a pure white light. Mr. Mumford dis- - under the head' of error every book which has failed to participate in this vision or has succeeded incompletely. American experience is, and the answer takes him hack a long way into the history of pean culture, of which we seemed to promise an im- ment. He asks next what the American mind, work- 1 passionately, can do with such experience, and the answer takes him up and down our literature. His ••lost American literature is that it has done nothing with American experience; the pioneer, far from facing the Nature he came to seek, merely evaded society ivage; and since the Civil War we have ibauched ourselves with externals been prag- moment — or gone mooning back to Europe, which, unfortunately, is dead, for relics culture e in our museums. Only once, in a n Hay which lasted twenty years, did we see life day of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, I Melville. Those men opened their eyes and America which we have not yet I am far from denying the importance of Mr. Mum- golden five, hut I am far from believing thai they or any other five are a cluster of touchstones by which earlier and later men can he evaluated. Mr. Mumford, blinded by their light, mak< ry mess of Jonathan Edwards. Mark Twain, and Theodore Dreiser, to name only authors whom his eyes were not built to see. "Emer- son achieved nakedness," he insists with some pleasure. There is the trouble. I like clot ties, too, even when they absurd and awry. Mark Van DOREN The Complete I)ie-I lard Ry the Very Rev. W. R. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's. Th( n World Series. Charles Scribner's Sons. $'.1. T~A KAN INGE has for many years enjoyed distinction as a *■ ' churchman and a scholar. Recently, however, he has de- the mystics, whose thought he interpreted so admirably, and has devoted some part of his talents to journalism. In exploited a very profit- able vein. His specialty is gloom — prophetic gloom. lie essays to be the Jeremiah of the British Empire, bewailing its lost glories and prophesying its downfall; hut, unlike his ancient prototype, he is not stoned by his fellow-countrymen. There is no martyrdom coming to him, unless the enthusiastic approval of the Daily Mail be counted as such; only generous royalties. For the English have always rewarded and honored those who tell them they are degenerate and their country going to the dogs. In this newest addition to the Modern World Series the Dean sets out to give a picture of England today as he sees it. His artistic methods are simple and sweeping. He has no use for half-tones. In the center of his picture is an oak-tree. It has been a splendid tree in its time, but now it is looking dis- tinctly wilted. Round the trunk and reaching into the upper branches climb parasitic plants, nasty poisonous-looking things. The biggest of these is an insidious red creeper labeled Syndi- calist Trade Unionism. Another plant with luxuriant, gaudy foliage is indicated as Roman Catholicism, while a third bears an unmistakable resemblance to the shamrock. Round the base of the tree and gnawing busily at its roots is an army of re- pellent-looking animals, instantly recognizable as of Russian origin. A little to one side is another tree — a very curious specimen. It apparently began life as an oak, but it has some- how turned into a hybrid unlike any other tree in the world. It is very healthy, nevertheless, with a profusion of golden leaves, and it is growing so rapidly that, although younger than the oak, it is considerably higher and is robbing its neighbor of light and air. In the background of this tragic picture is the setting sun trailing clouds of glory; the fore- ground, in strong contrast, consists simply of a dee]), dec p, black shadow. In creating this masterpiece the Dean has made no pretense of an objective approach. "I have tried," he says in his preface, "to be candid; I have made no attempt whatever to be impartial." And indeed he hasn't! His main thesis is that England is tottering to her fall because of "the anti social and unpatriotic sectionalism which is the curse of industrial civilization." So far it is possible, if not to agree, at hast to sympathize. "Unpatriotic sectional- ism" is a phrase that might cover a multitude of sinners — coal- owners, for instance. But one soon realizes that the section offensive to the Dean is nothing less than the whole British working class. Since 1HH0 or thereabouts they have deteriorated rapidly. Their days are spent, not in honest toil hut, egged on by those who are [dotting the ruin of industry, in contriving ingenious methods of ca'canny and sabotage. They have used their political enfranchisement to hold the propertied classes to ransom, securing for themselves all manner of doles and pensions. They are reluctant to emigrate (and so relieve the pressure of population at home) "while a grateful country pro- vides them with the means of leading a parasitic existence, battening on the rates and taxes." They breed like rabbits, while the "belter stocks" are so burdened that they have almost ed to reproduce. It is true that at one point the Dean relents slightly. The average worker is not, in himself, anti-social. He is "a good- natured, humorous, kindly, and sensible fellow." But that is irrelevant, because "the syndicalist leaders" ("syndicalist" is a favorite abusive adjective with the Dean; it covers apparently every kind of radical leader from Philip Snowden to Lenin) "have made the discovery that the opinions of the vast uncon- Bcious mass need not be taken into account." These leaders will be amazed to learn that they hold the workers to their sinister purposes by the exercise of an "iron discipline." They are the more easily able to do so because "the army of rebellion" includes, in addition to the unconscious mass of decent, working- men, a horde of the submerged — "a large number of degenerates who might have been eliminated under ruder social conditions, but who are now encouraged to live and multiply. Some of these are imbecile, neurotic, half-insane; others are chronic invalids; others are psychopaths with some morbid strain in their char- acter." This formidable force is led by "renegades from the ranks of civilization. These leaders are often brilliant men with a fatal moral and mental twist, really insane, but with a frightful method in their madness." I have quoted this description of the British labor mo ment because it illustrates perfectly the turgid depths to which the Dean can fall when he forgets that he is a Christian, a scholar, and a gentleman. One cannot argue with the Dean, for he lives in too remote a world; one can only be a little sorry for him. His primary grudge is against heaven, which decreed that he should be born into a twentieth-century civilization equipped with an excellent but entirely out-of-date mind. How happy he might have been as an eminent ecclesiastic of the first Georgian era! Then there was none of this silly talk about democracy; industrialism had not yet cast its shadow and per-

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Dec. 1, 1926] The Nation 603 verted the proletariat by cheapening the luxuries which were the prerogative of the wealthy and well born; Americans were still colonists and of no account at that. What a pleasant world! Society was an efficient and well-oiled mechanism and there was no need for a dean to neglect his cloistered studies to point out what was wrong with the works. Dean Inge is so completely overwhelmed by his prejudices that although he is terribly in earnest his book cannot be taken as a serious contribution to current politics. As a revelation of the complete die-hard it is indeed worth skimming. As an attempt to carry out the purposes of the Modern World Series it is nonsense. One must regret that the editor and the publish- ers of the series, which has included some admirable volumes, should have been tempted by a big name to lower their standards. Keith Hutchison Mr. Mencken's Best Prejudices: Fifth Scries. By H. L. Mencken. Alfred A. Knopf. 2.50. Notes on Democracy. By H. L. Mencken. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. MR. MENCKEN has achieved, in spite of himself, more than a measure of popularity. To admire him ceased, several years ago, to confer distinction, and accordingly all those who would rather be wrong than go with the crowd ceased to admire. It has become smart to say that he is overrated; it is merely flat to call him great; and yet the fact remains that he has grown steadily in strength and that he is, today, one of the very best writers America has produced — grotesque, of course, but with as good a right as Mark Twain ever had to be so if such is his nature. With the content of the two present volumes — the one a collection of short pieces upon very varied subjects, the other a Rabelaisian disquisition which begins with a de- lighted analysis of the moral and intellectual depravity of the average man and proceeds to a rapturous account of the absurdi- ties of our national political life — I have no immediate concern; but with their manner I have, for it is Mr. Mencken at his very fine best. This style of his seems easy to imitate. Many have imagined that they had caught the knack when they had sprinkled their pages with a few favorite words like "bilge" and gaudy" and with perhaps a phrase or two from the German as well; but imitation Mencken is very sorry stuff indeed, and the reason is simply that from the diverse and apparently base elements which make up his style he has forged a weapon — sword or bludgeon — which only he can wield. Menckenese is not something to be put on or discarded at will but, instead, like every true style, the perfect expression of a mind and temper. It is not sufficient to have the desire to share his popularity or even the willingness to slash as he slashes. To write like him one would have to have, in addition, his thoughts and his feelings; on: would have to share his exuberant interest in the contemporary scene and catch at the same time the glad irresponsibility which enables him to find in fools nothing but amusement; one would have, in a word, not merely to imitate or admire but actually to be Mencken. And hardest of all to catch would be the joyousness of his polemic. "Bitter" is the adjective which has been chosen to describe on the jacket the book on democracy, but it is just one of the most essential of his characteristics that he is never near enough to frustration to be bitter. The words flow so freely and the epithets are so adequate that emotion is purged away and he is, as a writer, too triumphant to be bitter. Damn him up, take away his superlative gift of words, make him feel that his contempt was greater than he could express, and he would grow savage; but as long as his language does not fail vitupera- tion will keep him sweet and laughter, not rage, will continue to be the fundamental note of his work. Every fresh outrage to sense which he can discover adds to the hilarity of his mood because it furnishes another occasion to which he knows he can rise. The worse things can be shown to be the more obvious are his high spirits, and thus, to him, even democracy is justified by its absurdity. Of Bryan's failure to get himself elected president he says: Dullness has got into the White House, and the smell of cabbage boiling, but there is at least nothing to com)' to the intolerable buffoonery that went on in Tennes The President of the United States may be an ass. but at least he doesn't believe that the earth is square. The Golden Text is not painted weekly on the White House wall, and there is no need to keep ambassadors waiting while Pastor Simpson of Smythville prays for rain in the Blue Boom. We have escaped .something — by a narrow margin but still we escaped. One wonders if he is really glad. My case must rest ultimately upon a quotation, and I choose one — from the "In Memoriam" on Bryan in the "Prejudices" — which is quieter than much of Mr. Mencken's writing. It has its touches of the grotesque but it does not depend upon them alone. In it, besides the humor, is the steady march of great prose: the quiet, confident progression which is the mark of the strong writer who knows his strength. Of its kind it is as fine as anything written in America. Here it is: There was something peculiarly fitting in the fact that his last days were spent in a one-horse Tennessee village, and that death found him there. The man felt at home in such simple and Christian scenes. He liked people who sweated freely, and were not debauched by the refinements of the toilet. Making his progress up and down the Main Street of little Dayton, surrounded by gaping primates from the upper valleys of the Cumberland Range, his coat laid aside, his bare arms and hairy chest shining damply, his bald head sprinkled with dust — so accoutred and on display he was obviously happy. He liked getting up early in the morning, to the tune of cocks crowing on the dunghill. He liked the heavy, greasy victuals of the farmhouse kitchen. He liked country lawyers, country pastors, all country peo- ple. He liked country sounds and country smells. I believe this liking was sincere — perhaps the only sincere thing in the man. . . . The simian gabble of the cross-roads was not gabble to him, but wisdom of an occult and superior sort. . . . And toward the end, as he gradually forsook mundane politics for more ghostly concerns, they began to elevate him in their hierarchy. When he died he was the peer of Abraham. His old enemy, Wilson, aspiring to the same white and shining robe, came down with a thump. But Bryan made the grade. His place in Tennessee hagiog- raphy is secure. If the village barber saved any of his hair, then it is curing gall-stones down there today. Joseph Wood Krutch State and Government The Modern State. By R. M. Maclver. Oxford University Press. $7. NO student of political science can afford to leave this book unread. It presents, in reasonable limits, an admirable and suggestive view of the whole range of problems raised by the modern state; and there are few of them, indeed, upon which it has not something wise to say. I am tempted, indeed, to say that there has been no book quite like it since T. H. Green. It lacks something of the latter's superb moral insight; and it does not dig so deeply. But it has breadth, learning, and clarity. It is written in an intei-esting style, and it has the great quality of raising the ultimate questions in a significant way. Were I a university president (there is no danger of the event) who de- sired to have political philosophy taught in the grand style, I should not leave Professor Maclver long at Toronto. The period since the war has seen a large effort at the revision of accepted notions in political science. In almost every country there have arisen groups of thinkers who insist that the complex of powers summarized under the name of sovereignty cannot be thought of in the old way. Its defenders have retorted

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604 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 with vehemence; and the debate has now assumed formidable proportions. Professor Maclver may be said to occupy a middle position between the contestants. On the one hand he insists on the unique position of the state as a legal fact; on the other he admits that this is a historical category subject to change in a changing world. His method is to ti-ace the development of the state through the historic period, to seek from its history the clue to its powers and functions, to discuss the bearing of form and organization on its purpose and operation, and finally to explain what he believes to be the truth in the present chaos of conflicting opinions. My, his position is somewhat as follows. He will have nothing to do with the equation of state and society. The state is an organ of the community the function of which is to main- tain "the universal external conditions of social order" by means of coercive power. It has the authority necessary to this end, but no more. It is not sovereign in the sense of being omni- competent. Other bodies are as original and real as itself; and, like them, it is dependent upon the opinion of its members for its well-being. The order it maintains docs not mean merely the absence of violence. It is an order which embodies the protection and development of personality; all, accordingly, that affects these comes within the sphere of the state. Professor Maclver discusses the mechanisms it requires for this purpose; and he concludes, broadly, in favor of representative democracy based upon the party system as the most useful and satisfactory. He denies that the state is merely power. He will have nothing to do with theories of contract. The state for him is the agent of society in the creation of rights; and he faces the dilemma of how a power which c.eates rights can itself have obligations by arguing that behind the state is the community, and that it is the common interest of the latter which gives the state-power its nourishment. The community, in other words, as the source of organization gives to all its instruments the value which enables them to live. The state has high value, but upon the grim condition of deserving it. Its power is subjc :tive, is set by men's opinions, and is not independent of them. The more the state lives by winning their allegiance, the greater its power, because the greater thereby is the unity of society. Much of Professor Maclver's thesis I should venture to o from a different angle. I see no reason why anyone should respect the state as such; it is entitled to my allegiance only by what it shows itself able to perform. I am entitled to judge it, and, if need be, to condemn it, because, in the last analysis, it lives neither for nor to itself but to me. The great , as I see it, of Professor Maclver's book is that, if states the results of what it is now customary to call the pluralists in sociological terms. If I indicate some difficulties that I feel, these are rather problems upon which I am anxious for enlight- enment as to Professor Maclver's views than attacks upon his position. I cannot, in the first place, understand what he means by words and phrases like "solidarity" or "common interest"; no unity of any kind in society except what is put there by men, and I see none possible of achievement except by a complete reconstruction of the foundations of the present order. Professor Maclver seems to me to write as though there is somehow a unity in society which a force called "progress" or "evolution" is unfolding; I cannot see that this is so. In the second place, he seems to me to use the term "state" where a political scientist would often replace it by "government"; and in those instances the functions be attributes to the state seem to me to bear much less real relation to the facts than he ad- mits. And, as a corollary to this view, he seems to lay far too little emphasis upon the importance in the social order of the system of property. It is, in fact, from the rights annexed to property that a social order takes its color. Society may make its impact upon the state; but the state also makes society, and the whole process of life is set in the context of what its prop- erty-system implies. Rights, for instance, which Professor Mac- lver admits the state exists to maintain are always, in fact, relative to property, whether it is freedom of discussion, equality before the courts, or a living wage that is involved. The result of unequal property is, accordingly, that the state exists actually to protect unequal rights and in "maintaining the universal con- ditions of social order" it is, again in fact, maintaining unequal rights. This is the great truth in the communist answer to the classical political philosophy. There is a real sense in which the modern state is substantially the "executive committee of the capitalist class." To those of us who believe that the present system involves the class-war as its inherent logic, this aspect of the problem is urgent, and needs more discussion than Profes- sor Maclver has devoted to it. Harold J. Laski Seeing Things A Million and One Nights: The History of the Motion Picture. By Terry Ramsay. Simon and Schuster. Two volumes. $10. "V J OT so long ago when you lived in Cairo (111.) or Brazil -^ (Ind.) you had to content your desire for the play with attendance at heart-rending performances of "Hamlet" or "The Minister's Sweetheart" given by incidental traveling companies dignified with the poetic name of hams. Now you can live in Carthage (Ind.) or Centralia (Mo.) and observe the Fall of Babylon or the domestic habits of pythons or "This Side of Paradise" or the other side of Dante's "Inferno" or the impres- ive public appearance of Calvin Coolidge in a silk hat. It is all the fault of the moving pictures that dull lives may witness the blood-lust of romance and go on vicarious galleons to the uttermost parts of the sea and watch Douglas Fairbanks take himself seriously as a black pirate. It is common enough to find deep-browed intellectuals who deny art to the moving pictures and weep for the glad times when little children read the complete works of Charles Dickens instead of shivering at the great stone face of William Hart. They protest that people no longer read books or go to the theater. They get as much shocked at the scandalous private i ' of Hollywood mummers as the good Elizabethan burghers got shocked at the abuses of the theater and the ribaldries of the Mermaid Tavern. They see Douglas Fairbanks turn the Three Musketeers into acrobats or read that "Cyprienne" is to be called "Don't Tell the Wife"; and they go away quite angry. They believe ingenuously that the public which now adores so many silly movies really did read Shakespeare and Meredith once upon a time. They love the blood-boltered Elizabethan dramatists and refuse to be serious about "The Perils of Pauline" or "The Iron Claw" or "The Exploits of Elaine" or the other heart-shuddering serials of the golden age. The most casual glance at Mr. Ramsay's pages will of course prove the intellectual's case against the motion picture industry, but also it may remind him that at its best the motion picture does what no book or play or picture can ever do. It can show action in visible terms of motion; and even if it can not plumb the soul or write blank verse it can body forth panorama and landscape and mountain range and medieval battle and the unhappy lives of Keystone cops on a scale and magnificence impossible in the theater. It may be no more than gesture and pantomime; and yet "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is just as grisly and artistic as Poe's "Mask of the Red Death"; and the Babylon episodes in "Intolerance" and the sea-fight in "Cabiria" dazzle the eye and rouse the blood to an excite- ment at least as great as the best pages of Dumas and Tolstoi. That is the final argument for the art of the movies. I for one am merely bored by Mr. Ramsay's multitudinous references to every lawsuit and personal interview and salary contract that ever happened for the past fifty years. It is much more chronology than it is history. It is amusing enough, and often Mr. Ramsay is extremely funny and penetrating, but it is too choked with heaped facts like faggots piled up to hide the face of a cathedral. It tells everything and thereby it does

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 605 not tell enough. It is a mine of information; but I wish that some one would analyze fully the change which has come over American motion pictures since the golden age of the crook serials to the bourgeois morality which now dominates the screen. No one can deny all the bloated finance and corruption and evil which have festered in the motion pictures just as they fester in any art where the producer or publisher wants artists to serve as pimps to the lowest grade of public taste. No one has suffered more than I have suffered from uncounted spec- tacles of incredible dulness and silliness. Yet I cannot see why the average novel or play or biography is any less corrupt and imbecile than the average motion picture. What else can you expect in an art accessible to everybody? What else can you hope for in a land of sumptuary laws and democratic ideals of art? That is no argument against "Intolerance" or "Peter the Great" or "The Last Laugh" or "The Mark of Zorro" any more than Harold Bell Wright is an argument against Theodore Dreiser. After all, to read even the best pages of "War and Peace" is not quite the same thing as seeing those terrible battle pictures in the "Birth of a Nation." It is one function of every great novelist to make you see. I think the artist himself would be the last person to deny the virtue of an alien art which can do things he cannot do and show so poignantly all the gestures of visible life caught in the net of passionate action. Donald Douglas Mr. Eddison's Second Styrbiorn the Strong. By E. R. Eddison. Albert and Charles Boni. $2. OOMETHING of the elder Norse hung over the battles of "The ^ Worm Ouroboros"; here we have it neat in the author's own saga built up on the fragments of information available con- cerning the great son and nephew of the Swede-Kings Olaf and Eric, who lived, harried, and gloriously died in twenty years of the tenth century. The first and least thing which the reader notes is a manner of discourse: how the writer reproduces the tones and cadences of the bards, talking their talk without accent or self-consciousness the while he pictures for modern readers scenes, looks into subtleties of motive and character, as to which through use or indifference those ancients might have remained silent. More important in itself than with reference to any such standard is this astounding prose, changing hue with its changing subjects, flashing here and there with half-forgotten words which, like steel that for a while has rested, have thereby a keener edge; the word, moreover, the phrase, the incident, held back, timed, balanced, then thrown unerringly where it inevita- bly belongs and utterly realizes its value. That is method only, but this, a small book, is a spacious legend. If, as may be, Mr. Eddison is oppressed by the petty and transitory, he will not do it the honor of an offended repro- duction in his pages. If of the figures — virtuous or evil — that stalk through those pages too few by our experience are meanly so or unworthy a share of their creator's love, he errs on the neglected side, and we have need of more who are acquainted with nobility, to remind us of its lineaments. But hastily be it said that these are men and women of flesh and blood, and vio- lent, headstrong, proud, or surly enough in all conscience to satisfy all demands of the current realism save that one re- jected. "A strange unlucky tale," full of the sea and the vikings' ships and the tall, arrogant, eager, figure of Styrbiorn drawing love and hate from every hand, shining in the light and at last, to a curious wrench of the heart, darkened by the dust of Fyris- field: to a wrench for whose pain one is somehow jealous to the point of rejecting and regretting the comfort of the magnificent final picture, Valhalla. Mr. Eddison himself has written else- where: "I have known Juss and Gorice for some 35 years; Styrbiorn, etc., only 25." Few minds could have afforded space at once for more than the vast round conception of "The Worm," and "Stybiorn the Strong" is distinguished where that, it is submitted, was great. But distinguished it is, and of a royal breed apart. In a handsome volume one regrets only the fewness of Keith Henderson's designs, their reproduction without a credit line, and the anonymous anachronism of Arthurian knights in panoply on the jacket. Abbe NlLES Fremont Older and Jack Black My Own Story. By Fremont Older. The Macmillan Company. $3.50. You Can't Win. By Jack Black. The Macmillan Company. $2. T N San Francisco they tell you that Fremont Older first A moved heaven and earth to ^et Abe Ruef into the peniten- tiary, and then moved earth and heaven in a vain effort to get him out. Now, they add, Fremont Older rarely sits down to a meal without having some ex-convicts at the table. At this point the tales diverge, one man telling you that Older is a dangerous anarchist and another insisting that he is one of the saints of democracy. In "My Own Story" Mr. Older tells how he developed from "a young man with a nose for news" into a self-righteous crusader bent on throwing grafters into jail, and how, finally, he developed into that gentler being who said: "I shall never forget the morning that Ruef started for the penitentiary. All the bitterness and hatred of all the years of pursuit came into my mind to reproach me. I thought, 'Is this success or is it utter failure? Is this a real victory or an appalling defeat? After all the years of mad pursuit, is this the harvest? The imprisonment and branding of one poor, miserable, helpless human being.' " To this ramping Western editor long accustomed to wield- ing a newspaper as a spiked club there came, then, a vision such as came to Francis of Assisi when he met the leper, or such as came to the man-hunter on the road to Damascus. But instead of founding a monastic order or a new religion Mr. Older began, with that "nose for news" still guiding him, to make his newspaper a confessional where the poor and broken and outcast told their stories to all San Francisco. There, after some years, he joined them with his own story, which, after becoming part of the legend of San Francisco and being read with eagerness in a limited edition by students of journalism and politics, is now a book for the public. The rise in California of the Progressive movement which resulted in Hiram Johnson's governorship and senatorship is told in "My Own Story," as it was the prosecution of Abe Ruef, the San Francisco boss, which brought to a head the indignation resulting in the successful drive of 1910 against the Southern Pacific's political domination of the State. There are many famous names in this portion of the story. Scheming, manipu- lating, hating, electioneering, lambasting scorch the pages. Not earthquake, not fire, could halt the ruthless charge of Mr. Older and his crusading associates, nor could the corruption they fought be checked by the ruin of a city. Here the tale moves like a whirlwind against a background of conflagration. Turning from the relatively respectable political world, in the latter portion of his book Mr. Older tells story after story of burglars, dope fiends, women of the streets, of their agonies and clutchings after happiness, and, only too often, of their failure to be anything in the end but what some strange twist of soul had made them from the beginning. But Mr. Older does not walk in this museum of the underworld like a Barnum pointing out freaks. He loves and sympathizes with each one of these distorted creatures. One of the outcasts was Jack Black, whom Older found he could not classify with other criminals he had known, declaring: :He is in a class by himself. That is why he is so interesting." When Older first met Black, the latter had lain six years in a San Francisco jail, neglected and forgotten because the records of his case had been burned in the great fire of 1906. Black

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606 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 was under sentence of twenty-five years for highway robbery, and so did not press his case. If he got out of the jail he would go to the penitentiary, so why bother? But he was given his chance to reform, and he reformed. For years now he has been librarian of the paper of which Mr. Older is editor, the San Francisco Call. "You Can't Win" is a story told, as Robert Herrick says in the foreword, by a man who has "an instinct for realities." Jack Black tells his tale straight on, marching with a firm tread and with very little sentimentalizing through an account of highway robberies, safe-crackings where his fellow-yegg was killed by pursuers, penitentiary horrors, violent deaths by acci- dent in boxcars and by murder beside jungle campfires, and opium dens. The tale takes hold of the teller and he sweeps along, never asking whether this or that incident will help or hinder the propaganda of his friends, the prison reformers. But despite the fascination of these picaresque adventurings, the most nobly exciting thing in the book is the revelation it gives of the unbreakable spirit of Jack Black himself. Here is a man tramping the most devious byways, but always with his head held up and his spirit firm within him. There is no moral to the tale save that some souls are strong, unquenchably so. R. L. Burgess What Price Happiness? of a Happy Life. By William Lawrence. Houghton Mifflin Company. $5. HPHIS book is aptly named; Bishop Lawrence has had "a * happy life." Bo*n to the purple, raised to the lawn, heir of wealth, culture, social standing, dowered with physical health, personal charm, a good mind, successful as the world counts success, companion of the great and powerful, now coming to life's close with . . . that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friend , what wonder that the Bishop confesses he has been "blessed beyond measure." Were this the life-story of any other than a distinguished Christian leader, we should read it with joy, perhaps with envy, certainly with admiration. Bishop Lawrence round his ap- pointed work early, and has labored at it diligently through more than fifty years. His chief thought lias always been his diocese, and in this vineyard he has brought forth abundant harvests. Outside he has been busy also, raising the Harvard End wment and the Church Pension Funds, sitting on inumer- able boards and committees, participating in public- affairs of large importance, traveling widely for business as well as pleasure. This man has been no idler. fatal word!- there is something wrong. What is it if not a complacency, not with himself and his work, for the Bishop is a modest man, but with the world in which his lot has been so happily cast? What right has any religious leader to be on the whole so contented with things as they are, to adapt himself so easily to the wealth and power of his time, to move so easily among politicians (Henry Cabot Lodge), millionaires (J. P. Morgan), kings (Edward VII), to be so conspicuously a member of a class and that the upper class of such a society as ours? There have been great labor troubles in the Bishop's day — one unforgettable strike in his own feudal barony (Law- rence, Massachusetts) — but, barring a few casual lines, they are not mentioned. There have been vast political struggles for larger freedom and fuller life for the people but they do not intrude upon this world. There have been three wars — and they are received as natural, even glorious events, and valorously sup- ported. Not since the fall of Rome has there been such a rock- ing of the social fabric, such a challenge to civilization, as in this age — yet one feels scarce a tremor in this narrative. Bishop Lawrence has lived a happy life primarily because he has adapted himself successfully to his narrow, highly pros- perous, perfectly protected social group. He has accepted the world as good because it has been good to him. Christian leaders have not always been so conventional, and not always therefore so "happy." John Haynes Holmes A Philosophical Poem Love-life in Nature. By Wilhelm Bolsche. A. and C. Boni. Two volumes. $10. J3R0PHECY is doubly an act of daring. The prophet must be strong in the loneliness of his vision; but courage also is required of him who has heard the seer, and will cry "Lo! it is here. The day is come!" Santayana, finally evaluating Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe, beheld them fulfilled in a fourth philosophical poet, who would add Goethe's immediate sense of human experience to the Roman poet's conception of nature, and who would comprehend in a cosmic epic man's fullest knowledge of the universe, and the widest diversity of human values. "Throw open to the young poet the infinity of nature: let him feel the precariousness of life, the variety of purposes, civilizations, and religions even upon this little planet; let him l race the triumphs and follies of art and philosophy, and their perpetual resurrection." Should that poet have genius, "a taste for the world in which he lived and a clean view of it," he might write the great poem of Nature, having the double insight of Lucretius and Goethe. He could "reconstruct the shattered picture of the world. He should live in the continual presence of all experience and respect it; he should at the same time understand nature, the ground of that experience; and he should also have a delicate sense for the ideal echoes of his own passions, and for all the colors of his possible happi- ness." Wilhelm Bolsche is this poet, and "Love-life in Nature" is the great philosophical poem of naturalism. De Amorum Natura. That title reveals the altered meta- physical perspective. Lucretius wrote of the things of nature, dead bits of "solid singleness," the atoms that in their local and universal movement produced mechanically the changing aspects of substance. It is the procession of these changes that Lucretius draws upon his canvas. This is a picture for Democritus and Newton, but not for Darwin. Biology and psychology have gone beyond the old physics, have added to the picture in terms which are not incompatible but which rather enlarge and transform it. The treatment of the great suns and stellar systems, of the earth and of all that is thereon, as organisms which have been formed from other organisms, as living beings which have a pattern of growth and decay, and a force to recreate new forms — this is the metaphysical outlook of our age, based in the biological sciences. It is of all Nature thus conceived that Bolsche writes, and he has chosen as his central theme the fact of love which is present in all natural life as the fact of creation and recreation, love in the sense of life itself governed by its essence, yearning to live and increase life. Bolsche has written this epic, as Lucretius did, with the concrete panorama forever in the foreground; never, on the other hand, blurring the magnificently clear outlines of the whole. But in the two thousand years between them more has changed than viewpoint. Lucretius had to learn only what Democritus and Epicurus could teach; but Bolsche faced, and has mastered, the incomparably greater task of rendering the vaster store of our knowledge of the universe and of man in a coherent form, not only accurate before scientific standards but throughout transcending mere investigation and reasoning in the achievement of insight, or what Santayana calls "theory — a steady contemplation of all things in their order and worth." It is for this reason that Bolsche is a philosophical poet, having turned "his practical and passionate imagination on the order of all things, or on anything in the light of the whole." The fullest enumeration would fail to indicate the diversity of the particulars which Bolsche has informed with the significance of order. Perhaps it will suffice to say that

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 607 he has employed the materials afforded him by astronomy, astral physics, physical chemistry, bio-chemistry, geology, paleontology, all of the biological sciences, cytology, proto- zoology, genetics, embryology, psychology, and anthropology. This survey is no mere gesture in the direction of science. The facts are numberless. On the other hand, Bolsche never loses his fundamental philosophical attitude. "The material that science gives us," he says, "is absolutely free. All you have to do is accept it. What use you make of it is your own affair." But even more than that. The poet of our civilization must encompass not only its knowledge but its wisdom and its art, especially if his theme be Nature, for man and all his works c*innot be divorced from the main currents of life. Human culture cannot be reported as science can, by inventory of fact. It must be reflected as in the "Divine Comedy." "Love-life in Nature" succeeds here, catching the values of art and philosophy in its cosmic network, and making them luminous with the meaning of the whole. The reader can be instructed here only in the most gen- eral structure of the work. Like a great symphony it plays myriad variations upon a few inescapable motifs. The open- ing theme is the dominant, the evolution of love-life, of organic form and creative force, from the day-fly, to use Bolsche's metaphor, to the Madonna. The elements later to be encoun- tered are here intimated. Succeeding sections develop the out- lines of this epic story of the growth of worlds within worlds, always keeping the meaning of human love as the focal point of the vision, and enriching that meaning by the accumulated force of factual reiteration in endless variety of detail. The method Bolsche employs in doing this is that of a kaleidoscope. It brings picture after picture into view without obvious ar- rangement and yet the sequence moves onward to the final completed view in ever-broadening circles of comprehension. Mr. Cyril Brown's translation suggests the passion and sweep that the original German prose must possess with even greater dignity. Bolsche through 1,400 pages is in conversation with his reader concerning love, and the exposition always maintains the personal directness of that manner. Even more extraordinary is the way in which complicated metaphors are elaborated, with clear accurate imagery sustained for pages. It is this power which enables Bolsche to substitute the mag- nifications of light-imagery for the microscope, and to throw immense spaces into defined perspective. Without suffering confusion or aimlessness, the reader travels through aeons of time, through stellar distances, and to all nooks and crannies of the terrestrial globe, and witnesses the wildly super- abundant variegation of life upon this planet in all of the concrete phases of its cyclical manifestation. This is undoubtedly a great work. To evaluate it thor- oughly either as a work of art or as a philosophical expression would require more extended criticism. Enough if to Bolsche's prospective readers it be suggested that here is an epic over whose composition the spirits of Plato, Lucretius, Spinoza, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Darwin must have presided. Mortimer J. Adler Below Par Congress: An Explanation. By Robert Luce. Harvard Uni- versity Press. $1.50. '"pHE substance of this book, originally prepared as a series of *■ five lectures on the Godkin Foundation at Harvard, may not inaptly be characterized as a plea of confession and avoidance. Surveying the everyday work of Congress from the standpoint of an experienced member of the House of Representatives, Mr. Luce does not seem to go far beyond asking the reader: "What would you do if the job were yours?" Congress, he tells us at the outset, "is not to any material extent an originating body," far the larger part of the bills that come before it being pre- pared by, or in response to the wishes of, interests or depart- ments which want this or that done. It could not well be much of an originating body, however, even if it so desired, since the aggregate of its knowledge is hardly sufficient to compass all that the public or the interests want, while to pass expert judg- ment upon the details of all that is asked would be impossible. Debate on the floor is grievously restricted, what is said by members at public hearings is largely for public consumption, and the real work is done in committees behind closed doors, where inconspicuous members shine; but the calendar is over- crowded, the really important committees arc swamped, and amendments carried in open session are, on the average, few in number and of no great consequence. Mr. Luce enumerates the arguments in favor of a budget system mainly to refute them, but he nevertheless believes in the system, defends Congress against the charge of extravagance, shows how many formalities must be complied with before the lid of the pork barrel can be lifted, and insists that the real struggle for economy is between the President and the depart- ment officials. For none of these shortcomings does there appear to be an assured remedy, although Mr. Luce, like a number of other writers who seem still to feel the spell of Gamaliel Brad- ford, thinks it worth while to discant upon the possible advan- tages of seating Cabinet members in either house. The book is full of information, but it does not dispell the conviction that while the average quality of members of Congress may perhaps he as high today as ever, as Mr. Luce feels confident that it is, their efficiency as a legislature is a long way below par. William MacDonald Disraeli and Gladstone Benjamin Disraeli. By Sir Edward Clarke. The Macmillan Company. $2.50. Disraeli and Gladstone. By D. C. Somervell. George H. Doran Company. $3.50. WHILE few Englishmen will agree with Sir Edward Clarke that his hero was "the greatest Englishman who was born and died in the nineteenth century," most will admit that Dis- raeli was the most romantic figure in the drab politics of that century. The long official biography of the statesman-novelist will be read in America only by expert historians, but many readers may be found for this vivid and entertaining story of the young Jew who, by sheer dint of ability and persistence, forced himself into the leadership of the Conservative Party, remodeled its policy, set the nation on its imperialist career, and won the heart of Queen Victoria and the almost abject venera- tion of the aristocracy of England. The political struggles and issues will be of little interest to most readers in comparison with the problem of personality — the combination here of an extravagant fop and poseur with an enthusiast and tireless toiler in the art of political intrigue and management. A radical, a Chartist in his early sympathies, and the author of "Sybil," a truly revolutionary novel, Disraeli never shed the sort of sentimental socialism of his youthful outlook, but simply allowed it to be displaced by new enthusiasms better accommodated to the conveniences of his career. The passages here chosen from his speeches to illustrate his extraordinary vigor and felicity of expression go far to explain the mastery of the House of Commons he attained in a period when oratory was less suspect than now. He spoke for hours upon intricate issues without a note, but with careful preparation and with lively sallies of wit and invective. Less verbose than his great opponent, Gladstone, his utterances better stand the test of time, and Sir Edward Clarke can rightly claim for them that they contain a better and fuller exposition of modern British Conservatism than can be found elsewhere. There was private romance as well as political in Disraeli's life, and we have here a delightful picture of his happy married life with an elderly wife, together with the extraordinary philandering of his later years.

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608 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 In Mr. Somervell's brilliant duo-biography Americans will find all the essential facts of the public careers of the great Mid-Victorian antagonists, with some penetrating glances at their strangely contrasted characters. How the "rising hope of the stern unbending Tories" became the accepted leader of British liberalism for thirty years without shedding any of his deeper conservative convictions, and how the dandiacal Jew radical novelist obtained an ascendancy over the aristocratic conservatives of England which passed into worship and is still enshrined in "Primrose Day" — this pair of paradoxes fur- nishes a most illuminating commentary upon what upon the surface seems the haphazard opportunism of British politics. Gladstone was au fait a moralist and preacher, Disraeli an actor-artist, and each found a place for his peculiar gifts in the least expected quarter. Disraeli's was the more extraor- dinary achievement, Gladstone's the more serviceable. Each had remarkable intellectual powers, but Disraeli's wit gives a higher survival value to his utterances. Even in the realm of literature Disraeli's "Sybil," and perhaps his "Coningsby," will live, whereas the volumes upon Homer and theology which occu- pied Gladstone's leisure never achieved more than a passing ■ s d'estime. J- A. HOBSON Man versus Nature The Book of Marriage. Arranged and Edited by Count Hermann Keyserling. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $5. <<yN every society, its civilization is the territory conquered 1 in its contest with nature." So Tagore writes in his con- tribution to this polyphonic symphony of Count Keyserling. "It seems that in the age which has now come upon us, man is giving up the desperate hope of victoriously maintaining this constant struggle. He would now make his peace with Nature — and that duty has been intrusted to science. But the mar- riage system of every society belongs to an age when, in the parliament of life, man was sitting on the opposition benches against Nature's government. And Nature has ever retaliated against his obstructive tactics. Thus far they have nowhere come to any satisfactory agreement. That is why these ubiquitous attempts at the external regulation of man's most intimate relations have been insulting his best feelings and degrading the greatest of his institutions, all over the world." The majority of the contributors to this symposium are still sitting on the opposition benches against Nature's g< ment. For although their task was supposedly to locate mar- riage in Time and Space and so necessarily involved a descrip- tion of the various attempts at regulation made by different peoples at different times, this task was dealt out to them by a very active director of the polyphonic orchestra, who, among other things, writes in his letters patent that "in spite of its polyphonic modulations . . . the entire work is attuned and should always return," and who therefore fur- nished his collaborators with his definition of the "conventional marriage" to which it should return. "By 'conventional mar- riage' I mean, in accordance with its original and correct sense, marriage as the body of a specific ethos, the ethos of a definite cultural order, of a definite 'standing' in the cosmos." Who further illuminates his definition by interesting sidelights like the following: "The possibility of remarrying every year ruins marriage much more fundamentally than even the most frequent practice of adultery, for the latter does not at all affect marriage as such, but only offends against certain of its components, whereas divorce lays an ax at its roots. . . . Adultery existed all through the ages and was never looked upon as a real danger to marriage, in spite of the stringent protective and deterrent measures that were continually in force, for good reasons of their own; whereas facilitating divorce does seriously threaten marriage." Who asserts that "man is a human being only if he conquers Nature by spirit," and who sees in Nature's retaliations upon man for his obstruc- tive tactics chiefly a superb opportunity for the practice of that renunciation through which alone, he believes, man can attain full spiritual development, though he concedes that "there is no need to marry in order merely to gratify one's passions. Whoever does so sins against himself as a human being." There is also to be considered Marriage as an Eternal Problem, and I advise any reader who may find himself stag- gering faintly through Time and Space to persevere until he reaches this section. For though it is full of contradictions, of non sequiturs and of unscientific dogma, it is its great merit that it touches, sooner or later, on every complexity of this subject so overwhelmingly interesting to the modern man, or let us say the cultivated man, since marriage becomes a prob- lem in proportion as personality develops. "The person who feels inclined to live on a plane too high for him becomes a dangerous fool," Jung observes in a particularly thoughtful essay. Havelock Ellis discusses Love as an Art and various psychologists discuss love as a science. So discord is allowed to function in our polyphonic symphony, but it recurs to its credo that sensual desire is the poorest possible basis for a successful marriage, and the nays have it. Probably with justice, completely as the average modern may disagree with the particular steps that here lead to nihilism. For suppose the act of sexual union were to be considered so much more important than the institution built about its fragility that the latter must be dissolved when it no longer functioned naturally and happily, suppose the spirit were considered more important than the word, suppose, in short, man moved freely from one love to another — how many people would be hardy enough to endure being thrust out naked into the world after each new experience? Obviously the emotional focus that marriage supplies fills so universal a need that if the institution were destroyed today we could expect a new one very like it to take its place tomorrow. It has, in fact, so many mundane justifications that it hardly needs the mystical ones offered by these philosophers, who are perhaps confusing the case for those simple souls, after all the majority in every country, who accept with a literalness — that leads to even greater suffering than the vagaries of the human heart would naturally entail — postulates meant for philosophical con- sumption. For after all these gentlemen do not mean that man should contend too fanatically with nature; only that he should continue to maintain, at whatever cost, the appearance of con- tending. The women contributors, being, as a sex, new to thought and experience, arc all for honesty and courage, for making their peace with Nature. When they have once looked full in that face, they too may recur to a form within whose walls their hesitant spirits may move — a little freely, perhaps, but with shelter at hand. Unless, by chance, they, like some men, are artists. Artists, at least, in life. Alice Beal Parsons Thick and Thin Dark of the Moon. By Sara Teasdale. The Macmillan Company. $1.50. Flying Fish. By Grace Hazard Conkling. Alfred A. Knopf. $2. HPHESE two volumes are as different as a thin single strain *■ of melody and a body of rich orchestration, the purity of the one shining against the intricacy of the second. Yet their writers have in common a constancy to themselves and to the individual qualities which marked them from the start; they have (jrown within the boundaries originally set, though they have not been able to transcend them. Strangely enough the two books leave one with the same feeling — a sense of beauty being captured, of warm response to life — and the feeling that the poet should, and could, have gone one step further. "Dark of the Moon" gleams without color; Miss Teasdale is so engrossed in the pursuit of pure beauty that she seems to peer through a shielding veil at all objects. She is a lithe,

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 609 3££ A' '^S^^-.^S^«^SS«^K^ LANDMARKS OF A MEMORABLE SEASON BIOGRAPHIES EDISON The Man and I lis Work By George S. Bryan "Extraordinarily capa- ble and interesting. It is brief, well planned and not too technical for a popular audience. It explains Edi- son as well, probably, as the man can be explained." — -New Yorlf Sun. Illustrated. $4.00 GUY DE MAUPASSANT A Biographical Study By Ernest Boyd The most absorbing of all Maupassant's stories is the story of his life, as told by Ernest Boyd in this authoritative and pioneering work. Illustrated. $4.00 (Ernest Boyd is the editor of The Collective Novels and Stories of Cuy de Maupassant, complete in eighteen Volumes. Critics have left no doubt that this is the definitive English edition of Maupassant. $2.00 a volume.) (jive a BORZOI BOOK for Christmas Recent BORZOI Fiction MY MORTAL ENEMY By Willa Cither ' 'My Mortal Enemy' is a brilliant study of tem- perament. Nothing that Miss Gather has written — not even A Lost Lady — has more vitality ; and noth- ing is more relentless. . . . 'My Mortal Enemy' shows Miss Cather's power at its most concentrated, and has passages of a clear, etched beauty. It is a fine piece of art." — Atlantic Monthly. THIRD LARGE PRINTING $2.50 THE ORPHAN ANGEL By Elinor Wylie "The story is charming and engrossing even with- out reference to the subtle lacquer of its whimsical satire, without knowledge of its imperceptible height- enings and broadenings and delicious humors, without recognition of its wink at history, which makes it every step of the way a two-faced shield of fancy and I act." — Nen> Yorl( Times. THIRD LARGE PRINTING $2.50 A DEPUTY WAS KING By G. B. Stern, author of ' 'The Matriarch' ' "G. B. Stern is a creative artist indeed. . . . No writer of our generation has achieved anything more marvelous in the way of character building than 'the Matriarch' whom we met in the novel of that name and meet again in 'A Deputy Was King.' ' — Rebecca West. SECONDLARGEPRINTING $2.50 TAMPICO By Joseph Hergesheimer " 'Tampico' is an absorbing picture of the pictur- esque, sanguine and dangerous life." — Burton Rascoe. $2.50 NIGGER HEAVEN By Carl Van Vechten "I read straight through from the first page to the last without putting it down. 'Nigger Heaven' is an amazing thing, vivid, barbaric, and so alive that it bleeds." — Ellen Glasgow. SEVENTH LARGE PRINTING $2.50 TO STIMULATE THINKING ALCOHOL AND LONGEVITY By Raymond Pearl tor of the Institute for Bio- Research, Johns Hopkins rsity, and author of "The Biology of Population Growth." A sound scientific study of the effect of alcohol on the individual and on the race. "There is nothing essen- tial in Pearl's book which is beyond the average com- prehension. It put the bur- den of proof on the prohi- bitionists as never before." — II. M. Parshlcv, in the N. Y. Herald Tribune. $3.50 CONCERNING IRASCIBLE STRONG By William H. Smith "I rejoice that a man has at last been produced who can see the evolu- tionary facts of nature and depict them so clearly, so humorously, with such mathematical precision and accurately in accord with the thought of the best modern thinkers on the sub- jects of evolution and social progress. I believe your book will have a tremen- dous circulation and receive a hearty welcome." —Luther Burbanl(. $3.50 (jive a BORZOI BOOK for Christmas AT ALL BOOKSTORES ALFRED A. KNOPF, Publisher iwm.h 730 FIFTH AVENUE, New Yor. &S&ti£®!S&>&<&£&i£<3 <^£ ;<£%&&<3fc& »£^ When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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610 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 £, :■: ' ': '..' ' ' ^~ " "" -'"";.. iiiiiiiimiii iiiiiiiiimiiiiiimmminmiiimim iiiiiiiiihihiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i win iiiiiiimi iiiiiiiiiizb^^ hiiiihih Havelock Ellis One of the most en- during of all of Ellis' studies, "The Soul of Spain,'' a brilliant volume on Spanish history, psy- chology and charac- ter, is now issued in popular edition, uni- form with "The New- Spirit," i n which Ellis discusses Heine, Whitman, Ibsen, Tolstoi and Diderot. Each, $2.25 Jefferson and Hamilton Claude G. Bowers The intimate account of one of the most memo- rable struggles in history. "No lover of American history can afford to overlook it." — John W. Davis. $5.00 Richard Kane Looks at Life I ruin Ed man A finely tempered philosophy of youth which "puts Mr. Edman in the class of Santayana and James. " — Buffalo limes. $2.50 On the Stream of Travel James Norman J I all A modern Odyssey which takes the wanderer from Tahiti to Iceland. "His prose is smooth and facile, his love for beauty genuine. " — New York Herald Tribune. $.5.00 The Social Worker in a Hospital Ward Elsie IVulkop An invaluable book with comments by Dr. Richard C. Cabot which illuminates the extensive possibilities of social service. $3.00 The Little Blue Man Giuseppe Fanciulli A book for children between 5 and 10 by one of the best Italian story-tellers. Illustrated. $1.75 The Pueblo Boy Cornelia James Cannon A thrilling story of the Spanish conquest of America with a sound historical background. Ages 8 to 14. Illustrated. $2.00 Letters of a Roman Gentleman Arthur P. McKinlay A particularly happy selection of Cicero's letters which gives a classic picture of this very human and very modern Roman orator. $4.00 Gift Books for Fn HOUGHTON M 2 Park Street, Boston, Mass. Free copies of our Holiday ar Gamaliel Br The life story of the man who "made heaven a laughi both live and luminous by his psychological mode of a a dispassionate zeal that stimulate the reader and give Heart of Emerson's Journals Bliss Perry The quintessence of Emerson's Journals is now access ble in a single volume. "Here is a book that deserves place beside Will Durant's 'Story of Philosophy.' It loaded with nuggets." — New York World. $3.C Falodon Papers discount Grey "As a contribution to the understam ing of the true character of an eminei statesman, these essavs are invaluable -The Independent. Attractively illu t rated from woodcuts. $2.c Streets in the Moon Archibald MacLeish In harmony with its distinction, this new volume < poems by "the most significant figure among the young< generation of American poets" is issued in limited ed tion, beautifully printed and bound. $5-C Intimate Papers The best of all gift books, the most thrilling, absorbing understanding of the war as is the map of Europe." — J the 'Arabian Nights.' " — Claude G. Bowers in the New — Chicago Post. U When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 611 / TION Readers tof LIN COMPANY 16 East 40th Street, New York l's Catalogs will be sent on request. rd's Darwin d heaven a dream." "Mr. Bradford makes biography id he writes with an unembellished facility of style and of clarity and security." — New York Times. $3.50 Making of the Modern Mind John H. Randall, Jr. ihn Dewey calls this "the only history of modern ought and philosophy which puts their development in e proper perspective." "Anything better . . . could >t well be imagined." — Boston Transcript. $5.00 Demosthenes Georges Clemenceau ias taken on the proportions of a eat event." — New York Times. "Pas- ges of imaginative beauty but re- "ained b y reason are scattered roughout." — New York Post. $2.50 rhiers & the French Monarchy John M. S. Allison n illuminating portrait of the life of this most gifted d interesting literary statesman, from 1797 to the revo- tion of 1848, drawn from an extensive study of original aterials. $5.00 Colonel House •rtant of all the books on the war. "As necessary to an jerard in the Bookman. "As stirring as a story out of Id. "Will revolutionize the history of 1912 to 1917." Two volumes. $10.00 Lady Murasaki When " I'he Talc of Genji" w a s pub- lish) J ci 1! ics pro- nounced (Ihn Japa- 11.' nf the world's gi masterpieces." 1 h e volume, " I'he i 1 10," is con- sidered 1» v Witter Bynner to be even "more suavely potent than the fii Each, $2.25 George Rogers Clark Temple Bodley A vivid and striking account of one of the most picturesque men who helped push forward the early American frontier. §5.00 The Yankee Whaler Clifford JT. Ashley The most sumptuous volume on whaling, whale scenes and whale men that has ever been pub- lished. Lavishly illustrated in color. $20.00 East Wind Amy Lowell "Seldom if ever has Miss Lowell so completely revealed her depth of human feeling and sym- pathy. . . . The poet's consummate art never falters."— New York Times. $2.25 My Antonia Willa Cat her A new revised edition of Miss Cather's master- piece which led H. L. Mencken to say: "No novel ever written in America by man or woman is one half so beautiful." $2.50 Palimpsest H. D. This first novel by a distinguished contemporary poet thrusts forward the established frontiers of prose fiction. $3.5t) Other Peopled Daughters Eleanor Rowland W emhridge "An unusual book written with the psycholo- gist's scientific knowledge of human nature." — New York Times. $2.50 William Jackson, Indian Scout James Willard Schultz This story of one of the most famous scouts in the Indian wars is an ideal book for boys from 10 to 16. Illustrated. $1.75 When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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612 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 simple, spontaneous lyricist, her voice remaining as pure as it was ten years ago but carrying a maturer note. Always in such a personal collection there is the danger of monotony, and Miss Teasdale does not wholly avoid this; the same exquisite melancholy touches each poem, she is too clear to be subtle, her mood seldom varies. Her poems should be read singly — one at a time they sometimes touch perfection. Mrs. Conkling by contrast is opulent and resonant and highly conscious. She reveals a carefully balanced, intelligent design, lavish in its variety, abundant in its detail, daring and luminous in its imagery. "Flying Fish" is better than the author's previous work. Her tendency has always been to thicken with a quantity of color, to confuse and stifle with a luxuriance of beauty, but in this latest volume she has resisted more than ever before the surfeited picture and the prodigal de- scription. Even this book would be better for some further prun- ing, although the group of poems called A Child in the Mexican Garden is free of all obstructions. It is, however, significant that Mrs. Conkling's first lines are usually her best. The con- tinuing cadences sometimes get out of hand, run off into words, lose their first clarity. Undoubtedly she has recognized this herself, since she has so greatly improved; since also she admits: me the words and I shall hear Their wisdom later. Lenore G. Marshall Deep as First Love Mitya's Love. By Ivan Bunin. Translated by Madelaine Boyd. With an Introduction by Finest Boyd. Henry Holt and Company. $2.50. ONE is often given to marvel at the legend which describes youth as a time of gay and careless rapture and dignifies the birth of passion with the sacramental name of "calf" love. The thing is said to offer no more serious a vision than a moon- calf bleating for the stars; and especially in these j iars the habit of patronizing the calf with a lecture on the proved trivi- ality of love has become a literary business with the intellectuals. Armored in a thick hide of corrupt frivolity they go about being very wise and witty about the facile penalties of young love and solving every obscure entanglement of the soul with a nice logic. It is no longer fashionable to be serious about trivial matters, and to be serious about a serious matter like adolescence is an unpardonable blunder in literary etiquette. One is also given to marvel whether there was ever an age wherein so many wise men were so rooted in their own wisdom and their liberty to advise the young about experience. Elegant bigots are really quite sure that Tristram was no better than a neurotic fool to let himself be doomed by passion. Mary Stuart was born too early to profit by the "Book of Knowledge"; and Cleopatra really- died from a bad cold. The Shropshire Lad had no business hav- ing those thoughts which put lads in their graves. Men have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for love: no doubt from suppressed desire. They understand these things better in Russian novels; but, of course, Russian novels are rotten with morbid passion and Russian students who kill themselves never had the chance to go to state universities where informed pedants teach healthy- mind-, d boys and girls how Medea should have "risen above" her passion and resolved all her tearing riddles by studying psychology, or perhaps have given up the adolescence of love for the maturity of a career in interior decorating. The young man in "Mitya's Love" meets betrayal in first love and after a horrible torture of isolation puts a revolver in his mouth and pulls the trigger. No wonder Russia needs civilizing! There is nothing "new" in Bunin's haunting and exquisite story of Mitya's awakening to the world's painful beauty through his infatuation with Katya and his subsequent long- drawn torment and sudden death. The theme is as threadbare as the continued presence of tragic love in a world so wise that it has already suggested every expedient for remedying the mistakes of lovers who take passion as seriously as they take death. The story shows the familiar process of a young man caught in all the agony of the damned and all the ecstasy of the blessed by discovering life and death and the aching wonder of natural beauty through the involuntary agency of a quite ordinary young girl. It has none of the spectacular melodrama of "The Gentleman from San Francisco" or the descriptive sociology of "The Village." It avoids the virginal poetry of Turgenev's "First Love" and the deep purple of Compton Mackenzie's "Youth's Encounter." It has nothing stronger to recommend it to wisdom than its profound evocation of those years when girls really are wounded with beauty of the summer night; and when young men enter through the scorching magic fire into the enchanted circle which rims the world and conjures up the divine and terrible goddess shaped like a young girl and holding in her sorcery all the illusory phantasms of heaven and all the infernal racks of hell. Donald Douglas Why Women Are Scabs The Woman Worker and the Trade Unions. By Theresa Wolf- son. International Publishers. $1.75. rT,HE best American women in the labor unions are Russian ' Jewesses; the hardest women in American industry to organize are the 4,507,846 Anglo-Saxons who are going to marry the district attorney. Labor organizers have discovered after bitter experience that most American girls are too stupid, too ladylike, or too suppressed to join labor unions. The reasons for all this have now been explained by an insider in the labor movement, Dr. Wolfson of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union. Her book is both an analysis of theory and a manual for practical work, a thoroughly satisfying book which should become the authority in the field. Of the 8,500,000 working women in the United States only 250,000 arc organized in trade unions. Why is the union repre- sentation so small? Dr. Wolfson goes back to the position of women in the home. "The linking of the woman to her home has undoubtedly secured the perpetuation of the family, but it has at the same time created a state of introversion, an interest in her immediate surroundings and herself, which forms a real obstacle to any attempt at trade-union organization when the woman enters the industrial field." The suppression of women in industry is partly a carry-over from their suppression in the home. Women are generally classed as unskilled workers and it is a common assumption that they receive low pay because they are unskilled. Perhaps they are classed as unskilled because they receive low pay. Dr. Wolfson at least raises the question. Arc chocolate dippers, she asks, any less skilled than garment pressers? It takes about the same time to become proficient at either job, but the girl chocolate dippers receive much lower pay than the men pressers. The average earnings of women in American industry are only one-half to three- quarters the earnings of men. Give a skilled job to a woman and pretty soon it is classified as "semi-skilled." The efforts of the American Federation of Labor to organize the women workers have been pitifully inadequate. Craft jealousy has played a large part in keeping the women unor- ganized; resolutions passed at annual conventions about equal pay for equal work have been "wish fulfillments." The Execu- tive Council of the A. F. of L. has never had a woman member; the annual sessions of the Federation are smoke-befogged male monopolies with a few women delegates even more inconspicuous than the women of the British Trades Union Congress. The intelligent efforts to organize women have come chiefly from the New York needle-trades unions, which owe their spirit to Euro- pean socialism rather than to the A. F. of L., and from the Women's Trade Union League, which is fostered largely by middle-class sympathizers. Dr. Wolfson does not directly attack

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 613 HERE ARE IMPORTANT SCRIBNER BOOKS FOR HOLIDAY GIFTS <n <4 The Silver Spoon By John Galsworthy "I had just finished three improbable but exciting detective stones, and I found 'The Silver S|H)on' more difficult to lay down than any of them." — William Lyon Phelps. Si.oo The Golden Key By Henry van Dyke "These arc all stories of deliverance from some kind of peril or perplexity or bondage," says Dr. van 1)\ kc. A superb gift book. Cloth, $i.oo; leather, $3.00 ~\fa fa fa fa too Cynthia Asquith's The Treasure Ship The work of famous authors and illustrators, a superb book for boys and girls. $2.. 50 Ignatius Loyola By Paul van Dyke A comprehensive and impartial biography of a great world figure. $3.50 England By the Very Rev. W. R. Inge An honest and courageous view of England's present and future. $3.00 Our Mobile Earth By Prof. R. A. Daly A foremost geologist tells the fascinating story of the earth's formation. Illustrated $5.00 Beyond the Milky Way By George Ellery Hale The very latest discoveries and researches in astronomy. Illustrated $1.50 East of the Sun and West of the Moon By Theodore Roosevelt and Kermit Roosevelt "The adventurers describe with fervor and power their in- cursions into India .... The narrative is clear, concise and graphic." — Philadelphia Record. Illustrated $3.50 Our 1 lmeS '. THE TURN OF THE CENTURY By Mark Sullivan This unusual history is a book for every home. It will be an indispensable hook for your Christmas gift list. Readers of middle years find especial delight in it. 610 pages. 2.13 illustrations. $5.00 Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises "A truly gripping story, told in lean hard, athletic prose." — New York Times $1.00 The Pulse of Progress By Ellsworth Huntington An eminent geographer's conclusions as to the real causes of progress in civilization. $5.00 Foundations of the Republic By Calvin Coolidge The President's views on fundamental American principles. The American People: A History By Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker A one-volume, readable history written for the adult mind. An answer to the plea for interesting histories. $5.00 Excellent Fiction HEAVEN TREES By Stark. Young Charm and serenity in a novel of the old South. $2.00 SEA WHISPERS By W. W. Jacobs A famous story-teller's first book in seven years. $2.00 SUSAN SHANE By Roger Burlingame "An undiluted American novel,'' says YVm. Lyon Phelps. S2 00 PAGEMR.TUTT! By Arthur Train The delightful and canny old lawyer in a new book. S2. 00 ulllOky! THE STORY OF A ONE-MAN HORSE By Will James " 'Smoky' is one of the few truly great horse stories in our language. . . . 'Smoky' rings true on every page." — William T. Hornaday. With 43 of Will James' exciting drawings. $1.50 Five Large Printings FAMOUS PRINTS Edited by Frank V.'citen- kampf, limited to 1000 copies, is one of the most beautiful booksonart ever issued in America $30.00 THE COPELAND READER Prof. C. T. Copeland's 1700 pase anthology of English poetry ami prose. S 10.00 ADVENTURES AND CONFESSIONS Prof. Wm. Lyon Phelps 1 alls this his most con- fessional book. $2.00 FIX BAYONETS! Five large printingsof this great war book. $350 fa to- fa fa fa fa too too too too too too too too too too too CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK iWWWW?¥¥W^F ?WWWFTWWWW¥r too fa too too 'too too fa fa too Ifa When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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614 The Nation. [Vol. 123, No. 3205 the A. F. of L. for negligence, but her description of the situa- tion constitutes an indictment of the policy of the A. F. of L. and of the general anti-feminism of American trade unions. The choicest example of the stupidity of old-line craft unions in facing the woman problem is afforded by the barbers' union. The barbers were having a hard struggle to maintain their union. Suddenly a heaven-sent opportunity was presented to them in the world-wide movement toward bobbed hair. Beauty parlors began to spring up everywhere and women bar- bers knocked at the door of the union. What did the male barbers do? They fought the entrance of women at every opportunity; the lady barbers of Chicago, Seattle, and Portland were refused charters and defiantly continued as non-union. One of the reasons quoted by Dr. Wolfson was: "In view of the fact of her physical make-up is it not a fact that if she were comely to look upon and possessed extreme charm, would it not have a tendency to create discord among the men who, up to the time of her admittance to membership, were real working brothers?" Now the barbers have lowered their bars to women members, but it is too late; the beauty parlor of the future will be a scab shop. Can American women be organized in spite of their "well- padded group loyalty to the boss"? Dr. Wolfson says, Yes, on four conditions: if the union broadens its structural boundaries to include the unskilled workers, if the union officials appreciate in their organization campaigns the psychology and racial tradi- tions of the women to be organized, if the union does not give its benediction to the existing differential in wages between men and women, and if the women workers generally will learn to consider themselves a permanent group in industry despite the impermanence of the individual. Paul Blanshard Harsh White Noon Through Minn/ Windows. By Helen Woodward. Harper and Brothers. $2.50. IT is an old pleasantry anions,' temperamental conservatives to say that the ranks of political and economic radicalism are recruited from among those who have lacked the compe- tence to thrive under the beneficent regime of the established order. -Mrs. Woodward is avowedly and determinedly radical and in her business life she decidedly make a no of it. Thus the autobiography of her business life affords a pleasing dis- harmony in any old tune which, since people are traditionally conservative, is inconsiderately lodged in the common mind. Mrs. Woodward's business life lay within the confines of the first quarter of this century, and her success lay in adver- tising— not merely in writing words which sold books and cos- metics but equally in sidling her own commodity — advertising itself — and in managing the complex human relationships which are involved in the pleasant occupation of dispensing someone else's money for words and pictures to influence the public to demand, or accept, one article over another. Mrs. Woodward grew up in a radical Jewish household, but, by that dispensation whereby each generation turns its hand against the truths of the elders, she took refuge in reaction. It was purely an affair of the interplay of natural forces within the family group. When the family group no longer mattered she swung sharply toward the left — "my weakness is always to like the new" — and there she resided. It was during her conservative period that Mrs. Woodward stepped forth into life, with a wide-eyed "faith in the cool, bright perfection of American business." The moment taxes severely the historical imagination of a generation that is incapable alike of wide eyes or acts of faith. At this time advertising was the youngest of businesses. That meant that it was full of color and personality, but ('^ficient in organization, prestige, or ethics. As it became more respectable, more codi- fied, more ethical, Mrs. Woodward found herself less and less in sympathy with advertising and with the established economic order. Order and dignity are incompatible with joustings and excitement, and smug Hypocrisy, she observed, attends closely upon Ethics. Writing as an uncompromising realist, Mrs. Woodward refuses to regard business success as worthy of such terminology as "achievement" or "career," nor will she have any other epithet for it which evokes the suggestion of the use of creative faculties. Business has only to do with raking in cash, and he who is cutest accumulates the most counters and is declared to have won the game, which is played without rules. Epochal changes have come over the philosophy and prac- tice of business in America during Mrs. Woodward's connection with it; but since it occasioned her no pleasure to reflect that she had a part in making them, she took consolation, as realists so often must, in entering joyously and completely into the ebb and flow of each day's event and circumstance. She liked the noise and stir, the authority, the application of her own powers to specific problems, the dust and affray and frenzy with which her daily work was invested. In short, business afforded her a life of adventure, each moment to be lived for itself, and the structure of her occupation to be supported only by the philoso- phy that there was no philosophy. Indubitably many thrills and a certain qualified happiness are possible under such an arrange- ment; under some such charter, indeed, most modern intellec- tuals live out their tale of days, waiting for a new faith. Activity for its own sake is not satisfying ultimately. Mrs. Woodward became impounded by a sense of the futility and determinism of life, which whirls intelligence "like chaff before Ihe winds." Gently and not too happily she slipped out of the harness, her "success in life" deeply impaired by her devotion to an occupation in which she couldn't believe. I have tried to indicate that this business autobiography is really a spiritual and intellectual autobiography, for in that direction lies its importance. Twenty years is a long time to spend living in the world yet denying it. Mrs. Woodward did it and preserved her integrity. But the price was high. She closes with these cryptic words her interesting account of a rather significant life: "So at last I made up my mind just to stop and drift. That would be enough. I was mistaken." Gerald Carson New England Early Autumn. By Louis Bromfield. Frederick A. Stokes Company. $2. A GAIN, in this third of his series of panels of the American ■**■ scene, Louis Bromfield conveys a sense of life, diverse and warm. If that sense is thinner than in the first two books, it is because he conceives of the New England spirit as thin and wintry, just as he sees, most extraordinarily, the rich New England countryside as bleak and unbeautiful, and just as he patronizes the New England deities to whom he refers as Mr. Emerson and Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Lowell. His concep- tion of these last is evidently that formed by a very small boy from the pictures on the cards of his game of authors. Long- fellow, the first daring young American literary expatriate who brought back to his country the best in European literature; Emerson, from whom an enterprising author today could still cull a five-foot shelf of high explosives, these he does not know, but only white-haired gentlemen whose clothes are amusingly out of date. He seems as little conversant with the individual New Eng- lander, that astonishing blend of passion and mysticism, of inhibitions that spring more often from a philosophic fatalism than from respect for social regulations, that poignant burning creature from whom I suspect we shall hear again in American life, even though today he may be frustrate. The very capacity for frustration involves a spiritual and emotional ardor that these people of Mr. Bromfield do not know.

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 615 Yet they are people who are to be found everywhere. I will grant them their collective power to thin the atmosphere around us and to deaden the sky, if the author will first remove the New England label. They are to be found in Boston, of course, but also in New York and Chicago and San Fran- cisco. They form, as Mr. Bromfiold rightly assumed, a dis- turbing background for living passion. But here again one stumbles. It is Mr. Bromfiold's chief virtue that he sees the romance in human nature. It is his increasing defect that he brings this out for the reader by sentimental exaggerations of certain heroic traits, rather than by scrupulous respect t the divergent qualities that enter into every human beir woman was ever so consistently brave and patient and beautiful and self-denying as his Olivia; and yet any old doddering char- woman one shoulders on the street is more interesting, if one can catch her living and whole. Mr. Bromfield still leaves the impression with me that he is one of the most richly gifted of our novelists. But in this book he seems definitely to have chosen to let himself off rather easily. Alice Beal Parsons The Religious Problem in Mexico Church and State in Mexico, 1822-1857. By Wilfrid Hardy Call- cott. Duke University Press. $4. THE title of this book is justified only to the extent that in the period under survey the Church-State relation gave rise to the most outstanding political issues and because the two commanding historical peaks are the reform laws and decrees of 183o (pushed through by that remarkable personality, Valentin Gomez Farias) and the reform constitution of 1857 that "caught the principles of democracy which the Mexican people for half a century had been working out and expressed and crystallized them in a great legal document." Mr. Callcott's book is a scholarly and occasionally vivid account of the political manifestations of these multitudinous tendencies and ideas which disrupted the social and political fabric of Mexico for nearly half a century. It could have been no easy task thus to trace the tangled threads of the conflicting forces at play during the chaotic years when Mexico first tested inde- pendence, threads further snarled by rampant personal ambi- tions, foreign intrigue, and lack of racial and geographic cohesion; but Mr. Callcott capably accomplishes this by sketch- ing the key-pattern of the Colonial regime at the time of Inde- pendence and thus tacking each unruly thread to its proper starting point. Mexico was not merely attempting to become a nation with a stable government; she was obliged to face the major prob- lems which had agitated Europe most violently since before the Renaissance, a collective task complicated by stubborn indi- genous difficulties quite beyond the ken of Europe. Mud-pie simple were the problems of the Thirteen Colonies in compari- son to those of that harried country to the south of us, which under the regime of Iturbide was "the third largest empire in the world." We started relatively with a clean slate. Mexico inherited the worst evils and most chronic conflicts of the Old World. From many angles its independence movement was but an attempt to shut out the French enlightenment. In the political field Monarchism was still a vital issue. Freedom (sic) began with a Spanish emperor, Iturbide. At least three subsequent heads of the Government, Alaman, Paredes y Arrillaga, and Santa Anna, favored the overthrow of Repub- licanism. As late as 1854 Santa Anna, supported by the Clergy, sent a representative to Europe to scare up a foreign prince; and even after the Juarez Reform Laws of 1859, Mexico was to be ruled by a Hapsburg. Monarchism vs. Republicanism, Centralism vs. Federalism, Democracy vs. Class-rule, Church vs. State were still bellicose problems not simplified by foreign intrigue, American aggression, militarism, geographical sepa- ratism, financial instability. Institutionally, racially, culturally, Uiking POWER l>\ Lion Feuchtwanger " rhe storj of a soul as great in its degradation a-, in its heroism. A tremendous allegory of power; a magnificent synthesis of melo- drama anil philosophy ... a book for all of us."— The World. $2.50 The SECOND BOOK of NEGRO SPIRITUALS Carl Van Vechten in The Herald Tribune: "I predict that this new collection will be just as popular as the first, and deservedly so." With 61 sunys and an introduction. $3.50 THE TIME OF MAN by Elizabeth Madox Roberts A Book-of-the-Month Club selection. "A wonderful performance." — Sher- wood Anderson. "A work of genius." — Edward Garnctt. "A beautiful work of art." — Carl Van Daren. The most talked of novel of the day. 47th Thousand. $2.50 <r*sM*r?) TRANSITION by Edict n Muir Illuminating and wise essays on the most baffling and interesting figures in contemporary literature: Joyce, Lawrence, Strachey, Huxley, and many more. "He is the only critic who has succeeded in grasping the modern situation as a whole." — The Nation. $2.00 crWyfT) SATIRICAL POEMS by Siegfried Sassoon One of the best and most popular of the younger English poets breaks a siience of seven years with this new volume of verse. $1.50 30 Irving Place THE VIKING PRESS Nno York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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616 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 economically Mexico was a super-charged, unstable complex. To consider these and other factors in their just relations has been the praiseworthy achievement of Mr. Callcott, who surveys the broad river of what he calls "the liberal movement" of the nineteenth century in Mexico, a movement that carried upon its widening current the germs of race and class liberation, twisting in and out through the preliminary yet significant church struggles of the 'thirties and the 'fifties, finally to flow into the broad harbor of the 1857 Constitution. Yet while this constitution magnificently closed an era and paved the way for a long peace, Mr. Callcott, with less of an historian's eye and with more sensitivity to the bitter irony of Mexico and its repeated frustrations, well might have carried his study over into the temporary debacle of democracy and religious liberty — the Maximilian regime. It is to be hoped that he will use his impartial talents to give us a treatment of the subse- quent era from 1857 to the present, with similar emphasis upon the Church-State relation. Had such a volume been at hand during the recent religious crisis, we might have had fewer newspaper scareheads and editorial superlatives. Carleton Beals Mostly Fudge John Wanamaker. By Herbert Adams Gibbons. Two volumes. Harper and Brothers. $10. TT ERE they come again — those "two fat volumes" which Mr. * -1 Strachey deplored a few years since. These particular twins are dressed up in a luxurious and yet dignified fashion that would befit a great subject and a great biographer. Had Caesar been the theme, and Plutarch the author, the publishers could hardly have bettered their end of the business. This is not to say that either the subject or the author is negligible. John Wanamaker may have been as great a man as Mr. Gibbons so staunchly believes and tries to prove through more than 800 detailed and painstaking pages; he may have been as important as some thousands of Americans believe. To some others, how- ever, this story which rings all the familiar changes on a thread- bare topic — the rise of a poor American boy from the position of a brick-worker to the eminence of a great American merchant — appears about as drab and dispiriting as any Horatio Alger masterpiece. Here, for the hundredth or thousandth time, are concretely illustrated those sterling (catchpenny, one might say) American virtues of grit, thrift, spunk, "money back," "infinite capacity for detail," and, of course, piety. No matter what Wanamaker did — whether he passed around those religious tracts with which his pockets commonly bulged; whether he had a "fine talk" with Queen Victoria's daughter, the Princess Louise ("My, but I enjoyed it!") ; whether he continued the salaries of his employees who volunteered for the Spanish- American War; whether his account book and his New Testa- ment perpetually jostled each other in his inside pocket; whether he tried his "best to buy in falling markets"; whether, in visit- ing the Holy Sepulchre, "yielding to an irresistible temptation, I stretched myself out on the tomb"; whether he served efficiently as Postmaster-General under Harrison; or whether, at eighty- four, he "jumped out of bed eager for the day's work" — he always did those things that the average American most heartily applauded and most wished that he himself might do. And yet, despite the fact that his life was "radiant adventure, always, always, always," his greatest desire remained unfulfilled. "In each man's soul is some cherished dream or purpose that he confides to none. Mr. Wanamaker's dream was to write a life of Martin Luther." There were times, indeed, when his optimism ("Pollyanna," next to the Bible, was his best-loved book) almost failed him. On July 4, 1903, he wrote: "The pity of it all for- ever to drudge and never to budge from mostly fudge!" Mr. Gibbons has done his job with appalling thoroughness — no one, it is safe to say, will ever be tempted to write another two-volume life of Wanamaker. Yet it seems that the author is still unsatisfied with his labors, for in one place he darkly com- Clergymen and laymen alike, atheists as well as the devout, join in praise of MY HERESY by Bishop William Montgomery Brown The story of a man who lost a religion and found a faith. John Dewey says: "The movement which the book records has a typical significance which is absent from most heresies." Rev. William Norman Guthrie says: "A bit of palpitating humanity." Herbert Asbury says: "A sparkling and witty account." Dudley Siddall says: "Takes on the character of a Holy Revelation." The New York Evening Post says: "Likely to keep anyone who begins it in the evening up all night." A 272-page book, but priced at $2.00 — far below the usual scale — to keep it within reach of the widest possible number of persons seeking new faith. NEW SCHOOLS IN THE OLD WORLD by Carleton Washburne, Superintendent of Schools at Winnetka, III. in collaboration with MYRON M. STEARNS Report and comment on twelve progressive schools in Europe. $1.75 "No one interested in educational methods, either in theory or practice, can fail to find it richly stimulating." — New York Times. "Here's a fresh wind to blow upon this discussion of what to teach our children in the public schools — and how. To a layman like myself the book is interesting on every page." — Harry Hansen in the New York World. A CHILD'S MAP OF THE ANCIENT WORLD by Alice York Designed by Ilonka Karasz For the first time, the ancient world of myth and history is graphically presented in a pictorial map, done in six colors. Bright and decorative, to quicken youthful imaginations, it is designed to serve as a guide to fascinating discoveries. Folded, in envelope, $1.50. At all Bookstores The John Day Co., 25 West 45th Street, New York When writing tx> advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 617 ments: "A volume could be written about Wanamaker and tin- piano business." He also brandishes a threatening pitchfork at possibly captious critics by stating in his bibliography that "the authority for every statement made and the quotations — very often in Wanamaker's own handwriting — are preserved on fifteen thousand cards, thoroughly indexed and classified." Nevertheless his logic is sometimes rather curious. These two sentences are taken from the same paragraph: "Wanamaker . . . was instinctively incapable of partisanship or sectarianism at every stage of his life. . . . Through thick and thin, from Lincoln to Harding, he stuck by the [Republican] Party.'' And once he allows a slight speck to remain on the portrait: " \1 though we doubt whether he read every word of it, he sometimes called 'Les Miserables' his favorite work of fiction." For few, indeed, are the dark shadows that lurk in the background of the picture — Mr. Gibbons has brushed them away. Hut he defends his hero so vehemently that one begins to wonder: could there have been so much smoke without a tiny blaze somewhere? And then one turns to take another look at the intriguing copyright. And so, while this is assuredly the definitive and official life of Wanamaker, one still wonders — is it the life? Wanamaker himself, in one of his lucid moments, once telegraphed: "Think- ing, trying, toiling, and trusting in God is all my biography." Perhaps Mr. Gibbons bettered this laconic utterance in his terse opening sentence: "John Wanamaker earned money for seventy- five years." A thousand years hence, will anyone remember even as little as that? R. F. Dibble Once More the Impossible A Short History of Cirilization, By Lynn Thorndike. F. S. Crofts and Company. $5. PROFESSOR THORNDIKE has placed a tolerably adequate account of the development of civilization from the Old Stone Age to Locarno within the covers of a single volume. He has, of course, rushed in where his colleagues fear to tread. Few men in this age of specialization care to expose themselves to attack upon so many fronts. But Professor Thorndike is no novelist with a sudden enthusiasm for Kulturgeschichtc, getting up his subject overnight. As a medievalist he has sure foun- dations for a survey of the cultural history of Western Europe. His studies in magic have led him into the heart of that com- plex of science, pseudo-science, and superstition which forms so large a part of our vaunted civilization. Finally, he is an experienced teacher, not in one field of history but in many. It would be rash to assert that he is the one man in the country who should have undertaken this particular task, but it is clear that he is by far the ablest who has yet tackled it single-handed. His book is carefully planned and clearly written. The major problems of emphasis and proportion have been solved with considerable success. The Far and the Near East have received due attention, though the center of interest is naturally in Western Europe. Neither constant use of the compound adjective nor the veritably interminable flow of fact has made the book unreadable. Pert statements of the author's own prejudices are sufficiently frequent to lure the reader on. "The human mind moves slowly at best, and the military mind still more slowly." "It is not recorded that the great librarians of Alexandria ever attended a library school, but they knew what was in the books in their library." "The Fascisti with Mussolini as dictator instituted a regime of forced labor, so- briety, and order, seasoned with much sententious bombast, imperialistic 'flapdoodle,' and occasional bloodshed." This is no ordinary textbook. New viewpoints and novel theories are to be found in the book, but they are not numerous. In the main the author has been content to skim the cream from the works of others; he has used the best books, however. The chapters devoted to medieval Europe are exceptionally good, notably that on medie- val art. An earlier chapter on Hellenistic culture and later Books for Gifts MANY BOOKS MANY FOLK of for of MANY KINDS MANY MINDS THE VAGABOND DUCHESS By Cyril Hntbes Harlmann The life of I lor- Irnsr Manoni. nicer of Cardinal Maza- rin. "One of llic most amazing tales ever hear d." — - /V. V. San. Boxed. $5.00 THE CHEVALIER DE BOUFFLERS By Nesta H. Webster Attractively bound and boxed. $5.00 BEATRICE D By Julia Corfu $3.00 BIOGRAPHY sycymi THE MEDICI By G. F. Youn? The only complete account of this great family. Two splendid volumes, boxed. $12.00 THE FACE OF SILENCE By Dhan Gopal Mukerji The sublime record ion in prac- tice of a holy man in India by the au- thor of 'My Broth- er's Face." $3.00 QUEEN ELIZABETH'S MAIDS OF HONOUR By Violet Wilson $5.00 ESTE MARY STUART By Florence A. Maccann $3.00 FICTION, HUMOUR AND POETRY ANN'S CRIME DEVICES AND PRECIOUS BANE ncciocc By R. T. M. Scott DESIRES By Vera Wheatley A ripping detective A s,ory of y°utn- I-, Most attractively story i "Secret Service Smith" appears again. $2.00 USELESS HANDS By Claude Farrere author of "Thomas the Lambkin." $2.50 bound and jacketed and encased i n glassine paper for Christmas giving. $2.50 I SING THE PIONEER By' Arthur Gaiterman Ballads Making Nation. of the of the $2.00 By Mary Webb "Rare and fine and beautiful." — N. Y. Evening Post Lit- erary Rcvieto. $2.00 THE LUNATIC IN CHARGE By J. Storer Clouston author o f "The Lunatic at Large," etc. $2.00 THE POETRY OF NONSENSE By Emilz Cammaerts $1.75 CASEMENTS By Richard Cloadesley Sarate $2.00 TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE IN MANY LANDS By Cecil Gosling $3.50 THE SURGEON'S LOG By J. Johnston Abraham $5.00 A NOVELIST'S TOUR OF THE WORLD By Vicente Blasco Ibanez $6.00 THE FIRE OF DESERT FOLK By Ferdinand Ossendowski author of "Beasts, Men and Gods." From the j :cket of "The Surgeon's Log*' $3.00 Check the books you want and lake this list to your favorite bookshop — unless you prefer to order direct from us. Free upon Request "Dt tton Gift Books" Fifth Avenue at 54th Street When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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618 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 chapters on the religious changes in early modern Europe and on the economic changes at the beginning of the nineteenth century are new in manner and admirable in content. The comparative neglect of Charlemagne and the absolute omis- sion of Frederick II are hard to understand. The institutional phases of European civilization have been slighted. The des- cription of feudalism is especially unsatisfactory. The author seems curiously unappreciative of the contributions of Erasmus, Luther, and Voltaire. On the other hand both Louis XIV and Napoleon have fared better than one could expect. Henry VIII still seeks a "divorce." Many would not agree that Joseph II was the best example of enlightened despotism. But it is as a textbook that it will be judged. And here the reviewer confesses to firm convictions. His experience, reasonably extensive, has persuaded him that we already at- tempt too much in our general courses in European history. Professor Thorndike would have us abandon the relatively simple thread of political history and take up the whole field of cultural achievement; he would have us start with the Old Stone Age. He thinks that we are now prevented from so do- in": only by a lack of able teachers and an adequate textbook. The latter he has supplied. Turn to the accounts of the Pelo- ponnesian League or of the "fuller democracy of Athens" or to the beautifully balanced summary of Chinese culture or to the masterly digest of Restoration England. What will the average student derive from all this? To him even the names are new, almost every phrase without helpful connotation, un- less he already has other and extensive contacts with history or allied subjects. Barrett Wendell once remarked that thirty years of experience had convinced him that English composi- tion could not be taught, but that the attempt should be made. The failure of the history of civilization as an elementary sub- ject in our colleges seems assured; the necessity for attempting it, of course, may still be demonstrated. Sidney R. P\ckard The Nation's Poetry Prize rriHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for I the best poem submitted by an American poet in a contest conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. This year in addition a second prize of $50 and a third prize of $25 will be offered. The rules for 1926 are as folic ws: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Na tiov, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. 3. No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- cumstances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. 6. The winning poem will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation,to appear February 9, 1927. 7. Besides the winning poem, The N ition reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. Poems should in no case be sent to them personally. BOOKS OF ENDURING VALUE A Golden[Book of Science and Adventure THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE by WILLIAM BEEBE This has proved the most popular book that has come from Beebe's gifted pen. The Saturday Review of Literature calls it: "A book for everyone who is stirred by the strange and beau- tiful in nature, by exciting and decidedly unconventional ad- venture, ami by a true tale well told." Lavishly illustrated. $6.00 Exploration in Mongolia ON THE TRAIL OF ANCIENT MAN try ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS This story of scientific ardors and accomplishment is one of the most fascinating volumes imaginable. The Christian Science Monitor says: "One rarely reads a book on exploration or travel written in such a charming manner and relating facts of such absorbing interest." Illustrated. $6.00 The Dark Continent Exposed DENATURED AFRICA by DANIEL W. STREETER The Neiv York Herald Tribune says: "Richly humorous travel books are so rare that lovers of the genre are advised in- stantly to pounce upon 'Denatured Africa' and drag it to a secluded spot for some hours of uninterrupted enjoyment." It is sound advice. Illustrated. $2.50 An Historian Contemplates His Age WORDS TO THE DEAF by GUGLIELMO FERRERO In this volume the great Italian historian diagnoses the mala- dies from which the world today is suffering. Industry, art, finance, and international relations are all considered. There is intellectual dvnamite in these pages. Translated by Ben Ray Redman. $2.00 G. P. PUTNAIVTS SON'S New York London When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 619 A Library List of Children's Hooks In response to a request from The Nation the children's librarians of the Boston, Detroit, Chicago, and St. l. (L^WO d^to%J) 4Sr%J) (L^X^O advertisers, please mention The Nation

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620 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 in the wilderness of frustration (p. 3-4) ... I write the defeatist's saga of the prairie empire (p. 3) . . . 'Mother,' said [my father] 'we've raised a foolish child' (p. 12) . . . I am a mean guy and I exult in . . . wholesome exter- mination even though I and my own tribe be the ones that are exterminated. Down with all self-kidding weaklings. Damn them (p. 273) . . . As I flop around with a consumptive's restlessness, my sound is a rattling dirge, an aching yawp. I froth at the mouth with frustration. I think of my kin in tradition, another amiable gullible ass, Henry Adams (p. 315) . . . At any rate, it's great to be an ass (p. 140)." It must be. Darwin. By Gamaliel Bradford. Houghton Mifflin Company. $3.50. Seven chapters make up this book: The Observer, The Thinker, The Discoverer, The Loser, The Lover, The Destroyer, The Scientific Spirit. It is possible that Darwin may be best comprehended if viewed from these several angles; but — as Mr. Bradford is doubtless aware — any such analytical device is largely arbitrary and, furthermore, it tends to a certain amount of overlapping in both argument and illustration. As a working device, however, it is sufficiently effective and perhaps, in the case of such a man as Darwin, analysis and argument should supersede narration. If Mr. Bradford is sometimes too gar- rulous and repetitious, he is frequently shrewd and discrimin- ating; if he tends to exhort too much, he has no patience what- ever with the theologians who dogged and besmirched Darwin; and if he is somewhat too personal and plaintive in his con- cern over metaphysical mysteries, he shows a minute, judicious, and urbane knowledge of the vast revolution which Darwin was chiefly instrumental in effecting. Causes and Their Clvam-jnons. By M. A. DeWolfe Howe. Little, Brown and Company. $4. This book has two aims: it deals with eight causes "directly affecting contemporary life in America," and with the man or woman who was principally instrumental in furthering each cause. While including Phillips Brooks as the champion of tolerance in religion, Mr. Howe yet excludes Garrison on the ground that anti-slavery "is omitted only as a res adjudicata." To those who are interested in a surface presentation of things, this distinction will doubtless appear valid; to those who, with Carlyle, believe that Negro slavery was only a symptom of a national disease that still persists in other forms, and that reli- gious toleration is most decidedly unsettled, the distinction will be unsatisfactory. The volume, in short, while written in a clear and businesslike fashion, offers little that is new in material, in method, or in theory. Translations and Tomfooleries. By Bernard Shaw. Brentano's. $2.25. The Austrian novelist and playwright Siegfried Trebitsch translated into German the bulk of Shaw's work and Shaw out of pure gratitude undertook to render into English Herr Trebitsch's "Jitta's Atonement," although — as one might have guessed beforehand — he found it impossible to refrain from making it over to suit himself. This is the "Translations" (sic) of the present volume. The "Tomfooleries" include the well- known "Admirable Bashville" and "Press Cuttings" as well as several even slighter skits, one or two of which were written for theatrical benefits. Shaw's more extravagant burlesques are usually amusing in dialogue but rather feeble in general conception. The Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni. Translated by John Black. The Blue Jade Library. Alfred A. Knopf. $3. In his introduction William Drake justly accepts the state- ment of Gibbon that these memoirs are the most pleasing and vital of their author's comedies. Written in old age after his retirement to France, they are admiraole expressions of the same ebullient, superficial nature which went to the making of the plays and, being less artificial, have less quickly faded. Casanova himself gives a scarcely more vivid picture of rococo Venice. Lippincott Books! Gifts for Every Taste "Anatole France to the life" — Emile Henriot in Lc Temps RAMBLES WITH ANATOLE FRANCE By SANDOR KEMERI Never has the personal charm of the Master been felt as in this book of his enthusiasms. Through old Paris, Milan, Naples, Rome we run the fire of his comment on art and men and ideas. From the Hungarian. Illustrated with hitherto unpublished photographs and facsimile letters. Large, handsome octavo. $5.00 \ FORGOTTEN SHRINES OF SPAIN By MILDRED STAPLEY BYNE A volume that throws Spain open like a great museum to the art-lovers of the world. 65 Beautiful illustrations, quaintly drawn frontispiece and map. $5.00 THE DEAD RIDE HARD By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE A galloping tale of love, intrigue and breathless adventure, by a master of romance. It tells of that intrepid American, Andrew Brull, and his service to an imperious lady of Buda- pest in the days when the White Terror rode hard upon the Red. $2.00 THE PRACTICAL BOOK OF LEARNING DECORATION AND FURNITURE By EDWARD STRATTON HOLLOWAY A humanized course in Interior Decoration. It presents by the picture and illustration method an easily grasped survey of the whole subject, and includes suggestions for more inten- sive study of details. 180 Illustrations. $4.50 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Edited by DR. E. C. HAYES, University of Illinois (Lippincott's Sociological Series) The seven stimulating chapters have each been written by a specialist and cover the following fields: Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Anthropogeography, Economics, Political Science, History. This is a critical survey of the recent developments presented in such a fashion as to make most interesting reading. $3.50. I SOCIAL PROGRESS By ULYSSES G. WEATHERLY, University of Indiana (Lippincott's Sociological Series) Here is no ordinary historical survey of theory of progress, but a stimulating study of the dynamics of change. The author's method is pragmatic rather than historical or speculative. $2.50. For Boy* and Girls Fairy Tales from India llluitrated with Special Lining Paper*. Decoration and 12 Fxguiiltt Color Plates by KATHARINE PYLE. One ~>t the most beautiful Kift books this reason. These old Dercan Rtoriee of Uajal and Kan..-,. Wuzeers and Brahmins, cobras. Jackals and wicked rakshas are colorful with the magic ■>f a mystic land. $3.50 Martha the Seventh By JANE ABBOTT. What happened to a "seventh child of a seventh child" at Twin Farms in the green hills of Vermont, — a New England story for cirls. Illustrated. $1.75 The Rider in the Green Mask By RUPERT SARGENT HOLLAND. A stirring tale of t tie American Revolu- tion— the daring pursuit of the "Wolves" of Watson's Glen. Colored frontispiece. 3 other illustrations. $2.00 I Little Abe Lincoln By BERNIE BABCOCK. The true story of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood adven- tures and achievement, a wildwood story full of the spontaneous humor of the backwoods Illustrated. $2.00 Wisdom of the Woods By DAN BEARD. Fascinating back- woods secrets that will rejoice "Scouts" and a'l outdoor hoys. New volume tn Dan Beard's "Woodcraft Series." 243 Illustrations, colored frontispiece. $2.50 The Stories All Children Love Series 28 FAVORITES— the stories that never grow old. Beautifully bound and charmingly illustrated in color. "Carrots" and "Eveli. the Little Singer" are the 1026 additions, Ask to see the books in the tjav tartan jackets. Each $1.50 At All Bookstores J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY PHILADELPHIA LONDON When tvriting to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 621 Apostate. By Forrest Reid. Houghton Mifflin Company ? 1. Spiritual autobiography is a difficult literary medium, and this one — for all its tranquil detail, its quiet sincerity, and its unceasing effort to recapture the moods of childhood — f:iils to reach a rounded reality. The style is limpid and many of the pictures are vivid, but the recital seems lacking in cohesive strength. It ends, moreover, on an indeterminate note, baffling to the reader. The Painted Room. By Margaret Wilson. Harper and Brothers. $2. Not particularly interesting people are moved about here like furniture. Like much of the current vintage of fiction, this deals in certain contrasts between the arriving and the departing generation, but it adds little to the already over- crowded warehouse. If done brilliantly the theme still justifies itself, but here the touch is inclined to be heavy, fraying out in thin philosophy. The Clean Up. By Mark Lee Luther. The Bobbs-Merrill Company. $2. The endless petty politics of the small American city in which not even a fire is handled to the satisfaction of the party that is out of office affords Mr. Luther a theme which he develops in a manner half Rotarian and half satirical. The characters are all black or all white, in accordance with the tested formula of melodrama, which simplifies the author's problem and places no mental burdens on the reader. The main outlines of the novel are conventional, but Mr. Luther is a shrewd transcriber of the contemporary idiom, and it is this which constitutes the best feature of his story. Americana 1926. Edited by H. L. Mencken. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. "The boobies Americanus" — Mr. Mencken once informed the readers of The Nation — "is a bird that knows no closed season," and the adage explains why both barrels of Mr. Mencken's shotgun are kept smoking hot month in and month out. The editor of the American Mercury is as heedlessly destructive of our American fools as the pioneers were of wild pigeons and bison. Can it be that the supply already begins to diminish? It sounds impossible, but the fact remains that in his second anthology of American asininity Mr. Mencken ekes out his mate- rials with an Appendix from Foreign Parts. His statement that the appendix was added at the request of various Amer- ican patriotic societies contains probably a germ of truth. Lovers of our native wild life begin to sicken at the unending slaughter and to dart foreboding eyes toward a drab and foolless future. . But their alarm is perhaps slightly premature. Music Music and Common Sense — I T'HE relations expressed by musical sounds, I have explained,1 *■ are not relations between the quantities and qualities of ordinary experience, but relations swi generis. They do not, therefore, conform to the categories derived from and applicable to ordinary experience, but to categories which are again sui generis, which represent special aural adaptations to combina- tions of musical sounds. This means that the common sense that is applicable to ordinary experience does not enable one to under- stand musical relations or provide a standard by which to judge them. What a person guided solely by common sense under- stands by the developing of a theme — what he knows of the process as it is applied to a subject of ordinary experience — does not enable him to understand what is meant by the process as it is applied to a musical subject, or to follow it through when he meets it; for the processes are as unlike as the subjects. And though he is familiar with a formal quality like symmetry or proportion in groups of physical objects, he does not understand ooks to give and to keep B Sixteen men, ranking scientists al ihe University of Chicago, have searched, and found, and written down (or the satisfaction of all oilier inquiring minds the facts about the world and man — of life itself as they have found it. 1 heir book, The Nature of the World and of Man is "fascinating reading . . . fulfilling rarely its purpose. . . . The book has taken on the unity, the coherence, the march of one great epic poem." $4.00 Outlook for American Prose By Joseph Warren Beach In the Neti> Yorl{ Times Bool( Review J. Brooks Atkinson says, "his book is accurate, audacious, and broad." And H. L. Mencken, "This is perhaps the first book, written by an American, in which precept is backed up by practise. Mr. Beach writes very effcclively, and has much of interest to say." $2.50 The Panchatantra Translated from the Sanskrit by Arthur W. Ryder. Of this book Stuart Sherman said in Bool(s: "Here is one of the world's oldest and most famous story books ... a racy translation . . . refreshing in its realism, its humanity, its pervasive humor. ..." $4.00 The Democratic Way of Life By T. V. Smith The professional man who conceives a ministry as well as a mission for his calling will find here enthusiastic confirmation. Mr. Smith offers "an intellectual exuberance and a brilliance in the management of abstract thought that make his pages both agreeable and stimulating to read." $1.75 % Brains of Rats and Men By C. Judson Herrick H. L. Mencken says of it in the American Mercury: "It is, perhaps, the best summary of the known facts about mental processes yet put into English." And the Forum praises it as 'one of the most readable volumes in the field of public education in science." $3.00 The Psalms Newly Translated by J. M. Powis Smith The Nation commends this new version which has benefited by modern scholarship as 'dignified and clear." The Jetvish Forum calls it "exalted, trustworthy, and beyond the ordinary cavillings of the critics of new efforts at Bible translation." $3.00 University of Chicago Press 5807 Ellis Avenue, Chicago 1In "Music and the External World," The Nation, October 13. mmmmm^m^omaamammem When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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622 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 it and cannot recognize it when it is the attribute of groups of musical tones. A scientist, then, may not be able to distinguish one phrase of music from another, since the intellectual dis- cipline is distinct from the specialized musical discipline that makes it possible to apprehend a type of music. This may appear obvious, but many notions prevail which fail to observe the distinction. For example, a popular program, by which is meant one that consists of simple, obvious music, is regularly spoken of as suiting the taste of a popular audience, by which is meant one that consists of intellectually unsophisti- cated persons; whereas in fact it suits the taste of even educated persons to whom all but the simplest of the special materials and processes of music are something of a mystery. And of late the demand has been more insistent than ever that music and its criticism and commentary be made intelligible to the layman; or rather that music — the art discussed, as well as individual compositions heard — be made intelligible to him by means of criticism and commentary that are intelligible; a demand which ag in. as I shall show, ignores the distinction between music and ordinary experience and between the musical discipline and the intellectual. Parenthetically, it is interesting that the failure to observe this distinction — like most of the errors with which musical com- mentary swarms — results itself from the very distinction ignored, that is, from the fact that usually the man who knows his music cannot think straight enough, and the man who can think straight does not know enough about music to avoid error. When — to take the first case — music is left, as apparently it should be, to be handled by the musical specialist, it is left in effect to one who usually has not learned objectivity, and who, therefore, is constantly guilty of special pleading — and this on behalf of nothing more than his little prejudices against this type of music or for that. lie sets out, as he thinks, to trace the connection between the revolutions of a century ago and music," but in reality to make out a case against program music rnd 0 i! s as b.ing infantile. He ends, therefore, not only by not discovering the connection but by confusing, among other things, musical with intellectual sophis- tication. On the other hand, the identical confusion is made by ntellectually sophisticated person who out of his ignorance of music demands a musical counterpart of "Why We Behave Like Human Beings." And it is this demand, as I have said, with the relation it implies between music and common sens.', that cads for discussion. Music has its proper place with activities like philosophy and mathematics, which use a technical terminology or a special set of symbols, either to introduce a desirable economy in ex- pression or to express relations that cannot be expressed in any way. But even in this class music stands apart. If Ein- stein's final results can be expressed only in mathematical sym- bols, nevertheless the relations so symbolized can be reduced to (or, in a sense, expanded into) other mathematical relations and this process continued until a relation is reached simple enough to be expressed adequately and clearly in ordinary language. The same can be done, with less difficulty, for the ideas of philosophy, and with comparative ease for those of anthropology. Thi' layman must, then, be willing to learn the definitions of cer- tain technical terms (the successful popularizer, then, is one who can induce his readers to learn them; the most easily popu- larized science that one of which the technical terms are most closely related to, and most easily incorporated in, the ordinary vocabulary) ; but if he does learn these definitions he has the means, not, probably, of appreciating the aesthetic qualities of a philosophic or mathematical demonstration, but at least of understanding some of the materials and processes which exhibit, in certain combinations and to * rtain individuals, these aesthetic qualities. Not so with music. The simplest verbal definition or description of the simplest musical relation uses terms which stand for purely musical facts, and which are mean- ingless until these musical facts have been apprehended directly r* (T^^fTT) (TW'. World. by FRITZ MAUTHNER $2.00 "Stimulating." i'h tin. Inquirer. '•Delightful." — Hartford Times. THE WOMAN WORKER anH the TRADE UNIONS bi/ Theresa Wolfson $1.75 CHAINS by Henri Barbusse 2 vols. $1.00 BROKEN EARTH by Maurice Hindus $2.00 OIL IMPERIALISM by Lou us t $2.00 WHITHER RUSSIA? by I .' on Trotsky $1.50 Tht new THEATRE .i d CINEMA of SOVIET RUSSIA by Huntly Carter • EDUCATION IN SOVIET RUSSIA l,il Scott Ncaring $1.50 FOUNDATIONS of CHRISTIANITY by Karl Kautsky $4.00 LEFT WING UNIONISM by David J. Sapoes $1.60 At ail Book Stores INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS write tor 381 FOUQTH AVENLb NEW VCBK Catalog 2Daniel Gregory Mason, in "Contemporary Composers." When writing t. advertisers, please mention The Nation

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Dec. 8. 1926] The Nation 623 as musical facts. There is, then, no making music intelligible to the absolute layman by using language that is intelligible as language. What such language makes intelligible is only what- ever quantities and qualities the words refer to in ordinary experience; the judgments that are made are judgments of only such quantities and qualities; and the criteria that are intro- duced by these judgments are common sense criteria which gov- ern only the aforementioned quantities and qualities. It requires knowledge of music in addition to translate these quantities and qualities into musical facts, the judgments into musical judg- ments, and the criteria into musical criteria. And since one possessing the requisite knowledge of music does not need the intelligible language, the use and value of such language is in any case solely that of literature or entertainment, not of en- lightenment. I have, it is true, been dealing with the extreme and rare case of the absolute layman, the person absolutely unacquainted with music; but what 1 have said of him remains true up the line: where the direct experience with the musical fact is ade- quate to a correct understanding of the verbal explanation the explanation is superfluous; where the direct experience is not adequate the explanation is useless. And so, given a person with actual but slight musical sophistication, there is no making Brahms intelligible and enjoyable to him by mere verbal descrip- tions of the intricate materials and processes involved. Instead there must be direct, comprehending — which means educated — experience with the materials and processes, but experience itself educated by direct experience with less intricate materials and processes. Otherwise, if the reader ever gets to a concert he finds that the verbal descriptions he understood do not confront him, and the processes that confront him he does not understand. R. H. Haggin Drama "The Witch" LAST season "The Dybbuk" illustrated one of the ways in which a playwright may avail himself of emotional experi- ences completely alien to his audience. Throughout, the author identified himself with the milieu he described and wrote the play as if he shared to the fullest extent the beliefs which constituted its premises. The audience was asked to put itself in the place of those with whom the story dealt, to renounce for the time being the spiritual world in which it was accus- tomed to live, and by an act of poetic faith to believe in the mythology of the Chassidic Jews. The result of such a method, when it is successfully em- ployed, is the production of a beautiful anachronism. By con- senting to accept, during a certain time, an alien Weltanschauung the spectator opens his soul to new terrors and new sublimities and he is led to partake in whatever strange and beautiful experiences his borrowed faith makes possible. He is frightened by things which he does not really fear, moved by passions foreign to his nature, stirred by conflicts that do not really concern him. He accepts, in a word, both the penalties and the rewards of a spiritual world not his own, so that, for example, in the case cited, he endures the dark terrors of a gloomy superstition for the sake of the compensating sense which it brings of inhabiting a universe made important by the omnipresence of unseen powers whose concern is with him: a universe, that is to say, at once darker and more sublime than that daylight one which rationality has robbed at once of its terror and its grandeur. A play of this sort asks of the intellect sympathy, not judg- ment. It aims to lull the critical faculty to sleep and its pur- pose is to make the distant past live again exactly as once it did. Successful as it may be, such is not, however, the only way in which an alien world may be presented. We may be Tzvo Neiv Plays THE CAPTIVE By Edouard I^ourdet I ranslatcd by Arthur I lornblow, Jr. "An unprecedented play, an absorbing play, ;i 9tudy of a young woman struggling helplessly in the toils of an abnormal, erotic passion." Alexander Woollcott in the N. Y. World "Bourdet lias wrought a play of gigantic proportions, ot compassion and candor, and, above all, of terrific dramatic effect." [$2.mj ] John Anderson in the N. Y. Evening Post THE WITCH By John Masefield Adapted from the Norwegian of II. Wiers-Jenssen "The author has devoted himself as lovingly to native folklore for dramatic purposes as Ansky of "The Dybbuk' did. Something of the same fervor and complete sim- plicity is in both plays. A worthy contribution to the drattia of all nations." [$1.75] Gilbert Gabriel in tin- X. Y. Sun Publishers BRENTANG'S New York "Belongs to all time" FORTY by BENJAMIN DeCASSERES The Story of the World's Great Civilizers " 'Forty Immortals' is one of the great- est books of criti- cism that I know. I have read nothing in criticism which is as enndensed, as lyrical, as fulgurant, as intuitional. From ihe background of an imposing erudi- tion there leap from each page lightning flashes which illumi- n a t e a compkto literary landscape, a complete human ■soul, where they are seen for an instant .:s one could not see them in a year, perhaps in a life- time of study. This book is not criti- cism : it is crea- tion." — Maurice Maeterlinck. 371 Pasres. "Unhackneyed, bril- I i a n t. ' ' — H. L. Mencken. Anafole France Friedrich Nietzsche Gabriele D'Annunzio Percy B. Shelley V/alt WhiSman James B. Cabell William Shakespeare Gus'ave Flaubert Thomas Hardy Edgar Sallus $3.50 AT ALL BOOKSTORES "Invigorating, daz- zling."— The Book. man. "You won't fall asleep over this vol- ume."— Kcnelm Dig- liy. "In 'Forty Immor- tals' DeCasseres comes nearer t o achieving the pur- pose of constructive criticism than any- le we can re- call to mind." — N'-ic York Times. PUBLISHING COMPANY 160 Fifth Avenue. New York When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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624 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3205 asked instead to go back with our eyes open, to judge events as we should judge them here and now, to react with our waking souls to other creeds and other deeds. Then we do not, as we did before, live the lives of those we watch and, starting from their premises, reach their conclusions; we stand over them instead. Viewed thus from a different angle events take on different meanings, so that the performance of a duty becomes, perhaps, a folly and justice mere cruelty. Judgment, not sympathy, is called into play and our experience is not wholly, at least, poetic, but in part critical as well. Such is the method employed in the somber tragedy which John Masefield took from the Norwegian of Wiers-Jenssen and calkd "The Witch" (Greenwich Village Theater). The scene is sixteenth-century Norway and the subject witchcraft, not witchcraft as it appeared to those who lived in the days when it flourished and when burnings seemed as inevitable as executions seem today but witchcraft as we in retrospect see it. To those who played their parts in the ghastly tragedies enacted throughout the Western world it appeared as a terrible emergency, a visible eruption of hell, and upon their premises a moving play could be written; but Wiers-Jenssen has chosen to give us instead the drama of witchcraft as we see it, the tragedy, that is to say, of a delusion so cunningly calculated ay into the hand of all human weakness — superstition, fear, malice, and insanity- — and to unite them into one frightful weapon of evil as to be worthy of any devil the human imag- ination has ever conceived. And the result is that while "The Dybbuk" made us almost regret our rationality, "The Witch" us shuddering over an abyss which, thank God, no longer yawns for us. In the beginning the author prepares us for the full .sig- nificance of what is to come by striking terror to the heart with a ghastly scene in which an old woman (unforgettably played by Maria Ouspenskaya) is dragged away to the stake; then, in a series of vividly imagined scenes, he shows how the net, which she herself helps to weave, closes round the body of an unfortunate girl and destines her too for the stake. The sexually starved wife of an old man and the daughter of a dead woman upon whom the suspicion of witchcraft had fallen, she herself at moments mistakes her incipient hysteria for demonic possession, and so when her husband dies sud- denly she is half convinced that her wishing killed him. The dead man's mother, seizing, without quite knowing what she doer , this pretext to indulge in a long-nourished hate, denounces her and she, stricken with terror, faints under a test. Then her lover, overcome with fear and unconsciously glad of an opportunity to shift the burden of his guilt and to blame his fall upon supernatural powers, deserts her at the last moment and her fate is sealed. One by one, morbid nerves, then malice, and then fear have played their parts, and thanks to them a whole people, strengthened anew in their delusion, will harden their hearts in the name of righteousness and rejoice at the spectacle when fire wraps itself around shrinking flesh. Montague Summers, whose researches into the drama and whose recent fanatic book upon the subject of witchcraft both give him a certain right to speak, calls "The Witch" "probably the finest piece of work dealing in domestic fashion with the warlock and sorceress that has been seen on the English stage since the reign of wise King James," and in spite of the fact that its last two acts never reach the hi^h level of the first two and that there are moments when it loses itself in too extended treatment of the love of the witch and her paramour, I think that he is right. Here are genuine pity and genuine terror in which both the imagination and the intellect are involved. The production is generally excel'ent and two performances besides that of Maria Ouspenskaya demand especial mention — the restrained intelligent performance of Alice Brady as the witch and the burning intensity of James C. Malaidy's playing in the role of a fanatical priest. Joseph Wood Krutch □ THEATER □ —The Neighborhood Playhouse/?^ SSS'Si?'— Evenings (Except Monday), Matinee Saturday The Hindu Classic THE LITTLE CLAY CART f nnoarr* Theatre. 48th St, West of Broadway. Evenings 8 :I6 L,uu^ai.ic Matinee* Wednesday and Saturday at 2:80 A a THEODORE DREISER'S n American tragedy ■A PLAY WHICH IS BOUND TO WRENCH A MILLION HEARTS." — Journal. DRAMATIZED BY PATRICK KEARNEY. LIMITED ENGAGEMENT ACTORS THEATRE PRODUCTION EVt ENE O'NEILL'S "BEYOND THE HORIZON" Mansfield Theatre 47th St.. West of Chickering 5852 B'way Eves. Mats. 8:30. Wed. & Sat. 2:30. YIDDISH ART THEATRE 12th St. and 2nd Ave. Stuy. 7195 MAURICE SCHWARTZ PRODUCTION OF ABRAHAM GOLDFADEN'S "The Tenth Commandment" Evenings 8.30 Matinees Saturday and Sunday 2:30 I CIVIC REPERTORY THEATRE $g *;»£ %, EVA Le GALLIENNE Thursday. December 2. "Three Sisters." Friday, December 3. "La Locandiera." Saturday Matinee, Deceml>er 4, "La Lu-amlii ra." Saturday Evening, December 4, "Master Builder." Monday, December 6, "La Locandiera." Tuesday, December 7, "Three Sisters." Wednesday Matinee, December 8, "La Laeondiera." Evenings & Saturday Matinees, 50c to $1.5(\ Wednesday Matinees, 35c-$l. THEATRE GUILD PRODUCTIONS SIDNEY HOWARDS COMEDY Ned McCobb's Daughter TnUNT CCW rWM Thea.. 58th St.. East of B'way. JUniN VjWL.L'LIN Matinees THURS. and SAT. BERNARD SHAW'S PYGMALION "The most refreshing intellectual shower bath on Broadway, with the tingling drops of Shaw's wit to tickle the spine." Frank Vreeland, Telegram. GUILD THEATRE 52nd St.. W. of B'way. Evs. 8:30. Matinees THURS. and SAT., 2:30. □ □ □ □ D n □ n □ SECOND DANCE PROGRAM THIS SEASON This Sunday Evening. December 5th at 8:30 P. M. ANGNA ENTERS Premiere of Five Compositions in Dance Form: (Der Rosenkavalier ; Odalisque: Man, His Origin Is Dust; Colombine: and Bar Maid. Also Sapphic; Feline: Habanera; Dance of Death; Promenade; Second Empire; Bourree; Cardinal; Moyen Age; and Colombine.) 238 W. 44th St. LITTLE THEATRE Lackawanna 6620 Seats now on sale: $2.20, $1.65, $1.10. When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED IS 8 f> Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY. DECEMBER 15, Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS EDITORIALS: Revelry ami Whispers Refrigerated Mammoths Manufacturing News 629 IN MEXICO. By Hendrik van l.n 630 THE NICARAGUAN FARCE. By Carleton Reals MOTHER'S DAUGHTER. Anonymous THE NATIONALISTS TAKE WUCHANG. By Anna Rochester 636 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 010 CORRESPONDENCE 610 BOOKS AND PLAYS: Cepyreadcr. By Ted Olson 641 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 641 Toward America Sober. By Henry Raymond Mussey Hard-Boiled. Ry Allen Tate 642 The Problem of Races. By Franz Boas 644 Four English Essayists. By John Waldhorn Gassner 646 The Nation's Poetry Prize 6+6 Books in Brief 646 Drama: A Note on Tragedy. By Joseph Wood Krutch INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The British Commonwealth of Nations 648 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFEE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada. $5.60 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address: Nation. New Y'ork. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square. London, W. C. 1, England. THE NEW YORK STATE WATER-POWER commission, with not so much as a month to live, is determined to hand over the incomparable power resources of the St. Law- rence River to the Aluminum Trust. The commission goes out of existence on December 31. It is Republican, whereas Governor Smith, who is fighting to conserve the State's water-power, belongs to the opposite party. The over- whelming victory of Governor Smith in the recent election gave clear indication that the people of New York were behind him in that fight. And so, before the door is shut on such schemes forever, the commission summons in one of the richest and greediest corporations in the world and bids it take 2,000,000 horse-power away, on terms that must shake the sides of all the devils in hell. It is as though the commission were seeking deliberate revenge on a people for beating its party at the polls; or else had gone quite mad. No more wanton, cynical raid on the public domain has ever been recorded. Teapot Dome does not hold a fraction of the wealth that is locked up in the "white coal" of the St. Lawrence. GOVERNOR SMITH continues to fight. He has re- tained Samuel Untermyer to seek ways and means of enjoining the commission's action. The federal government as well as the courts will have something to say before the deal is finally consummated. But the danger is acute, and all men and women with a spark of citizenship should range themselves — as vocally as possible— on the Governor's side. The lease provides that the Aluminum Trust shall pay the State $2,000,000 a year in taxes. Where will it get the taxes? Out of the hides of the citizens of New York in exorbitant power rates. The lease provides that at the end of fifty years the plant will revert to the State. On what terms? At cost plus 15 per cent— $20,000,000 velvet or thereabouts to be handed over to Mr. Mellon's heirs. Fur- thermore, a loophole is left for watering values which, if past experience in public-utility valuations is any guide, will undoubtedly be used to push up the price to such a figure that the people of New York can never afford to buy their own property back. Or worse still, they may be forced to pay through the nose when the engineering of fifty years hence is getting cheaper power from other sources. The New York World states the case flatly: "This is not a matter of private development versus public devel- opment. This is a matter of decent development, whether public or private, versus a barefaced last-minute grab." THE GREAT FATHER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, that dauntless man, has just surrendered without discretion to the Senators from North Dakota, Nye and Frazier. The intrepid Mr. Coolidge, it seems, appointed to the position of United States Marshal in North Dakota one C. F. Mud- gett, a protege of Mr. Hanna, the recently defeated regular candidate for the Senate. When this news reached Senator Nye he promptly went to the White House, demanded an interview with the President, and got it. Then and there he told the President that he would stand for no such treat- ment in the disposition of patronage in his State and the aforesaid intrepid President came down with the rapidity and benevolence of Davy Crockett's 'coon. Poor Mr. Mud- gett, who had left his home for his new post, is to return unrewarded. Senator Frazier, too, served notice upon the White House that the President must recognize no one but the elected Senators. Washington points to the closeness of the next Senate as the reason for Mr. Coolidge's igno- minious surrender, but we are inclined to think that Sena- tor Nye's own fighting spirit helped to carry the day. In- dubitably, as Frank R. Kent points out in the Baltimore Sun, this rather shoddy struggle over patronage reflects little credit upon any one involved. But, if patronage must be, there is no reason why the President should be per- mitted to use that of North Dakota to punish insurgent Senators who refuse to kiss the royal robes on all occasions. How, in the face of incidents like this, can the myth of the big, strong statesman in the White House persist? WHERE WAS MOSES when the light went on? This will be the question in Washington when Senator Borah undertakes to investigate the activities of his col- league, Senator Moses of New Hampshire, in connection with the Alien Property Custodian's office. Norman Hap- pood has brought out in his Washington correspondence the fact that Emory R. Buckner, United States District Attorney in New York, has in his possession three checks aggregating $6,000, drawn by John T. King to the order of Senator Moses. John T. King, it will be remembered, was

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626 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 the man who distributed the $441,000 which figured in the Daugherty-Miller conspiracy case, that being the money said to have been paid as a bribe by Richard Merton in order improperly to obtain release of certain alien property. Mr. Hapgood also declares that these three checks are not re- ported in the income tax of Senator Moses, and thinks from this it is "impossible to argue that this $6,000 was for legiti- mate services legitimately accounted for." He also main- tains that there are letters in Mr. Buckner's possession which throw an extremely interesting light on the relations between Senator Moses and Mr. King. One of these letters relates to the attempt to get the "right kind of ambassador from Germany," and another from Senator Moses tells Mr. King that he will give him a tip as to the right kind of pressure in order to bring this about. As far as we can make out the next Senate will be devoted chiefly to investi- gating its new and old members. Smith of Illinois, Gould of Maine, Watson of Indiana, Vare of Pennsylvania, Moses of New Hampshire — the list is getting longer and more interesting every day. ENTIRELY GRATIFYING is Mr. S. Parker Gilbert's report of the second year's working of the Dawes Plan. The Agent General for Reparations speaks in warm praise of the "loyalty and fidelity" of the Germans in their coopera- tion with the Dawes authorities, the promptness of their payments, and their ability to settle two supplementary budget contributions by the lump-sum payments of 300,000,- 000 marks; the latter Mr. Gilbert declares "significant of the spirit of friendly accommodation ... a new sign of the good-will and mutual understanding that lie at the basis of the plan." Distribution of reparation payments has gone on smoothly, without trade or currency disturbances. France alone received 011,877,000 marks in cash, 225,000,- 000 marks in coal, coke, and lignite, 40,000,000 marks in fertilizers, and 37,000,000 in timber and agricultural prod- ucts. Next year Germany must pay, all told, 1,500,000,000 marls and there is every prospect that it will be able to do so despite the heavy burden of unemployment doles. Mr. Gilbert criticizes the usual danger of too great govern- mental expenditure and censures the failure to work out a definite financial relationship between the Reich and the separate states and communes. But he records the sta- bility of the currency for more than two years, the ade- quacy of the gold reserve, and the brave manner in which the Reich has borne the pains of reorganization after infla- tion. He, too, takes a slap at the preposterous European tariffs, declaring that "trade barriers are still responsible for great dislocation" and hamper the prompt movement of goods. All in all, the report reveals a situation far better than had been hoped for, one that reflects infinite credit on all concerned and upon none more than on Mr. Gilbert and his American staff. THERE IS CERTAINLY no better— and perhaps no other — peaceful solution of the fifty-year-old wrangle between Chile and Peru over the Tacna-Arica territory than that formally proposed by our Secretary of State in suggesting that the area be awarded to Bolivia, the latter paying a price for it to be fixed by negotiation. The sug- gestion, commended by The Nation in its issue of March 31, last, did not originate with Mr. Kellogg, but his accept- ance of it may heal a long-festering wound and restore to our diplomacy the prestige which we lost when our badly conceived attempt to supervise a plebiscite ended last spring in a fiasco. Bolivia, quite naturally, has already accepted the proposal, and it is reported that Chile is favorably dis- posed toward it. Such a settlement has much to commend it to all the countries concerned. The area is an arid strip between Peru and Chile of no material value to either, but it would be of decided importance to Bolivia, giving it access to the sea, a railway thereto, and the ready-made port of Arica in place of Antofagasta, which it lost to Chile in the war of half a century ago. For South America and the world at large an acceptance of the proposal would end a long-standing cause of national jealousy and potential war. EXCITED BY A THREAT of a general strike on the part of their servants, the foreigners at Hankow, in the heart of China, telegraphed ardently for gunboats to protect them, and an international flotilla is now anchored off the concessions. But the general strike which excited such apprehension has not occurred, and the 407 American marines now at Hankow must find life dull. To the Chinese, however, the incident must have seemed just one more proof of the unity of the foreign nations. The ordinary Chi- nese does not know that the American Government, by announcing that it would not use its marines to maintain foreign control of the Chinese customs, had done the inde- pendence of China a real service; he knows only that when- ever foreign warships threaten China the Stars and Stripes fly alongside the rest. Meanwhile, the Nationalists con- tinue to gain ground; they have moved their capital from Canton in the South to Wuchang, opposite Hankow; their armies have captured Fuchow, the last important center of resistance south of Shanghai. A coalition of Northern war lords, meeting in Tientsin, has issued noisy proclamations of determination to down them, but while the dispatches report an intention to send 150,000 soldiers against the Southerners it remains to be seen where the coalition will find the soldiers willing to fight, the money to pay for them, or the generals capable of leadership. I T WOULD BE UNCONSTITUTIONAL in our coun- by William D. Guthrie, president of the New York City Bar Association, to Cardinal Hayes, sums up that jurist's argu- ment against Mexico's anticlerical legislation. True, but what of it? Certainly legislation analogous to that em- bodied in the Mexican constitutions of 1857 and 1917 could not be enacted in the United States. We have, fortunately, never had an established church which dominated our entire nation politically, economically, and spiritually. Mr. Guthrie is an eminent lawyer, but he should fortify himself in Mexi- can history. "If," he writes, "during the last century in Mexico, fair play and religious liberty as we Americans now conceive fair play to all creeds and to all churches had been granted to the Roman Catholic church"— things would have been different. Does he not know that the Mexican Catholic episcopate unanimously decried tolerance of other creeds as "impious," "disastrous," and "anti-Catholic" three-quarters of a century after religious liberty had been written into our own national charter? ONTARIO, TOO, HAS GONE WET— all Canada, with the exception of the Maritime Provinces, has now de- serted the prohibition adopted in war time. Ontario, how- ever, has not gone back to the saloon — she has, by reseating

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation 627 the Conservative Party with added strength, indorsed Pre- mier Ferguson's program of permitting Dry communities to be Dry and of establishing package sale in communities which choose to be Wet. Prohibition was established in Ontario in 1916; 68 per cent of the voters indorsed it at a referendum in 1919, only 54 per cent in 1924; this year Premier Ferguson, after putting through a redistribution act which gave the cities the larger representation to which their increasing population entitled them, went to the people on the direct issue of abandoning prohibition altogether, and won. Prohibition, he declared, was a failure; and ap- parently most of Ontario's voters agree with him. It will be interesting to observe the new system in operation. Ontario apparently did not like the saloon system when she had it; she does not like prohibition; will the system of giving to any person over 21 a revocable card entitling him to buy liquor in packages at government monopoly stores please the people better? THE CONSOLIDATION OF NEWSPAPERS goes on apace, the Scripps-Howard group having just pur- chased four more dailies, the Denver Rocky Mountain N( ws, Denver Times, Knoxville Sentinel, and Memphis News- Scimitar. The Denver Times was immediately consolidated with the Express of that city, already owned by the Scripps- Howard chain; the News-Scimitar with the Scripps-Howard Press of Memphis, while the Knoxville Sentinel is similarly joined to the Knoxville News. Every week sees new com- binations, while the air is full of rumors that there will soon be a Scripps-Howard daily in New York and that other sales and combinations are under way in the metropolis and elsewhere. But this remarkable trend is not confined to the large cities — it goes on in the small towns, sometimes extending to the concentration of all the dailies of a city under one ownei-ship, as in Springfield, Massachusetts, and Auburn, New York. Since chain stores and combinations, in order to achieve economies of management, are the rule in almost all other lines of business, and since the making of newspapers is now purely a business affair, this drift is not to be wondered at. The effect it will have on the edi- torial side of the press is another matter. On this point we have a warning from a veteran old-school editor, Milie Bunnell, founder of the Duluth Herald, who sees in the consolidations a "disintegration" and declares chat the "sal- vation of American thought must come from editors whose courage and brilliance will be sufficient to combat the money interests seeking to monopolize the nation's news and opin- ions." Fortunately, the Scripps-Howard chain rank among the most liberal daily newspapers existing in the United States today. THE EDITOR of the St. Petersburg, Florida, Independ- ent is grieved at an article entitled Real Estate versus Human Lives in Florida which appeared in The Nation for October 13 last over the signature of Stella Crossley. He objects to the statement in that article that "the policy of Florida newspapers, which in recent years have become mere real-estate house organs, has been to play down local storms and play up Northern ones to the advantage of the realtor." The editor assures us that the Independent never has been controlled in either its news or editorial policy by the realtors or, for that matter, by anyone except its owners and managers, none of whom are financially interested in any real-estate development." We are glad to accept his assurances on this point and In exempt the Independent from the general application of .Miss Crossley's statement. The Independent also obji Miss Crossley's assertion, based on an Associated Press dispatch, that "concrete benches were picked up and whirled about by the wind and frame houses were leveled," this being attributed to one J. A. Kelly, who subsequently, the Independent informs us, with- drew those statements. As for the Independent's handling of the news of the storm, however, we cannot agree that its headlines on the day of the storm were justified by the facts or the news printed under them. We have no desire to do the editors or owners of the St. Petersburg Independent the slightest injury or injustice; we are concerned only with the truth. TWO DISTINGUISHED REPRESENTATIVES of Bos- ton Unitarianism have died within the past month. Edward Cummings, successor of Edward Everett Hah; at what was best known as "Dr. Hale's Church," was killed at a railroad crossing in New Hampshire; Paul Revere Froth- ingham, pastor of the congregation before which William Ellery Channing preached a century ago, died at his Boston home. Mr. Frothingham was author of an excellent life of Edward Everett, that other Bostonian of many brilliancies and scant permanent achievement; Mr. Cummings was a leader in the pro-League efforts of the World Peace Foun- dation. Both were men of broad vision and of singular per- sonal charm, whose qualities early promised brilliant careers; yet neither really weathered the war. Both were stricken with that strange hesitancy which leaves Boston Unitarianism today a faint shadow of the pulsing movement which once moulded American thinking. The liberal Ortho- dox churches have caught up with what was once religious radicalism; and the social gospel which inspired Channing to denounce war when it was still unquestioned has, like other Boston radicalisms, been smothered in the smug ancestor-worship of the present generation. Nonetheless, Mr. Cummings and Mr. Frothingham will be missed and Unitarianism confronts the question whether adequate suc- cessors can be found. THE SUICIDE OF GEORGE STERLING closed" an at- tractive career of the sort that can be pursued today only, perhaps, on the Pacific Coast. To Californians, Sterling was not merely a good poet; he was in a more than figurative sense their poet laureate, and by virtue of his many ad- mirable qualities as a person he was a civic institution as well. His rank as an American poet, whatever that may be, is worth determining; but we should also remember him as a companionable man, generous to younger poets, and the leading spirit of the Bohemian Club, whence he sent his con- tributions to magazines all over the United States. The last poem he contributed to The Nation, The Seventh Veil, was so energetic an expression of disillusion that Fremont Older, upon reading it, sat down and wrote this letter: I got a great kick out of your Seventh Veil, published in The Nation. You have expressed very beautifully what I have thought ever since I found out about the human race, but have lacked both the ability and the courage to express my conclusions. I am grateful to you. Sterling forwarded the letter to the editors of The Nation, but before they had time to thank him he was dead by his own hand. The disillusion he had expressed was, it would seem, his own.

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628 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 Revelry and Whispers TWO books have stirred political waters in England and America and have called forth bitter denunciations. They are the anonymous "Whispering Gallery," already suppressed in London, and Samuel Hopkins Adams's "Revelry," the latter a novel and in that guise setting forth the story of the Harding Administration. It is without literary merit and has little to recommend it save that it portrays the author's idea of how the "Ohio gang" lived, acted, stole, and betrayed America in Washington. Coarse- ness, vulgarity, a sordidness incredible, utter unmorality — Mr. Adams's pages reek with them, and the chief charac- ters in this lowest of dramas are but faintly disguised. Forbes, Fall, Daugherty, Sawyer, Harding himself all ap- pear in scenes which must seem incredible to those who are ignorant of what the Harding Administration was, who have not followed the developments which sent Forbes and others to jail, brought two former Cabinet officers to the bar of justice, and compelled a series of suicides. As for the "Whispering Gallery," which was fraudu- lently foisted on the publishers, it is a little difficult to understand the anger it has aroused. Many of the sketches of public personages strike us as extremely apt; the con- versations attributed to some of the great are, on the other hand, artificial and made to order. Yet there breathes through it all such a clear conception of the smallness of most of the characters that guided the English ivorld dur- ing its four years of torture that one must believe that the author, whoever he be, had not only a humane outlook on life but a real understanding of the political forces which made such a catastrophe possible. He is certainly correct in his assertion that the politicians killed themselves when they enthroned the financiers as the real rulers of the world. If he did not personally know men like Ramsay MacDonald and Woodrow Wilson he must have been near enough to then or their friends to give pictures which, however sketchy, are often faithful. We are less concerned today with the books themselves than with the use of these two forms of writing in political attack. We credit Mr. Adams with the desire to do a gen- uine service in thus unveiling political conditions which can as yet not be handled directly without silly cries of "besmirching dead men" and "slandering a President who can no longer defend himself." Were we of the opinion that Mr. Adams wrote as a mere sensationalist, or simply in order to make money by the scandals of the Harding regime, we should of course have an emphatically unfavor- able opinion to express. Assuming his sincerity, we must approve of the choice of his medium despite the crudeness of the narration. History teems with novels which have roused the public conscience where ponderous tomes and elaborate Parliamentary or Congressional reports had failed to move — witness "Ramona," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "The Jungle," and many others, to say nothing of Charles Reade and Charles Dickens and the other crusading novelists across the seas. Yet the novel form for political or social propaganda is sometimes confusing, because of necessity truth and fiction are intermingled — not less so in the case of "Revelry" than in similar books. None the less wtc re- peat that we deem it entirely justifiable. If "Revelry" does not shock and arouse the American people it will be because of the author's lack of artistry and depth, because of its style rather than because of its form. Some day, some time, this humiliating chapter in our recent political history must be set forth in all its shame if the country is to be preserved from its recurrence. Margot Asquith quite naturally is defending the useful- ness of intimate memoirs — always assuming honesty, truthfulness, and sincerity. She is right in declaring that the public wishes to know what the real politician is like. It should be told, for, as the Countess of Oxford says: If you study the susceptibilities of the living it is more than likely that you will deal inadequately with the dead. ... I prefer the art of a brave and faithful painter to the ingenuity of a beauty specialist when ordering the portrait of a friend, and if you ignore the faults of public men you will have nailed them more securely in their coffins than any undertaker. The public ought to have the truth about public men, espe- cially in America, or we shall have frequently repeated the present situation when the American electorate has been led to believe that there is a big, brave, and wise statesman in the White House instead of a timid, little man who never faces an issue until compelled to do so. Novels, memoirs, "mirrors" of Downing Street or Wash- ington— we need them all, if they are within the boun- daries of sincerity and decency. The glamor that sur- rounds public men, which in America has led to an absurd worship of the Presidential office and the man in it, is a menace to democratic progress and to the frank por- traying of the truth at all times upon which democracies must insist if their political life is to be kept pure. Refrigerated Mammoths THE perfectly preserved carcass of a mammoth, the Rus- sians report, has recently been found in Trans- Baikalia, deep in a frozen bank. It has been shipped to the Leningrad Academy of Science for further study. This is not the first prehistoric veteran whose refrigerated remains have been discovered in Arctic Siberia, nor even the first shipped on ice to the former Russian capital. At least twenty frozen mammoths have been inspected in situ by Russian scientists, and four woolly rhinoceroses. Indeed, the region about the mouth of the Lena River, and the New Siberia Isles in the Arctic Ocean, must once have been thickly populated with mammoths. The trade in "fossil ivory" brought down from Siberia into China is at least a thousand years old, and several thousand pairs have been marketed within the last two hundred years. The ancient Chinese traders understood them to be the tusks of a giant rat which, they believed, lived in dark caves near the Arctic; and a shrewd old scientist suggested that the subsoil maneuvers of these gigantic creatures might be the cause of earthquakes. The first Westerners were little wiser. Captain Muller, a Swede sent to Siberia as a prisoner in 1716, wrote of these tusks that The common opinion of inhabitants is that they are real elephant's teeth and have lain buried ever since the universal deluge. Some of our countrymen think it to be the Ebur fossile, and consequently a product of the earth. Others again maintain that they are the horns

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation 629 of a live huge beast, which lives in morasses and subter- ranean caves, subsisting by the mud and working itself by the help of its horns through the mire and earth, but when it chances to meet sandy ground, the sands, rolling after it so close that, by reason of its unwieldiness, it cannot turn itself again, it sticks fast and perisl.es. Until within a few decades hopeful souls still planned Arctic journeys in the expectation of finding sonic oi the great beasts still wandering alive over the tundras. Modern sci- ence insists that the last of them died ten or fifteen thou- sand years ago — almost simultaneously with the disappear- ance of the mastodons who once roamed in herds over what is now the Eastern United States, but it cannot explain the mystery of their extinction, nor why their relics are so abundant in a restricted part of Siberia. Those whose carcasses are recovered entire are the few who plunged into clefts or abysses and. struggling, buried themselves in snow or ice which persisted through the millenniums until some wanton freshet, shifting its course, at last released them. But the others? Before the discovery of Beresovska mammoth a quarter century ago it was permissible to suggest a change of climate. But the Beresovska animal had, in its refrigerated stomach, the remains of some eighteen species of plants, all of which still flourish in the Arctic, and when climates changi docs the vegetation. This Beresovska monarch, whose carefully preserved remains were for years the pride of the St. Petersburg Academy, was, except for the missing trunk and parts of the head, still frozen solid when the scientific expedition sent to recover it came upon it. Indeed so well preserved was it that Dr. Hertz's contemporary diary somewhat dryly reports : The flesh from under the shoulder, fibrous and marbled with fat, is dark red and looks as fresh as well-frozen beef or horse-meat. It looked so appetizing that we won- dered for some time whether we would not taste it. But no one would venture to take it into his mouth, and horse- flesh was given the preference. . . . The dogs ate whatever mammoth meat we threw them. Manufacturing News PAUL Y. ANDERSON, Washington correspondent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, performed a public ser- vice the other day when he exposed the State Department in the deliberate manufacture and propagation of malicious news and the Associated Press as collaborating in the job. Here are his facts: On September 16 Robert E. Olds, Assistant Secretary of State and former law partner of Secretary Kellogg, tele- phoned to the three national press associations which sup- ply news to virtually every newspaper in the country and asked to have responsible men sent to see him. When these responsible visitors arrived Mr. Olds began by pledg- ing them to secrecy, and then proceeded with a lurid picture of Mexico as a hotbed of Bolshevism. "Gentlemen," he said, "we feel that this picture should be presented to the American people. We cannot prove it, but we are morally certain that a warm bond of sympathy, if not an actual understanding, exists between Mexico City and Moscow. ... I want your advice and cooperation." We understand that it was the representative of the United Press who first gave advice. "That is easy," he said. "Let the State Department issue a statement over the signature of the Secretary of State; every newspaper in the country will publish it." Mr. Olds made a gesture of fear. The State Depart- ment could not charge a neighboring country, with which we were in ostensibly friendly relations, with things which it was not in a position to prove. It wanted the allegations made, but it did not want to be held responsible for them. It had no proof. After some discussion, one of the newspapermen suggested that Mr. Olds's unprovable bogy might be dovetailed into a story of the impending recognition by the United States of the Diaz Government in Nicaragua. And so it was — by the Associated Press. Newspapers all over the country appeared on Novem- ber 18 with scare headlines over a Washington dispatch which began thus : Washington, November 17 (A. P.). — The specter of a Mexican-fostered Bolshevist hegemony intervening between the United States and the Panama Canal has thrust itself into American-Mexican relations, already strained. The Associated Press had done Mr. Olds's bidding. There was not a word in the dispatch to justify the lead, but the job was done; the news had been manufactured; the head- lines flared; and the editorial writers sharpened their pen- cils and started their excoriation. The United Press and the International News Service maintained their independence and discriminated between news and propaganda. We have examined the "flimsies" of both agencies for November 17, and the dispatches sent out by these agencies were honest news reports limited to statements of fact. They did not aid the State Department in manufacturing news — though some of their subscribers bombarded them with protests at letting themselves be "scooped." Fortunately the country has learned to be a bit sus- picious of anti-Mexican propaganda. But the instance is all too typical. Washington news consists in large part of "canned" material given out by the various departments, sometimes responsibly and sometimes not, and of the steady flow of disguised campaign material given out by Mr. Coolidge himself under the thin pseudonym of the "White House Spokesman." Washington correspondents, who naturally wish to preserve their "news sources," their friendships with officialdom, are loath to antagonize by re- fusing to put this canned propaganda on the wires. Nor is it Washington news alone which is distorted by official- dom. At the American Legation in Peking the newspaper- men daily meet a young gentleman who talks of the Can- tonese as "Bolsheviks" and gives his own political nuance to the news — and the Associated Press news which comes to us from China is gathered for it by a semi-official British agency. All over the world the process goes on. Responsible newspapers and news agencies have an obligation to the public to war against it; and the public owes a debt to the United Press, the International News Service, and Mr. Anderson for serving it so well in this instance. The posi- tion of the United Press is significant. Serving, as it does, newspapers in thirty-seven countries, it cannot afford to let itself be used as a catspaw by the Foreign Office of any one country — and it is not.

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630 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 In Mexico "/ see by the papers that there have oeen 189 'murders in the United States in the last two weeks, that mail carriages have been robbed in plain daylight, that nine million dollars' worth of jewels liave been stolen. It is about time our President sent an army across the Rio Grande to reestablish order, eh, Pedro?"

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation 631 The Nicaraguan Farce By CARLETON BEALS I FOURTEEN years ago, November 13, 11)12, the Nica- raguan press reported that the presidential train had left Managua for Corinto at G a. m. — three coaches, the first and third containing American marines, the middle car carrying President Adolfo Oiaz, General Emiliano Chamorro, Minister Oiego M. Chamorro, and Carlos Cuadra Pasos. The American marines downed the revolution, and kept Diaz as President. Adolfo Diaz is again President in 1926, and whimper- ing for American armed protection against the Liberals and against Mexico. If there is a legitimate constitutional President at the present moment (Solorzano, who had been honestly elected, resigned last January under the menace of Emiliano Chamorro's guns, and Chamorro then shot his way into the Presidency) it is Vice-President J. Bautista Sacasa, who led the Liberal revolt against Chamorro early this year, and was exiled under threat of death. Nevertheless, our State Department, according to the Associated Press, brazenly announced that it saw in Diaz's election "an indication that it may be possible to re- establish constitutional government in Nicaragua." Our State Department had declared Chamorro uncon- stitutional (per the 1923 Washington treaties), but winked at all shipments of arms to him from American ports and United States marines kept the rebels out of Blue- fields, the key Atlantic port; and now, within a few hours of his ascendancy, we have recognized Adolfo Diaz, who had been a lickspittle for Chamorro and American interests for seventeen years. This despite the fact that the 1923 Washington treaties, cut to democratic pattern by Charles E. Hughes and forced down the throats of the Central American republics, provide that no President (or near relative of such President) shall be recognized if he comes into power by armed means. In 1909 the cocktail was spiced with "revolution . . . ideals . . . majority will . . ." Secretary of State Knox, in his curiously bolshevistic note of 1909, delivered to the Nicaraguan representative in Washington, declared: The Government of the United States is convinced that the present revolution represents the ideals and will of the majority of the Nicaraguans more truly than does the Government of President Zelaya. To clarify the chain of events: In 1909 Nicaragua was ruled by one of those ruthless, malodorous, long-term Cen- tral American dictators, Jose Santos Zelaya. Zelaya proved acceptable to American interests until he negotiated a loan (against our protest) with the European Ethelburga bank- ers. Then a well-armed and well-financed revolution, headed by Estrada, with General Emiliano Chamorro in charge and Adolfo Diaz close in the offing, proceeded to overthrow Zelaya. Knox announced that Zelaya was violating the 1907 Washington treaties, exercising undue influence in Hon- duras, and flouting the rights of Costa Rica, Salvador, and Guatemala. So Zelaya had to resign; the Nicaraguan Con- gress appointed Jose Madriz in his stead. But the Wash- ington watchword was still "revolution" instead of "con- stitutionalism." American marines prevented Madriz from recapturing Bluefields, held by the Estrada-Chamorro-Diaz rebels (as lias similarly occurred again this year, 1926). The American occupation turned over thi' customs-houses to the rebels, prevented the regular Government from block- ading the port, and permitted rebel boats to fly the Ameri- can flag. Estrada's revolution had already promised, ac- cording to Thomas 1'. Moffat, American consul at Blue- fields, "annulment of all concessions not owned by foreign- ers." In accordance with a pact imposed by Thomas G. Dawson (expert on Dominican customs control) the new Government was pledged to make Adolfo Diaz the next President and to accept a loan "via the good offices of the United States." This same Diaz, a Bluefields employee of l.a Luz y Los Angeles Mining Company (American) at $1,000 a year, contributed to the revolution $600,000, which he eventually repaid to himself. General Estrada himself stated "with brutal frankness" that American companies had put up a million dollars, and named some of them. But the Nicaraguan Congress, after the revolution, proved refractory, attempting to adopt a constitution pre- venting foreign control through loans. With the approval of our State Department, this Congress was dissolved. New elections provoked popular discontent. Estrada turned the Presidency over to Adolfo Diaz, as per the Dawson agree- ment. The latter's election was assured by means of an American war-vessel sent into Nicaraguan waters "for moral effect." Followed a series of treaty-loans: 1911, Knox-Castrillo Convention, $15,000,000, turned down three times by our Senate in the face of Taft's insistent urging; 1911, Treasury Bills Agreement, temporary $1,500,000 loan, control of the National Bank goes to New York bankers, an American customs collector is appointed, right to solicit United States Government enforcement provided; 1912, Supplementary Loan, $500,000, customs guaranty, lien on railways which were transferred to a corporation organ- ized in the United States (to this day the railways pay New York State income taxes) ; 1912, Liberal revolution led by General Mena, protesting against this loan, put down by marines from eight United States war vessels; new elec- tions, polls guarded by United States marines, Adolfo Diaz continued four years longer in power; February, 1916, the Bryan-Chamorro treaty, by which the United States paid Nicaragua $3,000,000 to be applied to her debt and expended as the United States might otherwise designate, in return for trans-isthmian canal rights, ninety-nine year leases of the Great Corn and Little Corn Islands in the Caribbean and of a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca. II The geographical situation of Nicaragua explains many of its past and present difficulties. Central America reaches its greatest width near the southern boundary of Hon- duras; Nicaragua tapers down again toward Panama and the Canal. Its coast and harbors have strategic impor- tance, and its two large lakes, stretching half across the country and emptying into the Atlantic by the broad San Juan River, provide a sea-level canal almost ready made. This has long led to international contention; it was behind the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty reserving joint rights to England and the United States, and the machinations which

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632 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 in 1916 gave the United States exclusive rights at the moral and physical price already tabulated. The Great and Little Corn Islands, of remote importance for Panama, are in- dispensable for the protection of the Nicaraguan route. Also strategically important is the Gulf of Fonseca, the Pacific hub of the whole Central American wheel — politi- cally, commercially, militarily. On a sizzling day of last June I crossed the Gulf of Fonseca in a launch — mile after mile of glistening calm water surrounded by virginal forests and jagged purple mountains, and dotted with islands, one of the magnificent harbors of the world, beautiful as San Francisco, Guaymas, or Naples, with room for the combined navies of all the Powers. Beyond La Union in El Salvador towers the cone of Conchagua at the harbor entrance, a peak which E. G. Squier, American Minister to Honduras, climbed back in 1850 when there was no scientific map in existence, to satisfy himself, by the open vista he thus gained, that a trans-oceanic railway was feasible. The Gulf of Fonseca is one of the choice fruits of empire. For these and other reasons Nicaragua, one of the cross-roads of the New World, has been, since the earliest times, the scene of bitter conflict. And because of Nica- ragua's proximity to Panama, because of its potential waterway, because of the key positions of the Gulf of Fon- seca and of the Great and Little Corn Islands, the Bryan- Chamorro Treaty was put across with the help of the hire- ling government of Adolfo Diaz, held in power by Ameri- can marines. Greater than the rights of Nicaragua in the Gulf of Fonseca are those of Honduras and Salvrdor, both of which vigorously protested the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, claiming that it violated their own rights and the 1907 treaties. The matter was carried to the Central American Court of Justice (a pro-peace body created by the United States Government), which ruled against the treaty — a de- cision which both the United States and Nicaragua ignored. The court was thus smashed. Followed more treaties and loans: 1918, High Commis- sion of the Republic of Nicaragua (one Nicaraguan, two Ameixcans) to supervise expenditures; 1920, the Brown- Seligman $9,000,000 loan; 1921, a revolt against this loan, put down by guns and ammunition supplied from the United States; 1921-1922, repeated clashes between Nicaraguans and American marines; 1924, the coalition Liberal-Con- servative Government of Solorzano and Sacasa, and the be- ginning of financial emancipation; 1925, American marines withdrawn, but the Nicaraguan forces placed under the unitary command of American officers; October, 1925, cuar- telazo by Emiliano Chamorro against the too-liberal Solor- zano; January, 1926, Chamorro assumes the Presidency, exiles Sacasa; then, the Liberal revolt under Sacasa and the futile Conservative-Liberal parleys on the U. S. S. Denver, presided over by the American Minister. Ill Enter Mexico. Mexico has been seeking the leadership of Central America — through careful selection of diplomatic representatives, gifts of airplanes, libraries, wireless sta- tions, scholarships; the sending of labor organizers, theat- rical troupes, lecturers; the promotion of international sport and literary and cultural unions; the arranging of special tours to Mexico City; newspaper subsidies and a semi-official news service, "Ariel"; improving communica- tions, rail, cable, wireless, subsidized steamships, and co- operating in mutual difficulties such as the locust plague; offers of financial assistance and the active support of friendly Liberal governments. This is part of a large pro- gram of cultural rapprochement, a move toward the unifi- cation of the entire Latin-American cultural race-bloc, a move of which Mexico temporarily, perhaps permanently, is the spokesman, the prime mover, and the leader. To such unification and to governments friendly to Mexico the United States, for obvious reasons, is opposed. There is plenty of evidence that Mexico, in the case of Nicaragua, has not been content to play a merely passive role, but has followed the American tactic of financial and material assistance to the side that it favors. Mexico was exceedingly friendly to the Solorzano-Sacasa Government; I have heard Mexican officials boast: "We put it into power." Mexico desires to see the Liberal constitutional regime reestablished under Sacasa. Expeditions from both coasts of Mexico have landed arms and munitions in Nica- ragua. American aviators in the pay of Chamorro bom- barded such shipments. (Incidentally, they were not threatened by our State Department with loss of citizenship, as were similar adventurers in Morocco.) Chamorro, aware of these Mexican activities, sent a protest to the League of Nations. Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary of the League, transmitted the communication to Mexico. Sacasa protested to the League against such un- warranted recognition of the Chamorro dictatorship, citing violation of the 1923 Washington treaties (which have since proved his undoing), and denying Mexican aid. A clever move, this, on the part of Chamorro, nor dis- pleasing to Washington. It made it possible to flaunt the Monroe Doctrine, emphasize our sacred right to control the Western Hemisphere, and to settle Nicaragua's internal affairs promptly. The United States press blared that Mexico was carrying communism to Nicaragua and Central America and overthrowing popular government, that with Sacasa's aid it planned to set up Liberal (alias Labor, alias Communist) governments all the way to Panama, thus thwarting the sacred will of the people. IV Sacasa, even with Mexican aid, is more "constitu- tional" than American-propped Diaz, yet he, in turn, is dyed with the traditional Nicaraguan governing practices. Central American governments are still patterned after the old Spanish vice-regal regimes; they are still, in spirit, colonial fiefs, ruled by a number of bitterly contentious, semi-Creole families, whose heads are alternately in power or in exile, fighting to grab the lion's share of the spoils. In the last century one faction has gained its support by catering to American imperial interests, the other by cater- ing to the growing nationalist, racial, and anti-clerical senti- ments. One can hardly blame the bankers for wanting guaran- ties for loans to these belated condottieri; one can accuse them of playing in cahoots with such condottieri with cal- lous indifference toward popular and national needs; one can charge them with manipulation of our State Depart- ment. The treaty-loan system, as at present invoked, con- tinues a vicious semi-feudal type of irresponsible govern- ment over peoples too weak to protest, peoples which under the most favorable circumstances would find the road to democratic expression thorny with difficulties. It corrupts governments, raises up unscrupulous dictators and dema- gogues, creates intolerable popular burdens, brings about protective raids on our own Treasury, and, for the sake of a few financial groups, jeopardizes our cordial relations with the entire Latin-American world.

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation (533 These Modern Women Mother's Daughter ANONYMOUS A METHODIST preacher smote the cheek of his presid- ing elder several years before I was born. After that my father's preaching terminated abruptly. It was about my mother's right to be herself. The Methodist brethren wanted to force my mother into the Methodist church, an intimidation to which my father would not or could not be a party. They met about 1870 when she was 18 and he was 29. She was teaching, and had been teaching for four years, in a little town near the mouth of the Ohio River. He came from a nearby State to teach in the same school. Girls usually married early in those days, when they had a chance, but my mother temporized about marriage for five years, teaching all the while. She married at 23, and continued to teach. Wherever the church sent my father, she taught. She was not a Methodist, but they worked together constantly; she went with him into the work of church and schoolroom, into his Sunday schools, into his mission. She may have helped him with his sermons. But she did not join his church. Eventually they found themselves in a rabidly intol- erant Southern Methodist community. Here my mother was baited and harassed because of her adherence to her good old Baptist faith. Then, too, children came, and it was doubtless embarrassing to the Methodist brethren to have their own minister's babies crawl around unsprinkled and to have their own minister's wife avoid partaking of the Methodist communion. One thing led to another and to the final break. Of course father might have asserted him- self more. He might have slapped his wife rather than his presiding elder and thus held on to his frock. He did none of these things. So Methodist and Baptist they remained, but outside of the ministry. They were Democrats, too, and consistent in a moderate Southernism. He was the son of a slave- holding planter who had lost everything in the war. She was from "immigrant" non-slaveholding stock, with little to lose. We were poor. Life was a struggle and religion a comfort. My parents believed in God, of course — the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — and in the Resurrection Day. Nevertheless, during the six years I knew my father, I heard him swear occasionally. He indulged in tobacco, and now and then a toddy. My mother tried to teach me the steps of the dances of her girlhood. She and my father had attended opera in New Orleans. I heard him say I might become an opera singer if I held my lung-power — perhaps a Jenny Lind. One of my brothers was permitted to have a deck of cards. Checkers and parchesi and domi- noes were not denied us — even on Sunday. A collection of Arabian Nights tales was in our book-case and I read it early and had the stories told me at an even more tender age. There were also Shakespeare, Carlyle, Tom Paine, Victor Hugo, and George Eliot — who, my mother told me, "was really a woman named Mary Ann Evans." My mother drew few distinctions between her boys and girls. I have seen my brothers sweep, wipe dishes, and even cook. I had four brothers, three older and one younger. The attitude of my older brothers was friendly rather than merely protective. I followed them around, but not everywhere — not to school nor to "town" nor hunting nor fishing. But I was permitted to "help" load shells, dig worms, and make kites. I imitated them and was ap- plauded. I learned to turn somersaults, "skin the cat," and stand on my head. I knew these things were not for public exhibition, but I do not remember who told me so or what reasons were given. By the time I was nine or ten years old I had developed into something of a tomboy. Then one of my brothers died and the other two went away. My younger brother was frail, sensitive, and imagina- tive. As he was almost four years younger and not as strong and healthy as I was, my relations with him were almost the reverse of my relations with my older brothers. So I was not subdued. Perhaps I was trying to be to him what they had been to me. I became even more tomboyish and finally assumed an active physical superiority over my younger brother and over my sister, who was bookish. If they excelled me in some things, I knew where I could excel. I ran, jumped, climbed, and, not infrequently, fought. The town in which we lived was new and on a new rail- road. My father surveyed the site, but the town straggled along rather whimsically without regard to his plans. Our house stood near the center — on my father's map; but, as a matter of fact, it stood in the twilight zone between the main town and the Negro settlement known as "Jaybird." What had been planned as the street in front of the house became a yellow line of mud or dust with a plank walk on one side, leading to the road which was the beginning of Main Street. So, while a part of the town, we were isolated. If I sought playmates outside of my family I usually had to go across town to them or induce them to come across town to me. I played with both boys and girls. One of my play- mates was the grandson of a neighbor. I did not realize that he was stupid as long as we were just playing. When I saw him at school I became ashamed of him, because he could not learn. So much of my study had been done at home that I had had little opportunity to make comparisons, but at school I looked about me, at playmates, classmates, and then at my books. I discovered that there were de- grees of intelligence lower than my own. The tomboy began to recede and the star-pupil to emerge. After my older brothers left home most of the out- of-door chores fell to me. I brought in the wood and coal, carried water from the well, cut the kindling, made the fires, and ran errands. I also learned to cook such simple food as we had. I went barefoot through the hot months. My mother had rather large feet and wore shoes to fit them. She talked about the foolishness of women who bound their feet and waists. She wore corsets occasionally, but she often tried to avoid them by sewing stays into her basques. She was slender. When I grew to the corset age she ordered a "corset waist." I wore it loose — and I was then fat. I have never classed my mother as a feminist, but I suspect she was one. Life would have made her one in the end if she had not been in the beginning. After my father's

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634 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 death she faced the necessity of supporting a large family — six of us — in a town of less than a thousand population. She taught and gave music lessons — "piano and voice." She sent local items to newspapers in nearby cities. She ped- dled pianos and sometimes books. Between these activities she supervised our studies, our reading, our behavior, our work; nursed her neighbors, laid out their dead, helped their children with their school essays, and was kind to the Negroes who lived in the little huts nearby. When the children of these Negroes showed a craving for "book- larnin' " as they sometimes did, she taught them. In her narrow, almost primitive field, she held her position as an unusual, if sometimes a troublesome, woman — always tolerated and sometimes acclaimed. I am sure that there were times when my mother did not know whence the next week's food would come. One can understand how this struggle would have affected her attitude toward her daughters, even if her previous life had not shown her aversion to dependency. She fed our am- bitions. She would have wanted us to go to college and to get degrees had she lived and been able to manage. A normal school was established in our town and people came to it from the swamps around and the farther hills. It wras run by the Campbellites — calling themselves "Chris- tians." Each year this school held debates on the relative mental equipment of men and women. The debates usually lasted for a week and practically the whole student body took part. I managed to get into them in some way, if only by trying to help the other girls meet the onslaught of historical data. No feminist literature was available. We got our nitrogen out of the air. I do not remember that I was a conscious feminist until long after my mother's death. As a child and a girl I simply lived as an individual with little knowledge of the world and its poison of sex-antagonism. I left school at fourteen, because of my mother's illness. When she died I had hardly emerged from childhood, and girlhood wa.s all but dissolved in the emotional reaction from her death and the necessity that drove me forth. I went to work very soon, in order that I might eat. This much the world was willing that I do — if not too heartily or too fastidiously. In the South innumerable families were in economic ess; and, underneath the social traditions, there wa.s an almost clannish effort to regain economic power without sacrificing pride or prestige in the struggle. Women had their part to play in the scheme. "Ladies" went to work — at home if they could, or at "genteel" work on the outside. One might be pitied, but if one "belonged" one could join the ranks of genteel workers temporarily without suffer- ocial stigma. Meanwhile the conventional feminine tradition remained undisturbed. This social-psychological i to the early transition period, al- though it still hangs on here and there. One met it only where one was known. As time went on and the straitened ones got back on their economic feet, there was a change, a reaction. Lines were again drawn taut. My childhood was not such as to give me a snob's viewpoint. I had always understood that if I went to a certain distant county where my grandfather had worked his slaves, I would "belong." But I did not go, except to visit. And I ignored the "genteel" 'imitations that would have preserved my status as a "lady." I studied stenog- raphy. For two years I worked with a company that manu- factured articles of iron and steel and wood. There were machine shops, foundries, a carpenter's shop, and a place where pneumatic tools were turned against rivets. I wrote specifications — long lists of strange words. I studied cata- logues to try to see what the words meant. I begged the foremen to take me through the shops. My interest was a nuisance and treated as such, although the interest of the office boy was encouraged as a laudable ambition to "learn the business." I was not there to learn the business but to type things. I asked my employer if he thought it would help me to take a correspondence course in mechanical en- gineering. He gave me a fatherly lecture on woman's sphere in life, her place in the business world. I pointed my pencil toward the courthouse and became a "crack" court reporter. I was flattered by my lawyer friends as the wonder of the verbatim-shorthand world. I saved them a lot of work. But when I began to talk of studying law, they called me impractical and visionary. It was about time I was getting married, anyhow. I observed that young men were encouraged to "read." They were taken into offices, into the trial of cases, sponsored, even fed, sometimes, by the older members of the bar; and the banks would extend them credit while they were struggling. I had one friend more sympathetic than others, a judge who put his hand on the political wheel and turned it in my favor. He said to me: "Senator So-and-So says I can name his secretary and I am going to suggest you, so you can go to Washington and maybe find time to study law." The next day he came back. "They just would not stand for a woman; I could not make them see it." It was years be- fore I studied law, years before I got to Washington, years before I saw a Senator's office. It wasn't much to see, when I reached there. During my twelve years as a court reporter I saw many aspects of life that provided good training for a feminist. I heard some of the worst sex abnormalities defined and described; I heard dramatic stories of frustrations and mis- understandings. I saw the results in human terms of the legal disabilities of women. I turned to reading and en- countered Ibsen, Shelley — and whom else? I remember a book by Bouck White, "The Call of the Carpenter," a revolutionary-Christian-feminist document — if one be in the mood to take the whole dose. I was in the mood at that time. Then one day I fell into an argument about suffrage. I found that almost unaware I had committed myself. I became a suffragist, an active one, finally a militant one. As I plunged deeper in the suffrage fight, I had to marshal all my defenses. Prejudices were strong. I fared better than some of my associates by virtue of the strength gained from my single-handed grappling with life. Men would sometimes say, "If all women were like you," and I had to learn to dismiss the flattery. I have not married. I have had my chances — one of the first being a station agent who insisted on "giving me a home." I suspected that he needed assistance in check- ing freight bills at the depot. I have also had my disap- pointments— one especially. He is still singing in the choir and is president of a Kiwanis Club. Without regard to my register of eligibles, I believe I could not now be induced to enter into the present legal status of marriage. Perhaps the day will come when I shall make my peace with the conventions, submit to the law through a justice of the peace or even a bishop, and get married. I doubt it. Mar- riage is too much of a compromise; it lops off a woman's life as an individual. Yet the renunciation too is a lopping off. We choose between the frying-pan and the fire — both very uncomfortable.

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation 635 The Nationalists Take Wuchamy By ANNA ROCHESTER Wuchang, China, Octobi i WUCHANG is wearing a festal air. On October 10, the fifteenth anniversary of the Chinese Republic, the forty-day siege was broken. But there is much more than relief from hunger and terror in the air today. The Kuomintang [Nationalist Party] administration is giving the people a fresh and invigorating experience. Even criti- cal foreigners who expect little from Chinese are admitting that a new era seems to have begun. The siege was no child's play for either Chinese or foreigners within the city. The day it was broken, the Merchants Guild placarded the streets with posters, "Tear down the city walls or we close our shops." And as soon as they can decide on the best disposition of the bricks in the wall — which are too large for the usual style of build- ing— the walls of Wuchang will come down. Food had run short. One of our foreign friends who shared in the siege told of seeing an educated Chinese pay forty cash for one raisin. Dog meat is not a usual part of the Chinese diet, but all the dogs which usually clutter the streets of Wuchang were eaten daring the siege. Even the foreigners with their storerooms of beans, macaroni, and canned goods had used up their supplies and showed the marks of hunger when we came to Wuchang a week after the opening of the city. Chinese and foreigners wrestled hopelessly with the problem of cleanliness. Wuchang still depends on the daily carrying of human offal in buckets from the city to the fields outside. Cholera developed; flies multiplied. It is only extraordinary that the epidemic did not get beyond control ; how many cases there were no one knows. All the foreigners, at least, escaped it. The moment the siege was lifted, the Chinese Red Cross of Hankow came across the river; foreign doctors told us enthusiastically about their effective work. It was the Red Cross and other Chinese benevolent organizations which, during the siege, transported 60,000 women and children from Wuchang to Hankow and Hanyang. Two or three leading missionaries helped in the nego4iations which finally, on several successive mornings, opened the gates and cleared the river for refugees ; but the work was car- ried out entirely by Chinese organizations. One foreign eyewitness told us with a rather surprised appreciation that official families and the well-to-do were conspicuously absent from the crowds which escaped. The blind and the beggars led the procession; then, day after day, it was women and children first. Twice the crowd became a mob beyond control, and men pushed and trampled ruthlessly; but considering the total numbers handled the casualties were few. No foreign women who could be of service and no foreign men left their posts within the city. In the revolution of 1911 Wuchang was one great center of conflict, and most of the time since then the city has suffered much from undisciplined soldiers. Civil free- dom has been unknown. The Kuomintang had been at work here underground, and the students and a handful of others were enthusiastic about the approach of the Southern Army. But most of the people feared that the inrush of victorious soldiers would mean a fresh onslaught of looting and terror. During the siege the private looting by the Northern soldiers within the city did more serious damage to prop- erty and gave the people far more concern than the shelling which the attacking army aimed at forts and barracks and generals' headquarters. When the peace negotiations were completed — again with the help of an American bishop who, with a Chinese leader of the Merchants' Guild, was let down over the wall by a rope — the Northern soldiers rushed out and, after a brief interval, a small orderly troop of Southerners marched in. Once the Southern army was in full control, the pressure of years was released. The soldiers walked about unarmed, paying good money for purchases at the shops. An officer crossing the river on the public launch fell into talk with an American missionary. He asked the American what the fare was on the boats and was getting out his coppers to pay. The boatman said that soldiers never paid and refused to take the money. The officer explained that they had the strictest orders to take nothing without payment. Those who had witnessed the behavior of the Northern troops in Wuchang — or in Peking — considered this of revolutionary significance. The city was immediately placarded with posters. A few had pictures obvious to the illiterate. A few were virtually leaflets in poster form. Most of them were short sentences in large clear Chinese character: "Do not fear death; love the nation. Do not love money; love the people." "Abolish the evil that oppresses women — unequal evil insti- tutions." "Severely forbid opium." "Reform the city gov- ernment." "Women should have the right to inherit prop- erty." "Forbid betrothal and marriage of small boys and young girls. Abolish barter in marriage." "Earnestly practice education in Kuomintang culture and principles." "The people should vigorously protect the new constructive government of Hupeh." "Punish those who are near to the enemy." "Get revenge for fellow-countrymen killed in Wanhsien." "Wipe out anti-revolutionists." Sun Yat-sen's last book, the "San Min Chu I," or the "Three People's Principles," is the Bible of the army. One wounded Southern soldier — not an officer — was being tended by an American nurse; when the dressings were finished he pulled out his copy of the "San Min Chu I" to see what a victorious soldier in a new city was supposed to do! Of course the volume is not a manual of behavior but an expo- sition in terms of China's needs today of the three great words of the French Revolution: Min Ts'eo: the people's nation, equality of races; Min Ts'uan: the people's power, or democracy and freedom; Min Sen: the people's life, in- cluding industrial justice. Almost immediately the new administration ordered that all schools within the city and outside the walls which had been commandeered for troops of either side should be cleared and prepared for use. So far they are showing friendliness to the American mission schools, provided they introduce the salute to Sun Yat-sen and the weekly reading of his last will and testament. The one tax levied thus far is directed at the owners of land or buildings. The army has collected a month's rent from all tenants with the under- standing that the landlord must accept the army's receipt

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636 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206' in lieu of the tenant's next monthly payment to him. The army is now evaluating the property occupied by owners and is demanding from such owners the equivalent of one month's rent. For the immediate future of the Kuomintang and for the future of China the possession of Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang by the Southern forces is immensely impor- tant. Through it they control the strategical center of China: the head of navigation for ocean-going steamers on the Yangtze, the gateway for smaller steamers to the in- terior, the southern terminus of the Peking-Hankow rail- way line and the northern terminus of the partly completed Wuchang-Canton lines. The biggest iron and steel works in China are at Hanyang and Hankow, and the fighting south of the Yangtze and east of Wuchang, which still con- tinues as I write, involves control of the Tayeh iron mines and the Pinksiang coal mines, the largest in central China. Labor organization is now brought into the greatest inland industrial center of China. The quiet pioneering which had been continuing under the surface since Wu Pei- fu executed labor leaders en masse four years ago now comes out into the open. The six thousand organized ricksha coolies of Hankow held a great demonstration two weeks ago, parading and for one day refusing to pull. The cotton-mill workers in Wuchang have registered a claim for wages during the ^orty days of the siege when the mills (all outside the city walls) were of necessity closed. Within the Kuomintang a conflict of policy has already developed in the Wu-han cities between the Communist and the non- Communist labor leaders. At present the Communist labor leaders seem to be in favor with the administration, but there is opposition and shifts in policy may well occur. The immediate future of the Kuomintang is beset with perils. The army is far from its home base, and continuing good-will of the people in the new provinces and cities is vitally necessary to any permanent stability. With the vic- torious advance of the Southerners military chieftains who care nothing about the principles of the Kuomintang have insisted on lining themselves up with what appears to be the winning side. The People's Revolutionary Army may end 'jy wishing to be delivered from its friends. Again, will the well-to-do responsible Chinese of the Wu-han cities be content with the Kuomintang? At present they are ready to give it a chance to show what it can do. As a leading Chinese attorney of Hankow put it: "This is the first time we have had a party in this province which seems to be seriously concerned with principles and good government. And we certainly agree with their stand against unequal treaties." But this same attorney told me his view of the British-American tobacco strike last spring. It is a very real question whether the common ground which this gentleman and hundreds of other Chinese busi- ness men now share with the Kuomintang will hold firm as the implications of pro-labor party, whether Communist or otherwise, are worked out by that party. Meanwhile the big guns on Hanyang hill are silently trained on the British concession in Hankow, and thirteen gunboats of the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy line the shores of the foreign settlements. The anti-imperialist demands of the Kuomintang are some- what in abeyance while their civil war continues. But as soon as the military position of the Southern Government is strengthened, they tell us frankly that their demand for abrogation of the unequal treaties will be set forth as an ultimatum to the Powers. Four more Nation Dinners // you missed hearing the debate between Clarence Darroiv and Major Wright on Pro- hibition Enforcement, we offer our con- dolences and at the same time urge you to make reservations now for the dinners which remain. A series ticket insures a favorable position at all dinners. •January 11 < "CENSOR THE STAGE?" Elisabeth Marbury, Joseph Wood Krutch Frank Gillmore Executive Secretary, The Actors' Equity Association Chairman: Lewis S. Gannett, Associate Editor, The Nation February 15 "MEN— WHAT OF 'EM?" Ruth Hale, Lorine Pruette Chairman: Freda Kirchwey, Managing Editor, The Nation March 8 Songs and Dances by Atnericaii Indians Speakers to be announced on "THE ART OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN" Cliairman: Mark Van Doren, Literary Editor, The Nation April 12 — — — — — — . "WHO IS CALVIN COOLIDGE?" Frank R. Kent, William Hard Chairman: Oswald Garrison Villard, Editor, The Nation ALL DINNERS WILL BE HELD AT THE FIFTH AVENUE RESTAURANT 200 Fifth Avenue, at 7 P. M. $2.75 per plate. $10 for the series of four. Tickets may be bought only by Nation subscribers, although each subscriber may bring as many guests as he wishes. — // you are not a Subscriber — You may have The Nation for a year (regular price $5) with a ticket for the first dinner for $6.25, or with a ticket for the four dinners for $14.00. The Nation 20 Vesey Street, New York Send me The Nation for a year Reserve places for me at The dinner on □ The Series □ Name Address Tickets will be mailed a few days before the dinner.

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation 637 The Unimpeachable Gift VIKING BOOKS for more than a season 3 discoveries from 3 countries POWER by Lion Feuchtwanger From Germany comes "one of the great romances of the twentieth century." — The Literary Review. $2.50. THE TWO SISTERS by II. E. Bates From England comes this novel of youth by a twenty-one year old author — the discovery of Edward Garnett, dis- coverer of Conrad, Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson. $2.00. THE TIME OF MAN by Elizabeth Madox Roberts In America Elizabeth Madox Roberts "steps with her first novel to the front rank of American writers." A Boolc- of-the-Month Club Selection. 47th Thousand. $2.50. MOHAMMED by R. /'. Dibble The story of the prophet, politician, lover, warrior and man. Carl Van Doren in The Nation says: "This gorgeous -tory Mr. Dibble tells robustl) and shrewdly." $3. On. GAUTIER by John Garber Palaehe An informative and entertaining volume on Gautier, Balzac, Baudelaire, and other of Gautier's circle, combining biogra- phy, anecdote and criticism. Illustrated. $3.00. The SECOND BOOK of NEGRO SPIRITUALS Carl Van Vechten in The Herald Tribune: "I predict that this new collection will be just as popular as the first, and deservedly so." With 61 songs and an introduction. $3.50. 30 Irving Place THE VIKING PRESS New York City ARETINO Translated by PUTNAM IN TWO VOLUMES PRICE $17.50 SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY BROKEN NECKS by BEN HECHT THROBBING HUMAN STORIES PRICE $2.50 PASCAL COVICI - Publisher - CHICAGO THE MODERN LIBRARY REVIVES ANDREAS LATZKO'S MEN IN WAR A BOLD, BLAZING BOOK, FROWNED ON IN 1917 BY A GOVERNMENT THAT WAS BUSY LADLING SENTI- MENTAL SLOP ABOUT THE WAR TO THE PUBLIC, NOW OFFERED AGAIN COM- PLETE AND UNEXPURGATED OTHER RECENT ADDITIONS james Joyce's GEORGE GISSING'S DUBLINERS NEW GRUB STREET LUDWIG LEWISOHN'S daniel defoe's UP STREAM MOLL FLANDERS 95 CENTS A COPY AT ALL BOOKSTORES Send for Catalogue of the 125 Titles MODERN LIBRARY, Inc., 71 West 45th Street NEW YORK When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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638 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 The Unim\% •A Perfect Christmas Gift' MYBODY'S PEPYS • time the standard atlcy text in one volume 60 pages of illustrations by E. H. Shepard ibody's Pepya will lie successful iately as an apt Christmas pres- The Saturday Review of lAtera- Of Shepard's dt iWings : "Whether he ks shown sittinK. outwardly decorous, at with his wife and a demure r two, or kissing ladies on the for forfeits, he is the real, the human Pepys that we know and love." —.V. Y. Herald Tribune. At bookstores or from the publishers $3.50 ■Harcourt, Brace & Co., 383 Madison Ave., New York— Christopher Robin Plays Again! f% Y/lNNl^H(rP00H ' ii By DRAWINGS By V\\ ' "-SHEP-ARD N CTHIS PHENOMENAL BOOK bq the Jluthor of IPhen IDe IDere Derij IJoimg" LEADINQ FICTION AND NON-FICTION SALES E. P. Dutton & Co. The Monumental Masterpiece ivhitii LOVE - LIFI by Wh "TTNDOUBTEDLY a great work. Here Lucretius, Spinoza, Goethe, Schopenha ALBERT & CHARLES BONI, EUROPE SINCE WATERLOO By WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS A TREMENDOUS panoramic history of a century of great events, from Napoleon and the Holy Alliance to Hindenburg and the League of Nations. History told with color and drama and suspense, in a vigorous inarching style. Dr. Davis's Roots of the War has been one of the most widely read non-fiction books of many years. In it he dis- closed a rare coordination of scholarly authority with pic- torial imagination, lie revivifies history. He makes it live — as history did live while it was being enacted. Europe Since Waterloo is built around great men and great events, rather than vague, imponderable "forces" which have no actuality. Through more than nine hundred pages the tremendous story moves forward, a pageant of kin^s and conquistadores, of politicians, plunderers and patriots, of schemers and dreamers who moved the fates of nations. Illustrated and maps, index, bibliography. Royal octavo, 965 pages, $6.00. THE CENTURY CO. Publishers of Enduring Boofat ISRAFEL: The Life \ This mighty two volume biography "imm| biographies . . . Mr. Allen brings his wc achievements that defy succession." 960 pages by HER^ Two ix George H. When writing to advertiaeru please mention The Nation

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation 639 chable Qift over 150,000 copies in Germany N NATURE ulsche over whose composition the spirits of Plato, arw "in must have presided." — Tlie Nation. Two vol nines, boxed, $10.00 66 Filth Avenue, New York Sherwood Anderson America's most dis- nctive novelist. One f the most original ovelists ever heard f. He seems to de- ive from no one and d have no relation o any contempo- ary." — H. L. Menc- en in Vanity Fair. TAR A Midwest Childhood by SHERWOOD ANDERSON "When one decides, as any reason- able person must decide, that so far as writers of fiction under fifty years of age are concerned the United States makes an immensely better showing than England, Sherwood Anderson undoubtedly plays a great part in that calculation." — Rebecca West, N. Y. Herald Tribune. "Sufficient in itself to vindicate his uniqueness of being and his impor- tance as a commentator on Ameri- can life. TAR is all the lonely boys in small Middle-West towns during the last half of the nineteenth cen- tury."—Herbert S. Gorman, N. Y. Times Book Review. 2nd Edition. Large 12mo. $3.00. Limited auto- graphed edition, 325 copies, $10.00. — GOOD BOOKS BONI AND LIVERIGHT, N. Y. "imes of Edgar Allan Poe takes precedence in the long list of Poe's that category of decisive and definitive Herbert Gorman in The New York Times. ALLEN 3oxed i Company Net, $10.00 "Belongs to all time" FORTY IMMORTALS by BENJAMIN DeCASSERES The Story of the World's Great Civilizers ating, dazzling, brilliant, creative essays on the foremost writers of modern times, including Nietzsche, Whitman, M linck, Blake, Strindberg, Hugo, Ibsen, France, Stendhal, Flaubert, Hardy, Cabell, D'Annunzio, de Gourmont, Saltus and others. What "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant is to the history (it thinking, "Forty Immortals" is to the history of fine writing. N i American critic has the background of Benjamin DeCasseres; ither American writer is as intimately acquainted personally with the inner workings of the minds of the world's greatest litterateurs. Maeterlinck says: "There is more knowledge and wisdom in one of Benjamin DeCasseres' critical writing than an ordinary human being can digest in a lifetime." //. L. Mencken writes: "Unhackneyed, brilliant . . ." New York Times declare*: "Benjamin DeCasseres in 'Forty Immortals' comes nearer to achieving the purpose of constructive criticism than anybody else we can recall to mind." $3.50 at all bookstores. ^EVEN e/RTS PUBLISHING COMPANY 160 Fifth Avenue, New York BENJAMIN FRANKLIN THE FIRST CIVILIZED AMERICAN By Phillips Russell "One of the greatest biographies of our time." [N. Y. Eve. Post] "A great kick is given to history by defablyizing Franklin." [Richmond News Dispatch] "The book is as lively and charming as the man it depicts." [Chicago Daily News] "The most brilliant biography of the year." [Philadelphia Record] THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR FIVE DOLLARS At All Bookstores or from the Publishers - BRENTANO'S - New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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640 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 In the Driftway LEST readers miss the delightful controversy that has been going on in the correspondence columns of the New York World in regard to seagoing cows, the Drifter brings it to their attention. The correspondence began with a letter signed "(Miss) P. Chattahoochee Fink, Secre- tary, International Dry Travel League," in which the writer protested because instead of traveling on American steamships officials of the United States Government chose foreign vessels "with their bars and cigarette-smoking, cocktail-drinking men and women and sometimes almost children, so far as age and appearance go." The writer continued : It was only the other day that I asked a prominent government official whom I happened to meet one eve- ning in the home of a dear friend why he went to Europe and back this summer on an English vessel instead of sailing under the glorious Star Spangled Banner which paid him his salary, and he told me that it was on account of the milk, he being on a milk diet, or partly so, by doctor's orders. All of the ocean ships, he said, excepting the American ones, had live cows on them to supply fresh milk three times daily, for, as he explained, they have to milk them three time: every day instead of twice, because cows produce milk more rapidly on the water than on land. It seemed strange to me that the foreign ships should do this and the Americans not, until I was told by a sailor of whom I made inquiries that it was because several of the sailors on the American ships had been hooked by the cows, so they thought it best to get rid of them to avoid accident. Surely, Mr. Editor, that dilemma could be evaded by using hornless cows, and I am surprised that the managers of our boats have not thought of it. SOMEBODY had been spoofing the writer, it would seem, or else she was trifling with the readers of the World. Several of them were curious enough to make investigations, and one reported that an official of the Cunard Line had told him: "Boats nowadays keep all supplies fresh and palatable by properly regulated refrigeration." A repre- sentative of the White Star Line had said: "Boats haven't carried cows in fifty years; not since the days of the side-wheeler." ***** BUT the marine cow is not to be disposed of so easily. She still exists elsewhere than in history or aquariums. It is true that she no longer grazes along the North Atlantic lanes between the United States and Europe, and English steamships on all routes probably threw their last cows overboard many years ago. Milk, when properly pasteurized and carried in a refrigerator, keeps from three to four weeks. Even so, Italian and French steamships on South American runs or other routes where it is difficult to obtain dependable supplies not only often carry cows for milk but also live cattle and other animals sufficient to assure their passengers a diet of fresh meat. This is in deference to the general objection of the Latin peoples of Europe or elsewhere to frozen or chilled meat and their insistence, ashore or afloat, on fresh-killed products. Not only marine cows but seagoing sheep and chickens still ship before the mast. The Drifter Correspondence More Work for Cal To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: L. H. J.'s suggestion that we readers of The Nation contribute to a campaign fund to boom Mr. Coolidge for Mayor of Northampton in 1928 is unnecessary. Mr. Coolidge at present is not only President of the United States; he is also Honorary President of the Boy Scouts of America. He can retain that office, and I believe the citizens of Northampton will prefer to have him continue with the Scouts. Brooklyn, November 22 D. G. B. Speak Up! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: For four or five years there has been general discus- sion in the press of the United States as to the success or failure of that form of government now in vogue in Russia. Recently, many articles have appeared strongly pro-Soviet in character. Why not put to the test the sincerity of those who advocate the Russian regime? Is any reader of The Nation willing to re- nounce citizenship in our "capitalistic state," go to Russia, and reside there permanently? Replies may be sent to Andover, Mass., November 25 W. K. Moorehead Solving the Slums To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Many scoffers deride the plan recently presented by Mr. August Hcckscher. As an object-lesson of what Mr. Heckscher is trying to abolish I suggest that in each case where a criminal is arrested there be published, instead of his revolver, sweetheart, or cap- tor, a picture of the room in the tenement in which he was born. This may go a long way toward convincing the doubtful that the Heckscher scheme is in reality an investment in futures. New York, December 1 W. Frederick Suender Max Eastman and Mr. Ochs's Money To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: May I have space in your columns to tell my politi- cal friends in America that the money paid by the New York Times and other papers for my article quoting Lenin's testa- ment was not appropriated by me? It was expended by well- known Communists in the interest of the movement. Antibes, France, November 16 Max Eastman Don't Kiss! Don't Shake! Don't Breathe! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: Your comment on the hygienists' prohibition-spirit and meddling-complex as regards kissing and handshaking is very timely, as there are so many people with colds these days. There is no doubt that a person with a cold can by ordinary breathing infect Petri culture-dishes several feet away; much more dangerous is the possibility of people breathing his germs when he is speaking to them. A logical extension of our fix-it friends' principles leads us to~~ the conclusion that the only thing to do is to stop breathing. At least everyone ought to wear a gas mask, and communicate with others by a telephonic hearing device. New York, December 1 J. L. MORRISON

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Books and Plays Copyreader By TED OLSON This, then, had been his destiny from birth — To desiccate life's pageant to a phn Pity and terror, hunger, madness, mirth Congealed in "Man Shoots Five in Murder Craze." He'd written poems once. He wrote no more. His wits had chilled in stereotypes too long To kindle now one glittering metaphor. His pulse kept time to headlines, not to song. It was a sorry business, none knew better, And there were moments he was more than half Persuaded to shrug loose the ultimate fetter .... Save that he knew too well his epitaph. And somehow could not stomach quite the crass Brutality of "Scribe Ends Life with Gas." First Glance WE have had a good many books about Walt Whitman since Whitman himself wrote half of the first one. There have been four within the past few months, and un- doubtedly many are yet to come. What is to be learned from the best possible volume upon the subject? I am interested in the question not only because I am interested in good biography and criticism but also because I once seriously considered a request that I too write a book about Whitman. Among other things I sought then a definition of the perfect Whitman book— perfect, at any rate, for this day. And I was particularly careful to enumerate the things which the author should not attempt to do, either because they had been done once for all or because they cannot be done. The number of these things grew so large that I decided to let "Leaves of Grass" alone. Perhaps it is the perfect Whit- man book. One of the things that do not need to be accomplished again is the defense of Whitman's right to say what he liked in the manner he liked. That he died and that his book lived is sufficient proof that nothing more needs to be said there. William Sloane Kennedy, who writes the history of the controversy in "The Fight of a Book for the World" (West Yarmouth, Massachusetts: The Stonecroft Press: $2.50) , lessens his usefulness to other historians by getting excited. The result of his excitement — in itself, it may be, a chivalrous and excellent thing — is a great lack of order in the presentation of his material, and hence a de- cided failure on the part of this material to take effect. There is a great deal of it, since Mr. Kennedy, once a correspondent of Whitman's, has long been a collector of opinions for and against him, and has long studied "Leaves of Grass" with an absolute devotion. But the material lies here in most hopeless confusion, and furthermore the book is rendered ridiculous by Mr. Kennedy's perpetual jealous fear lest any possible reader in the world still be indifferent to the hero of Brooklyn and Camden. One of the things that, in my opinion, may never be accomplished is the biography of Whitman — so long, at any rate, as biography means more than "facts." Mr. Emory Holloway, who has made himself the authority where facts arc concerned, by a familiar irony proves in his "Whitman: An Interpretation in Narrative" i Knopf : $5) just how feeble all facts arc when the problem arises of explaining a poet. Mr. Holloway remarks that he was able to put into his large volume only a portion of the in- formation o\~ which he is master. But more would have been worse; these things do not matter. The only fact about Whitman about which I can work up any curiosity is the fact of his suddenly breaking loose in the early fifties and achieving the freedom — if it was freedom — which found expression in "Leaves of Grass." 1 say it may not have been freedom; it may have been a sudden consciousness that he was bound or that America was bound. The question which of these was the case might be the subject of a book about Whitman, and a convincing answer might make literary history. Mr. Holloway goes only a little way in this direction. He knows, as all must know, that "something ineffable" happened to Whitman once, and he properly emphasizes the significance of the fact that Whitman read Emerson. But he obviously is not the man to explore the riddle of great poetry. He has per- formed an important if negative service by establishing the limits of Whitman's interest to the biographer. Now for the great poetry and for an answer to the question whence it came. Mark Van Doren Toward America Sober Prohibition at Its Worst. By Irving Fisher. The Macmillan Company. $1.75. Prohibition in the United States. By D. Leigh Colvin. George H. Doran Company. .$">. I T is a pity that men's beliefs about prohibition are not based * on evidence rather than on prejudice and personal habit; but facts actually count for little. The campaign goes forward on the basis of vociferation, and as the wets control the chief organs of vociferation in the effete East and the main centers of population beyond the Alleghanies, it is reasonable to expect the prohibition crime wave to continue to mount so long as the alco- holic lamp holds out to burn. None the less, reasonable persons, wet and dry alike, will be grateful for Professor Fisher's facts, whether or not they are able to accept all of his inferences. Pro- fessor Fisher is a convinced prohibitionist, but he became such against his will, on the basis of a long study of the alcohol ques- tion. Like many of the rest of us, he believes that national prohibition came too soon, before the East was ready for it, and that in consequence the first five years have been "prohibition at its worst." What are the facts? No one questions that arrests for drunkenness decreased greatly under war-time restrictions, reached a low point in 1920, the first year of national prohibi- tion, and have increased since. How great the changes have been, and what they mean, are the questions at issue. Mr. Stanley Shirk, research director of the Moderation League, de- clares the increase so great "that drunkenness just about reached the level of the old saloon years by 1924." Professor Fisher demolishes this widely heralded r^-ertion, shows clearly a sub- stantial lessening in the arrests for drunkenness, and on the basis of increased police severity in arresting for drunkenness, estimates that even in 1924 actual cases of drunkenness (as opposed to arrests) per thousand population were probably less than half the pre-prohibition figures. Professor Willcox, one of our most competent statistical authorities, criticizes the method used in reaching this conclusion, however, a method which masks the statistical effect produced by the increase in arrests for drunkenness since 1920. No cautious student, certainly, is going

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642 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 to be dogmatic about the exact reduction; but when the tumult arid the shouting dies, the sober fact emerges that there is now far less drunkenness than there was in saloon days. Professor Fisher concludes that beverage consumption of alcohol is cer- tainly less than 16 per cent of pre-prohibition consumption, probably less than 10 per cent, and possibly less than 5 per cent. Professor Fisher figures the economic gain of prohibition at not less than six billions, a tenth of our national income. Most of us who talk with industrialists will be likely to guess that this guess is low rather than high. His figures and charts show juvenile delinquency in New York cut in half, arrests for assault and battery reduced by three-fifths, those for profanity by four-fifths, and for keeping disorderly houses all but wiped out. They show the percentage of first admissions to insane hospitals in Connecticut that is due to alcohol lessened by more than half, and in the formerly wet States generally by a third, deaths from cirrhosis of the liver in New York and Connecticut cut almost in two, deaths from alcoholism everywhere greatly reduced; but again they show an increase in nearly all these figures since 1920. Poor enforcement? Maybe; but if Ameri- cans by nature prefer to go to hell poor and drunk rather than to heaven rich and sober, all the statistics of the economic and social gains of prohibition (even if certified 99.44 per cent pure) are unlikely to change their tastes. Just here is the battle joined. The Eighteenth Amendment cannot be repealed. Despite the November referendums in the wet States, by every political test the country is dry. What then? Enforcement or nullification, for the latter is what "modi- fication" really means. There has always been a vast amount of lawlessness in the liquor trade, because a lawless liquor trade is vastly profitable. Lawlessness would scarcely be lessened even if half a dozen wet States were allowed by some legal hocus- pocus to nullify the amendment. Some of us are prohibitionists unwillingly, because we hate compulsion. Yet we are driven to go with Professor Fisher in concluding that we have no choice but an earnest attempt at enforcement and education. We be- lieve that enforcement is improving, and that successful en- forcement is possible, notwithstanding the present clamor. The question is not one of personalities; yet some of us believe that if we had a statesman instead of a graven image for president, a public-minded financier instead of an ex-distiller for secretary of the treasury, and a live lawyer instead of an American antique for attorney general, the present enforcement could be vastly improved in the course of twelve months, seeing that the overwhelming majority in Congress dare not for their political life do other than vote dry at every chance. We believe it a time to stand our ground bravely, and we welcome as doughty a champion as Professor Fisher, even if we regret the touch of asperity and the suggestion of bad faith with which he treats some of our friends the wets, even if we doubt the impregna- bility of all his statistical deductions. Dr. Colvin's book contains at least ten thousand facts (by statistical estimate, not actual count) ; for it has six hundred . and they must surely average at least 1G 2-3 facts per st of these facts seem to this reviewer unimportant, but perhaps there are no unimportant facts. At any rate, here are the details of every political contest in this country, from the days of Leif Ericsson down, in which the Prohibition Party or its predecessors took part; but if the curious seeker after information tries to find how many vol s (he party actually cast for president in a particular year, he will find Dr. Colvin singu- larly reticent. The work really deals with the political politics of prohibition, for that is what interests the author, who, as vice-presidential candidate in 1924, naturally thinks that the history shows the need for a national Prohibition Party. A monumental task of assembling insignificant facts seems to have been competently and conscientiously done, and future students of prohibition politics will be grateful to the author. Anyone who still believes that prohibition was somehow foisted on an unsuspecting country at a time when it was busy killing beer- drinking Germans would do well to read Dr. Colvin's chapters on the progress of prohibition in the States before the war, and to bear in mind that this country has been in process of going dry for half a century. Dr. Colvin does not prove the need for a Prohibition Party; he does indicate the importance of the liquor interest in politics. It is dry history, in two senses. Henry Raymond Mussey Hard-Boiled Tlte Sun Also Rises. By Ernest Hemingway. Charles Scribner's Sons. $2. rPHE present novel by the author of "In Our Time" supports * the recent prophecy that he will be the "big man in Ameri- can letters." At the time the prophecy was delivered it was meaningless because it was equivocal. Many of the possible interpretations now being eliminated, we fear it has turned out to mean something which we shall all regret. Mr. Hemingway has written a book that will be talked about, praised, perhaps imitated; it has already been received in something of that cautiously critical spirit which the followers of Henry James so notoriously maintain toward the master. Mr. Hemingway has produced a successful novel, but not without returning some violence upon the integrity achieved in his first book. He decided for reasons of his own to write a popular novel, or he wrote the only novel which he could write. To choose the latter conjecture is to clear his intentions, obviously at the cost of impugning his art. One infers moreover that although sentimentality appears explicitly for the first time in his prose, it must have always been there. Its history can be constructed. The method used in "In Our Time" was pointil- liste, and the sentimentality was submerged. With great skill he reversed the usual and most general formula of prose fiction: instead of selecting the details of physical background and of human behavior for the intensification of a dramatic situation, he employed the minimum of drama for the greatest possible intensification of the observed object. The reference of emphasis for the observed object was therefore not the action; rather, the reference of the action was the object, and the action could be impure or incomplete without risk of detection. It could be mixed and incoherent; it could be brought in when it was ad- vantageous to observation, or left out. The exception, important as such, in Mr. Hemingway's work is the story Mr. and Mrs. Elliott. Here the definite dramatic conflict inherent in a sexual relation emerged as fantasy, and significantly; presumably he could not handle it otherwise without giving himself away. In "The Sun Also Rises," a full-length novel, Mr. Heming- way could not escape such leading situations, and he had besides to approach them with a kind of seriousness. He fails. It is not that Mr. Hemingway is, in the term which he uses in fine contempt for the big word, hard-boiled; it is that he is not hard- boiled enough, in the artistic sense. No one can dispute with a writer the significance he derives from his subject-matter; one can only point out that the significance is mixed or incomplete. Brett is a nymphomaniac; Robert Cohn, a most offensive cad; both are puppets. For the emphasis is false; Hemingway doesn't fill out his characters and let them stand for themselves; he isolates one or two chief traits which reduce them to carica- ture. His perception of the physical object is direct and accu- rate; his vision of character, singularly oblique. And he actually betrays the interior machinery of his hard-boiled attitude: "It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the day- time, but at night it is another thing," says Jake, the sexually impotent, musing on the futile accessibility of Brett. The his- tory of his sentimentality is thus complete. There are certain devices exploited in the book which do not improve it; they extend its appeal. Robert Cohn is not only a bounder, he is a Jewish bounder. The other bounders, like Mike, Mr. Hemingway for some reason spares. He also spares Brett — another device — for while her pleasant folly need not be flogged, it equally need not be condoned ; she becomes the attrac-

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation How you can apply, in your own daily life, the amazing scientific discoveries of over 300 physicians On how to stay young "OU can prolong your youth twenty, thirty or an even greater number of years. It is not necessarily short lived. Scientists have discovered that the aying process (which so mars human bodies, par- ticularly women's) is not a matter of just so many years, but actually a chronic dis- ease. The cause is a combination of bad habits. As Seneca once wrote, "Man does not die. He kills himself." Hundreds of cases are on record of long- prolonged youth attained even before mod- ern scientific knowledge became available. The case of Ninon de Lenclos Probably the most famous case of retained youth is that of Ninon de Lenclos. During her early years she led the free life of a gay Parisian. Later she became acknowledged leader of society and fashion. She radiated an irresistible personal fascination — both for men and women. At 70 she had the appear- ance of a mature beauty in her late twenties. Her skin was free from wrinkles, and her shoulders, bust and neck were of exceptional roundness and beauty. So beautiful was she at 90 that a young man (who knew her age) fell desperately in love with her. Her figure retained to the last the perfect contour and elasticity of a woman in her prime. Records prove she diligently pursued certain rules for the care of her body which coincide to-day with the findings of modern science. The greatest cause of aging The chief reason why we lose youth and beauty (grow old) is declared by Metchni- koff and other great scientists to be intestinal stasis (one form of which is constipation). Authorities (such as Foges and Kellogg) de- clare that 90r,'r of all men and women over 25 are habitually constipated. (This explains why the average person begins to fail in health within less than 7 years after that time — at 31, according to U. S. Life Tables). Intestinal poisoning (brought on by constipa- tion) causes headaches, irritability, blurred visions, despondency, dizziness and sleepless- ness; also skin troubles destructive to beauty; wrinkles, yellow skin, dry or falling hair, and sallow complexion. Many cases of over or under weight are attributable to this cause. Intestinal poisoning also gives rise to a great variety of disease — including kidney trouble, bad tonsils, hardening of the arteries, ab- scessed teeth, abdominal cancer, and some 30 other dangerous conditions (according to Sir Arbuthnot Lane, physician to Kim; George V). This book will show you how to stay young "The Lazy Colon-" is a brief, authoritative presentation of what to do (and what not to do) in overcoming and preventing intestinal poisoning. This book contains the boiled down, practical part of over 2,000 technical works, medical and surgical reports, re- searches and discoveries made by over 300 physicians and scientists of international reputation. It is written in plain English — free from professional erminology. The authors (Charles M. Campbell and Al- bert K. Detwiller, M.D.) have spent nearly 20 years in the study of this subject. A thoughtful reading will materially change every mature person's outlook on life by showing that the bogy of middle age, if reso- lutely faced, can be driven forward into a receding future. Opinions of "The Lazy Colon" Martin W. Barr, M.D. , noted physician and author, says: "Sat up most of last night reading this delightful and masterly book." Hon. Wm. R. Green, Chairman Ways and MeansCommitteeof Congress: "This book might well be entitled How To Add 20 Years to Your Life. Its outstanding feature, digesting in non-technical language re- searches of the most intelligent investigators in the world, is unique, interesting and very instructive in a field of widespread igno- rance." Dr. Paul C Phillips of Amherst College: "I shall use this book for collateral reading in my class of Hygiene." Dr. John A. Neva, New York: "I have read your Lazy Colon with greatest delight. Every physician and layman should have one." It is impossible to tell you here even a small part of the epoch-making information this book contains. for it and examine it at your leisure. If you are not delighted with its sane, practical advice — return it and our check for its purchase price will be mailed at once. THE EDUCATIONAL PRESS, Dipt, li-4, 116-120 West 32nd St., N. Y. City Enclosed find $2.50 for one copy of "The Lazy Colon." If not satisfi^jj, I may return' it in 10 days and set my money back. Address . When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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644 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 tive wayward lady of Sir Arthur Pinero and Michael Arlen. Petronius's Circe, the archetype of all the Bretts, was neither appealing nor deformed. Mr. Hemingway has for some time been in the habit of throwing pebbles at the great — which recalls Mr. Pope's couplet about his contemporary Mr. Dennis. The habit was formed in "The Torrents of Spring," where it was amusing. It is discon- certing in the present novel; it strains the context; and one sus- pects that Mr. Hemingway protests too much. The point he seems to be making is that he is morally superior, for instance, to Mr. Mencken, but it is not yet clear just why. Allen Tate The Problem of Races Rasse und Kultur. Von Friedrich Hertz. Leipzig: Alfred Kroner. THERE are not many books that attack the exaggerate valu- ation of hereditary mental qualities of races and thus itttempt to counteract the popular notion of a self-evident racial superiority on the part of the European — particularly of the "Nordic." Their effectiveness is limited by the difficulty of avoiding the appearance of partisanship in opposing opinions that are violently asserted and dogmatically accepted. Caution in the selection of undisputable data and a thorough mastery of the biological problem are, therefore, a fundamental neces- sity for success. Jean Finot's book, "Le prejuge des races," hardly fulfils these conditions. Much more satisfactory is "Das Rassenproblem," by Ignatz Zollschan, which, however, suf- fers from the disadvantage of being essentially an attack upon Anti-Semitism. In its earlier editions Dr. Friedrich Hertz's book "Rasse und Kultur" is essentially a criticism of Houston Stewart Chamberlain; its new, third edition of 1925, now before us, has been largely rewritten and takes up the problem in all its latest aspects. The author discusses the social conditions making for racial antagonism and their influence upon the development of racial theories. He discusses the various human types and the rela- tion between type and mental life; the interrelation of race and language; the problem of race mixture; the modern race theories, particularly those of Eugen Fischer, Hans Giinther, and F. Lentz. This is followed by a special discussion of cul- tural phenomena in various groups and finally by a chapter on the conditions of cultural progress and on the psychology and ethics of race theories. His brief historical introduction sets forth the development of race theories and the interesting fact that the students of general history of human culture, who do not deal with the history of one particular area, have always been led to assume that the essential mental charac- teristics of all races are alike. In this his book is in agreeable contrast to the misstatements and misconceptions of Theophile Simar, who in his "Etude critique sur la formation de la doctrine des races" does not distinguish between the actual cultural individuality of nations or of other social groups and the theory of the hereditary determination of cultural forms. Thus it happens that he includes Herder among the defenders of the theories based on racial self-appreciation, although his great purpose was to teach the value of national and tribal individuality. In the chapter on the physical basis of the mentality of races Dr. Hertz is not so fortunate. He brings forward mate- rial that shows clearly the inadequacy of alleged proofs which are believed to justify the exaggerated emphasis that is habitually laid on heredity and stability of type; but he does not succeed in establishing his thesis of a complete lack of correlation between race and mentality. We cannot accept as conclusive all the evidence by which he tries to establish the instability of types. At the present time it is just as impos- sible to prove conclusively that the hereditary mental charac- teristics of races are alike as that they are somewhat different; but his examination of the available data does prove that it is quite impossible to show any kind of superiority of one type over another. The author is undoubtedly right in emphasizing the adaptability of function to outer conditions. This implies that human types differing considerably in build may function physiologically and mentally in similar ways. To the criticism of Gobineau and Chamberlain in earlier editions is added a critique of modern biologists who claim a close correlation between mental character and racial descent. His criticism makes it clear that the claim of a hereditary cause for the observed differences in the behavior of nations or racial groups rests on dogmatic assertion, not on biological proof. Nevertheless, the author hardly does justice to the seri- ous attempts to find evidence for possible functional differences between racial groups. The necessity for such investigation is evident on account of the modern findings of experimental psychologists that have shown clear differences in reaction to the so-called intelligence tests among various nationalities. It has not been proved in the least that these differences are determined by heredity, but their existence must be considered and studied. The general tendency of Dr. Hertz to minimize heredity as against environmental influences brings it about that he underestimates the importance of heredity in family lines. The error in the argument of most investigators lies in the unjustifiable confusion of biological inheritance in family lines as against the distribution of form and function in racial groups containing a large number of unrelated family lines. It is more than likely that Dr. Hertz is right in claiming that functional racial heredity does not exist. At least, his argu- ments seem convincing when he sets forth that tradition con- trols the cultural life of nations, and that, as compared to its importance, hereditary differences may be neglected. He proves that for the purpose of understanding cultural development, the functional differences between races are negligible; but he has not succeeded in proving that there may not be slight hered- itary differences between various races, particularly in so far as the frequencies of different hereditary types are concerned. It is intelligible that a book dealing with racial antag- onisms, a phenomenon of our time that is exciting the passions not merely of the masses and that involves the greatest danger to sane progress, should at times transgress the limits of objective discussion. We cannot help feeling that a greater restraint upon the praiseworthy enthusiasm of the author would have strengthened the influence of the book. Franz Boas Four English Essayists The Background of English Literature. By H. J. C. Grierson. Henry Holt and Company. $2.50. Critical Essays. By Osbert Burdett. Henry Holt and Company. $2. Fallodon Papers. By Viscount Grey of Fallodon. Houghton Mifflin Company. $2.50. Vision and Jewels. By Moysheh Oyved. Henry Holt and Com- pany. $2. A COLLECTION of four books by a distinguished professor, **• a brilliant critic, a famous statesman, and the proprietor of "the oddest, most artistic little shop in London" ought, no doubt, to be representative of a nation ; that it is not proves that England is larger than her leisure class and just at present expressing herself in a medium other than literature. Con- versely, this implies a break between its literature and reality; and the absence of forceful writers unqualifiedly facing a post- war English nation is distressingly apparent. Shaw and Gals- worthy are still smashing the old, dead gods. Intrenched behind the debris they have wrought they do not make for further advance, and Shaw, at least, possesses the clarity of self- appraisal — and also the self-assurance — to suggest that he be superseded.

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation Your Holiday in Europe This Year, Next Year, Some Time Whenever and wherever you want to go, make your arrangements through the Work- ers' Travel Association, an organization— in case you don't know it founded and main- tained to encourage foreign travel as a means of promoting the growth of mutual under- standing between the peoples of the world. The W. T. A. plans and carries out holidays ami tours of all kinds — to suit the most modest or the well-filled purse — for groups or individuals. It drafts itineraries, Krives quotations, makes hotel, steamer, and railroad reservations anywhere in Great Britain or on the Continent of Europe, supplies leaders, if desired, and arranges for meetings with representatives of educational, political, trade-union and other movements. The W. T. A. is official agent for the principal British and European Railroad and Steamship Companies, and can supply tickets of all descriptions. Independent travelers and organizers of parties are invited to write early to the W. T. A., mentioning the dates of their stay in Europe, the places they plan to visit, the amount they can spend, and their main interests, so that plans can be drafted for them in accordance with their wishes. The Workers' Travel Association Ltd Transport House WESTMINSTER Smith Squ are LONDON, S.W.I. <;i5 Phone VICTORIA 4608—9 (2 lineal Read these excerpts from THE NEW UNIVERSE By Baker Brownell and you will sense his magnetic style, his grasp of modern science and philosophy, his genius for bringing scientific truths into bold relief for the intelligent but non-technical reader; and you will have a touch of the stimulation to be enjoyed in his highly individual survey of the frontier problems of science, society, art, religion, and philosophy. "The biography of God has not been written except as science finds it in the long unwinding of natural processes. The scientists, not the 'funda- mentalists', have read the Bible in the stars." "Life is a small whisper heard here for a moment in the lull of universal thunder." "Light is the dynamic factor of a living thing and man's worship of the sun as his creator is not far-fetched." "Intellectually the modern world is a corral of wild horses. Each specialty kicks and bites at every other." "Specialization, vegetable or intellectual, in time is poisonous." "The atom, once a satisfying little lump of ultimate solidity, has become a communistic gang of electrons acting as a unit." "Life is not the wax or wick of the candle. It is the burning." "Society has a behavior. It is a unit of human living that is too often observed only through the peepholes of individual actions." A book that must inevitably be widely discussed. At all bookstores, $4.00, or by mail from the publishers. D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY 8 Warren Street, New York Geletfial Sanation . . . Ti : (HERE is nothing more agreeable than to find that Providence dislikes the same people that we do. It adds to our good opinion of Providence. Moreover it imparts a celestial sanction to comparatively cat-and- dog emotions, the pleasure of a massacre, for example, or of bombarding an unfortified town. Bad luck for the people one does not like is always retribution. It is a term that dis- guises the simplicity of our natural tastes and gives carte blanche to their indulgence. Under the name of retribution scalping loses — for you — much of its apparent crudity and yet it hurts the other person just as much. Scalping alongside Providence is rather dignified, while still retaining all its charm* So when one man hates another, or a na- tion, he should make haste to fetch in Provi- dence. Then his simple early racial certitudes may be freely displayed — feelings that might otherwise seem out of place in any creature that had lost its fur and tail — unless it had found Providence." /rom THE COLBY ESSAYS, the finest work of frank moore colby, a neglected American master of the ironic essay. Edited by Clarence Day, Jr. with an introduction by Philip Littell. Two volumes. Boxed. $7.50. HARPER & BROTHERS, Publishers Since 1817 When writing to advertisers, please mention The Nation

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646 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 The culture of the English litterateur makes it thrice diffi- cult for him adequately to appraise the situation of his race without precedent in letters. Professor Grierson recognizes the social basis of literature, "the spirit of a self-confident society seeking in art and literature the expression of its ideals and convictions." His appreciations are robust; he makes Byron, as the poet of action and energy, the subject of a splendid tribute. He champions Donne and defends Sancho Panza as the symbol of dull, plodding humanity which nevertheless follows the vision- ary, infected with his madness. Mr. Burdett ably appraises Frank Harris, pleads for the "humanity" of letters, and writes this powerful sentence: "Joy is a quality of strength, and only in the great poets is intensity wholly free from tensity." But neither Professor Grierson nor Mr. Burdett gives marrow to the young writer bent on newer things. For Viscount Grey writing is, of course, a release from public life. He writes interestingly of waterfowl, and this much is apparent, that he has entertained himself by writing. It is also true that his papers on fly-fishing, the coloration of birds, and the pleasures of reading are merely recreation for their busy author and not the spontaneous product of an inner spir- ituality such as, for example, lilts with W. H. Davies or piously trundles with Walton. Mr. Oyved's book, the frequently charming autobiography of a beautiful soul, translates itself quaintly against an Eng- lish background. It would be unfair to grudge the author the oasis he has created for himself, and his quiet mannerism would disarm criticism — were criticism possible of an elfin mood satu- rated with shrewd Jjwish glimpses of humanity. Only, his Love — the eviscerated post-exilic thing of "Visions and Jewels" — is too amorphous a creature to carry the burdens of the Time Spirit across-stream like another Christopher. John Waldiiorn Gassner The Nation's Poetry Prize rjlHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for A. the best poem submitted by an American poet in a contest conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. This year in addition a second prize of $50 and a third prize of $25 will be offered. The rules for 192G are as follows: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Xa tion, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. 3. No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- cumstances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent from this office. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. 6. The winning poems will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation, to appear February 9, 1927. 7. Besides the winning poems, The Nation reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted in the contest. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. Poems should in no case be sent to them personally. Books in Brief Labels. By A. Hamilton Gibbs. Little, Brown and Company. $2. "Somehow or other, in the course of centuries," says one of the characters here, "we've got to slough off the philosophy which has led us down the wrong trail. . . . The progress of man — if any — is over the dead bodies of its conscientious objectors." This thought — both in its earnestness and its vagueness — permeates "Labels," giving it an underlying force and at the same time robbing it of drive as a piece of fiction. The author's materials have begun to date, and all his expert handling cannot keep the story from seeming remote. Sabbatical Year. By George Shively. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2. A bright and crackling homily about a misfit minister and what — when sufficiently tempted — he does about it. Briefly, he spends his vacation with a member of his congregation in a manner not exactly sanctioned by his sermons. When the affair begins to assume the proportions of a scandal, he decides to revise his pulpit utterances to conform to his conduct. The sermon which the young man preaches on his return is awaited by the reader with as keen interest as though it were the solution of a crime mystery story. The plot is daring in ap- proximately the same sense that an evening gown might be; the talk is correctly tailored and smart; the total effect is momentarily amusing but ultimately unsatisfactory. Drama A Note on Tragedy ^PHE fundamentals of Tragedy are a protest and an adjust- * ment. Its subject is some flaw in man or the universe; its task the generation of some mood by means of which this flaw and its consequences are made either acceptable or at least tolerable to the human spirit. No mere series of unfortunate accidents ending in catastrophe is enough, for mere accident is trivial and mere catastrophe is, in itself, not tragic but painful. Only when something inevitable is involved and only when the passion of our protest against it is in a measure stilled does Tragedy come into being, for Tragedy is always, in some measure, a justification of the ways of God to man. The creation of Tragedy, so defined, is one of the most enduring activities of man, since it began when first he dis- covered how art might comfort his distress, and since it will continue until that day comes — if ever it does — when, recogniz- ing the eternal and finally unbearable disharmony between himself and his universe, he gives up all effort to reconcile him- self to it and thus dies his ultimate spiritual death. But though Tragedy is timeless, the form which tragedies take varies with the age which creates them, and no spiritual epoch has realized itself until it has created its tragedy, stating the gravamen of its protest and the terms of its acceptance. Something of this sort the great Greeks did for their age and Shakespeare for his, but no one has done it equally well for ours. Our vision, if not deeper, is more extensive, and while we perceive more com- pletely than any before us the manifold intricacies of our predicament, the comforts which others had seem more shadowy. Perhaps, indeed, nothing is more full of dark implications than the fact that true Tragedy is more difficult to write now than ever before. Gone with the last glimmerings of religion is that acceptance of destiny in which the Greeks rested, and gone, too, is that sense of the dignity and greatness of human passions which made man seem to Shakespeare glorious even in defeat. Man, too, as we know him better, seems little; unable to bear the dignity of the sceptered pall; at best not tragic but merely pitiful.

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Dec. 15, 1926] The Nation 647 Perhaps the real greatness of Eugene O'Neill lies in the fact that he has come nearer than any other American to writ- ing Tragedy in this sense, and that even in a play as early as "Beyond the Horizon" (now being revived by the Actors' Tl at the Mansfield) is clearly to be seen an instinctive discern- ment of the laws of such writing. This play is marked by a sense of tragic fitness which is by no means the inevitable accompaniment of vigor or honesty and which lifts the pi art, to a higher level than those two qualities alone can ever reach. In the hands of another his story might have become a vehicle for mere pathos or sentiment. If this boy who gives up his dream of a full life of adventure in strange lands for a marriage which chains him to the farm he hates had found in his marriage even the peace of gradual extinction, the play would be essentially a play of sentiment ; it* his wife had turned out to be merely not the woman he thought her, then his story would be only the story of an unfortunate mistake; but actually it is neither of these things. Divesting himself of every trace of faith in the permanent value of love and presenting it as merely one of the subtlest of those traps by which Nature snares Man, O'Neill turns a play which might have been merely ironic into an indictment not only of chance or fate but of that whole universe which sets itself up against man's desires and conquers them. Time and time again as the action proceeds one is struck to admiration by the way in which instinct leads O'Neill to sound the note which maintains the harmony of his conception when it would be so easy to destroy it. Thus, for example, when the brother returns and the wife confesses that it was he whom she ought to have loved, irony (something much lower than Tragedy) demands that he should confess a love for her, and any one with a less fine tragic sense would have made him do so. But O'Neill, realizing that love has no place in the world he has created, makes him merely laugh at such romantic notions instead, and the play, which might there have degenerated into a pitiful story of misplaced affections, leaps up once more into the bleak heights of Tragedy. And if, as Tragedy, it fails to take a place among supreme achievements it is only because no complete acquiescence in the events recorded is possible, because, in spite of the stoicism it inspires, there remains in it, as in all really modern tragedy, something that is merely distressing. Last year the merits of Mr. Noel Coward's plays were somewhat overrated, and this year the commentators, having discovered that fact, cover their confusion by refusing to give the devil even his due. Actually, "This Was a Man" (Klaw Theater) is considerably better than "The Vortex" — shallow, of course, but clever, spicy, and generally diverting. "Mozart" (Music Box), the Guitry play, in a later production of which the author is to appear here, has a measure of delicate charm, but it is spoiled by the frightful descents which Miss Irene Bordoni is allowed to make into music-hall minstrelsy. Joseph Wood Krutcii LECTURES JOHN COWPER POWYS will s peak at LABOR TEMPLE SCHOOL 244 East 14th St., Thursdays at i !:30 p. m. Dec. 16: Emerson Dec. 23: Poe Dec. 30: Whitman Admission 50 cents Send your name and address for our winter term announcement. DR. ALFRED ADLER, Noted Viennese Psychologist and Psychoanalyst, WILL GIVE THREE LECTURES ON "Individual Psychology in Theory and Practice' 1. The Inferiority Complex 2. Inhibitions and Obstacles 3. Love and Marriage Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, December 13, 14 and 1G, at 8 P. M. IN THE COMMUNITY AUDITORIUM, PARK AVENUE AND 34TH STREET Course tickets. $2.50; Single Admission, $1.00. Apply to Educational Department, The Community Church, 12 Park Avenue, or at the door. I II I A I l R -The Neighborhood Playhouse, "J^ g^V;«.Y' Saturday I he I lindu ( 'omedy THE LITTLE CLAY CART Alternat Ini December 1J with THE DYBBUK- A N on cacre Thentrc' lMh su, \\ w- 11 h St- *Y ' ' ' Tel. Watkiru 7767 GALLIENNE Thursday, December !>. "THREE SISTERS." Friday, December 10, "LA LOCANDIERA." Saturday Matinee. December 11, "JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN." Saturday Evening, December 11, "LA LOCANDIERA." Monday, December 13, "THREE SISTERS." Tuesday, December 14, "THE MASTER BUILDER." Wednesday Matinee. December 15, "THE MASTER BUTLDER." Wednesday Evening, December 15, "LA LOCANDIERA." Evenings & Saturday Matinees, 50c to $1.50. Wednesday Matinees, 35c-$l. Theatre Guild Acting Companies in SIDNEY HOWARD'S COMEDY Ned McCobb's Daughter TOJ-IM CCW HPKI Then., 58th St. E. of R'way. Eves. 8:30 JWrilX V_iV_/i^L^H,l N Ma HURSDAY and SATURDAY Tickets mat/ also be purchased at the Guild Theatre Box Office. BERNARD SHAW'S PYGMALION "The most refreshing il shower bath on Broadway, with the tingling drops of Shaw's wit to tickle the spin.-." Frank Vreeland, Teh GUILD THEATRE .r>L'n? The Sensational Russian Film! 'The Greatest Motion Picture liver Made" — agree DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, EMIL JANNINGS and MAX REINHARDT chanin-s t-i THEATRE, 47th St., I L T M O R Hi West ay. Twice Daily, 2:30-8:30 (Sunday, 3 and 8:30) When writing to adveJ The Nation

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International Relations Section The British Commonwealth of Nations WE print herewith the concluding portion of the report of the Inter-Imperial Relations Committee of the British Imperial Conference, as cabled to the New York Times. The first section was printed in last week's Nation. F — Coming into Force of Multilateral Treaties. In general treaties contain a ratification clause and the provision that the treaty will come into force on the deposit of a certain number of ratifications. The question has sometimes arisen in con- nection with treaties negotiated under the auspices of the League whether for the purpose of making up the number of ratifications necessary to bring the treaty into force ratifi- cations on behalf of different parts of the empire which are separate members of the League should be counted as separate ratifications. In order to avoid any difficulty in future it is recommended that when it is thought necessary that a treaty should contain a clause of this character it should take the form of a pro- vision that the treaty should come into force when it has been ratified on behalf of so many separate members of the League. We think that some convenient opportunity should be taken of explaining to other members of the League changes which it is desired to make in the form of treaties and the reasons for which they are desired. We would also recommend that the various governments of the empire should make it an instruction to their representatives at international conferences to be held in the future that they should use their best endeavors to secure that effect is given to the recommendations contained in the foregoing. G — Represi ntation at International Conferences. We also studied in the light of the resolution of the Imperial Conference of 1923 to which reference already has been made the ques- tion of representation of different parts of the empire at inter- national conferences. The conclusions which we reached may be summarized as follows: 1. No difficulty arises as regards representation at con- ferences convened by or under the auspices of the League of Nations. In the case of such conferences all members of the League are invited and if they attend are represented sepa- rately by separate; delegations. Cooperation is insured by application of Paragraph 1, 1-C, of the resolution of 1923. 2. As regards international conferences summoned by foreign governments, no rule of universal application can be laid down, since the nature of representation must in part depend on the form of invitation issued by the convening government. (a) In conferences of a technical character it is usual and always desirable that different parts of the empire should (if they wish to participate) be represented separately by sepa- rate delegations, and where necessary efforts should be made to secure invitations which will render such representation possible. (b) Conferences of a political character called by a foreign government must be considered on the special circumstances of each individual case. It is for each part of the empire to decide whether its particular interests are so involved, especially having regard to active obligations likely to be imposed by any resulting treaty, that it desires to be represented at a conference or whether it is content to leave negotiation in the hands of part or parts of the empire more directly concerned and accept the result. If the government desires to participate in the conclusion of a treaty the method by which representation will be secured is a matter to be arranged with other governments of the empire in the light of the invitation which has been received. Where more than one part of the empire desires to be represented three methods of representation are possible: (a) By means of a common plenipotentiary, or plenipoten- tiaries, the issue of full powers to whom should be on the advice of all parts of the empire participating. (b) By a single British Empire delegation composed of separate representatives of such parts of the empire as are participating in the conference. This was the form of repre- sentation employed at the Washington Disarmament Conference of 1921. (c) By separate delegations representing each part of the empire participating in the conference. If, as result of con- sultation, this third method is desired, an effort must be made to insure that the form of invitation from the convening gov- ernment will make this method of representation possible. Certain non-technical treaties should from their nature be concluded in a form which will render them binding upon all parts of the empire, and for this purpose should be ratified with the concurrence of all the governments. It is for each government to decide to what extent its concurrence in rati- fication will be facilitated by its participation in conclusion of a treaty, as, for instance, by the appointment of a common plenipotentiary. Any question as to whether the nature of the treaty is such that its ratification should be concurred in by all parts of the empire is matter for discussion and agreement between governments. // — General Conduct of Foreign Policy. We went on to examine the possibility of applying the principles underlying the treaty resolution of the 1923 conference to matters arising in the conduct of foreign affairs generally. It was frankly recognized that in this sphere, as in the sphere of defense, the major share of responsibility rests now and must for some time continue to rest with His Majesty's Government in Great Britain. Nevertheless, practically all the Dominions are engaged to some extent, and some to a considerable extent, in the con- duct of foreign relations, particularly those with foreign coun- tries on their borders. A particular instance of this is the growing work in connection with the relations between Canada and the United States of America, which has led to the neces- sity for the appointment of a Minister Plenipotentiary to represent the Canadian Government in Washington. We felt that the governing consideration underlying all the discussions of this problem must be that neither Great Britain nor the Dominions could be committed to acceptance of active obligations except with the definite assent of their own governments. / — Issue of Exequaturs to Foreign Consuls in Dominions. A question was raised with regard to practice regarding the issue of exequaturs to consuls in the Dominions. The gen- eral practice hitherto in the case of all appointments of con- suls de carriere in any part of the British Empire has been that the foreign government concerned notified His Majesty's Government in Great Britain through the diplomatic channel of the proposed appointment, and that, provided it is clear that the person concerned is in fact a consul de carriere, steps have been taken without further formality for the issue of His Majesty's exequatur. In the case of consuls other than those de carriere it has bi-en customary for some time past to consult the Dominion government concerned before the issue of an exequatur. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs informed us that His Majesty's Government in Great Britain accepted the sug- gestion that in future any application by a foreign govern- ment for the issue of an exequatur to any person who was to act as consul in the Dominion should be referred to the Dominion government concerned for consideration and that

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Dec. 15, 1926] Tho Nation 649 BOOKS STORY OF HILOSOPHY EDUCATIONAL THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE Program Dec. 12-18 AT COOPER UNION (8th St. and Astor Place) At 8 o'clock ADMISSION FREE Sunday, Dec. 12 — Dr. Bruno Roselli — "Fascismo Re- vamped." Tuesday, Dec. 14 — Dr. L. Pierce Clark — "A Psycho- logical Interpretation of Leonardo Da Vinci as Scientist and Inventor." Friday, Dec. 17 — Everett Dean Martin — What Is the Matter with Modern Ideas? "Humanitarian Ideals." AT MANHATTAN TRADE SCHOOL (Lexington Ave. and 22nd St., at 8 o'clock) Single Admission, 25 cents Reduction for Course Tickets Monday, Dec. 13 — Mr. Mark Van Doren — Literary Critics of Our Civilization. "E. A. Robinson." Wednesday, Dec. 15 — Scott M. Buchanan — A Meta- physical Doctrine. "Stating the Postulates." Thursday, Dec. 16— Dr. E. G. Spaulding— Outlines of Philosophy. "The Sources of Knowledge." Saturday, Dec. 18— G. Kingsley Noble, Ph.D. Evo- lution: Facts and Theories. "What Is Inherited?" Do You Want Your Child to Play the Piano and Enjoy Learning It? Do You Think Your Child has no "Ear?" Every Child has an Ear for Music. The Ear of some Children, however, must be developed. I have taught Successfully Children and Adults in Hungary and this country. My specialty is Ear Training and Concentration. Let me Teach Your Child. For terms and consultation address MISS FRANCISKA SCHWIMMER No. 2 West 83rd Street Tel. Endicotl 5706 The Gift of Gifts Fathers who read this magazine arc anxiously casting about at this season to find some one outstanding gift for a small son or daughter. This is offered as a suggestion. It is possible to place in your child's hands this Christmas morning the most valuable pos' session he or she could have — A UNI' VERSITY EDUCATION. The process is simple. Through the educa' tional endowment life insurance policy you may make certain that at the beginning of each college year — when your child is that age — money will be available to pay tuition and living expenses. This without regard to what may happen to you meanwhile. ASK YOUR PRUDENTIAL MAN TO EXPLAIN THIS PHASE OF PROTECTION Or make inquiry direct to the Home Office. THE PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA EDWARD D. DUFF1ELD, President Home Office, NEWARK, K ]■ When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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650 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3206 if the Dominion government agreed to the issue of an exequatur it would be sent to them for counter-signature by the Dominion minister. Instructions to this effect had already been given. J— ication BeUveen Dominion Govemi- Govemments. We took note of the devel- opment of the special interest which had occurred since the ial Conference last met, viz., the appointment of a min- ister plenipotentiary to represent the interests of the Irish Free State in Washington, which was now about to be followed by the appointment of a diplomatic representative of Canada. We felt that the most fruitful results could be anticipated from the cooperation of His Majesty's representatives in the United States of America already initiated and now further to be developed. In cases other than those where Dominion ministers were accredited to heads of foreign states it was agreed to be very desirable that the existing diplomatic chan- nels should continue to be used as between Dominion govern- ments and foreign governments in matters of general and political concern. . . . VI. — System of Communication and Consultation ins of the Imperial Conference at which the prime ministers of Great Britain and the Dominions are all able to be present cannot, from the nature of things, take place very frequently. The system of communication and consultation between conferences becomes, therefore, of special importance. We reviewed the position now reached in this respect with spe- cial reference to the desirability of arranging that a closer personal touch should be established between Great Britain and the Dominions. Such contact alone can convey the impn of the atmosphere in which official correspondence is conducted. Development in this respect seems particularly necessary in relation to matters of major importance in for' ign affairs, where expedition is often essential and an urgent decision ary. The special aspect of the question of consultation which we considered was that concerning the representation of Great Britain in the Dominions. By reason of his consti- tutional position, as explained in Section IV (B) of this report, the Governor General is no longer a representative of His Majesty's Government in Great Britain. There is no one, therefore, in the Dominion capitals in a position to represent with authority the views of His Majesty's Government in Great Britain. vVe summed up our conclusions in the following resolution, which is submitted for consideration of the conference: The governments represented at the Imperial Con- arc impressed with the desirability of developing a system of personal contact, both in London and in the Dominion capitals, to supplement the present system of intercommunication and a reciprocal supply of information iring joint consideration. The manner in which any new system is to be worked out is a matter for consideration and settlement between Tlis Majesty's governments in Great Britain and the Dominions, with ilii'' regard to the circumstances of each particular part of iln empire, it being understood that any new arrange- ments should be supplementary to and not in replacement of the system of direct communication from government ernment, and the special arrangements which have been in force since 1918 for communications between the prime ministers. VII. — Particular Aspects of Foreign Relations Discussed by the Committee It was found convenient that certain aspects of foreign relations on matters outstanding at the time of the conference should be referred to us, since they could be considered in greater detail and more informally than at meetings of the full conference. A — Compulsory Arbitration in International Disputes. One question which we studied was that of arbitration in inter- national disputes, with special reference to the question of acceptance of Article 36 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice providing for compulsory submission of certain classes of cases to the court. On this matter we decided to submit no resolution to the conference, but whilst the members of the committee were unanimous in favoring the widest possible extension of the method of arbitration for the settlement of international disputes, the feeling was that it was at present premature to accept the obligations under the article in question. A general understanding was reached that none of the governments represented at the Imperial Conference would take any action in the direction of acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the Permanent Court without bringing up the matter for further discussion. B — Adherence of the United States of America to the Protocol Establishing the Permanent Court of International Justice. Connected with the question last mentioned was that of adherence of the United States of America to the protocol establishing the Permanent Court of International Justice. The special conditions upon which the United States desired to become a party to the protocol had been discussed at a spe- cial conference held in Geneva in September, 1926, to which all the governments represented at the Imperial Conference had sent representatives. We ascertained that each of these governments was in accord with the conclusions reached by the special conference and with the action which that conference recommended. C—The Policy of Locarno. The Imperial Conference was fortunate in meeting at a time just after the ratifications of the Locarno treaty of mutual guaranty had been exchanged on the entry of Germany into the League of Nations. It was, therefore, possible to envisage the results which the Locarno policy had achieved already, and to forecast to some extent the further results which it was hoped to secure. These were explained and discussed. It then became clear that from the standpoint of all the Dominions and of India there was com- plete approval of the manner in which the negotiations had been conducted and brought to so successful a conclusion. Our final and unanimous conclusion was to recommend to the conference the adoption of the following resolution : The conference lias heard with satisfaction the state- ment of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs with regard to the efforts made to insure peace in Europe, cul- minating in the agreements of Locarno, and congratulates His Majesty's Government in Great Britain on its share in this successful contribution toward the promotion of the peace of the world. Signed on behalf of the committee, Balfour, Cliairman Contributors to This Issue Carleton Beals has been living in Mexico for several years. In the issues of The Nation of August 18, Sep- tember If), and October 6 he published articles on The M-xican Church Goes on Strike, Baron Banana in Puerto Barrios, and Calles Is Gaining in Mexico. Anna Rochester, formerly an editor of the World To- morrow, is now in China. Ted Olson is a Wyoming poet. Henry Raymond Mussey is professor of economics at Wellesley College, and was formerly associate editor of The Nation. Allen Tate is a New York critic and poet. Franz Boas, professor of anthropology at Columbia Uni- versity, is a world authority on the problem of races. He contributed an article, What is a Race? to The Nation's Nordic Myth series in 1925. The author of Mother's Daughter is a lawyer.

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The Nati o n FOUN D E 1) 1 a Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, W^u 3207 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 661 EDITORIALS: Christmas Puddin' Calvin Coolidge, Socialist Claude Monet, 1840-1926 Friar Bacon CARTOON. By Hendrik van Loon DOHENY— A PORTRAIT IN OIL. By Raymond Clapper 668 AN AIR LAW FOR AMERICA. By M. \V. Royse 669 THE PEACOCK'S I All. Anonymous 664 THE FRENCH FAMILY COMMITS MURDER. By Robert Dell 665 IN THE IUlll TWA Y. By the Drifter 666 CORRESPONDENCE 667 BOOKS AND PLAYS: What Will She Do with Seven Fat Years? By Clinch Calkins CCS Fust Glance. By Mark Van Doren 668 The "Different" Negro. By Melville J. Herskovits 668 The Melancholy Bull. By Joseph Wood Krutch 669 "Ad Maiorem Gloriam Dei." By Alter Brody 670 A Masterpiece in Logic. By Ernest Sutherland Hates 670 Smollett. By Arnold Whitridge 671 Books in Brief 67 1 The Nation's Poetry Prize 672 Art: Modern Art — Genesis or Exodus? By Louis Lozowick 672 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: The Real Hungary. By G. E. R. Gedye 674 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD. Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM, Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada. $5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION. No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address : Nation, New York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England. HOWEVER THE FALL-DOHENY TRIAL ends, the Navy Department stands guilty. The defense cen- tered around an alleged war scare which was supposed to excuse the deal by which Doheny got the oil lands. Secre- tary Wilbur would not permit Admiral Robison to give details or name the Power, but everyone knew it was Japan. Now, these scare stories date from the days of and after the Washington Conference, at which Japan canceled her alli- ance with England, canceled the Lansing-Ishii agreement with America, agreed to return Shantung to China, and entered into a series of treaties to safeguard peace and the status quo in the Pacific. That conference caused a marked lessening of tension in the Pacific. Any war scare, at that precise time, was the purest bogy-man. We do not pretend to know whether Mr. Doheny invented the bugaboo in order to get his oil or whether there really were naval officers foolish enough to believe it. Enough has already been hinted to do a deal of damage to Japanese-American rela- tions. Let us know the whole truth. Turn on the light, Mr. Wilbur! And is it not time for Mr. Hughes, father of the Washington Conference, to speak out? GOVERNOR SMITH has won fresh laurels in the water- power fight in that he compelled by ten days of publicity the New York State Water-Power Commission, which is about to go out of existence, to forego its plans to lease the St. Lawrence River to the Aluminum Trust and allied interests. When the commission met on December the meeting at which it was to have given its approval to the proposed lease to the Frontier Corporation, which is jointly owned by the Aluminum Company of America, the Dupont interests, and the General Electric Company, the corpora- tion itself wisely withdrew its acceptance of the proposed plan. On the following day the Northeastern Power Corpo- ration withdrew its application for the creation of a river- regulating district on the Salmon River, which meant a power site on that river within the forest preserves. This is a magnificent victory, and not only for the Governor. The New York World again deserves the highest praise for its share in the campaign which resulted in so rapid a rousing of public opinion. The Water-Power Commission can now die an ignominious death, the Republican Party in the State of New York has once more thoroughly besmirched itself, and Governor Smith more than ever ranks as a de- fender of public rights. Will the Republicans now dare to oppose Ctovernor Smith's program for a State Power Au- thority to take the State's "white coal" out of the hands of politicians? THOUGH THE NUMBER OF MEN of courage and of zeal for truth and justice is steadily increasing in the South — witness the splendid fight made by R. Charlton Wright, publisher of the Columbia, South Carolina, Record, to bring about the punishment of the lynchers who butch- ered the three Negroes in Aiken on October 8 — it is not often that a Southern man gets up before a Southern audi- ence and says that "highfalutin talk about the beauty of Southern women and the chivalry of Southern men" cannot hide the lack of intellectual, artistic, social, and political progress. Professor Edwin Mims of Vanderbilt University spoke thus at the annual dinner of the New York Southern Society, and uttered among other reasonable sentiments the following: "The solidarity of the South is no longer a source of pride, but a humiliation to many of its most devoted men"; "the Southern States are still at the bottom of all statistics that register actual educational conditions of this country"; "it is also true that there is not a single university in the South that has adequate resources for the highest type of graduate work"; "even in politics an in- creasing number of business men (of the South) are no longer voting one way and praying another, but are follow- ing the dictates of their consciences and patriotism." He was equally outspoken in his opposition to Tennessee's anti- evolution law, which he described as the child of "political cowardice." He pointed out that the State of Georgia has recently sent to the penitentiary for from four years to life the leaders of a lynching mob, to date eleven men. This makes it easier for the brave editors of the South, such as Julian Harris in Georgia, Charlton Wright in South Caro- lina, and Desha Breckinridge in Kentucky, to cite only a few, to fight their unending battles for justice. ALL HONOR TO THE BOARD OF REGENTS of the University of Utah! The Chamber of Commerce of Salt Lake City, the Commercial Club, the American Legion,

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652 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 and the usual list of patriotic societies recently undertook to prevent Scott Nearing from giving an address in con- nection with the University Extension course. He is and was a pacifist, a member of the Civil Liberties Union, a and he opposed the entrance of the United States World War. Therefore these solemn bodies opined it was their sacred duty to censor the course of lectures lished by the university, and notified its authorities that in their judgment the mere presence of Scott Nearing, no matter how mild his utterances might be, would be "harmful to the university students." Wonderful to relate, overnor of the State and the Mayor of Salt Lake City found on the side of free speech, and when the protests of the Chamber of Commerce and its affiliated organ - came before the Board of Regents they unayiu voted to keep Scott Nearing on their roll of lecturers. We cannot too warmly commend this action. For a university board of control to allow commercial organiza- tions to say what shall and what shall not be said on university platforms would be to abdicate the most sacred of their functions. The net result was, of course, thai the Salt Lake so boomed Mr. Nearing's coming that it was necessary to take for his lecture the large Assembly Hall of the Mormon church. TUP: GOOD OLD DAYS in which a vote was worth two and no more — unless it might be a glass of whis- are gone forever. Votes come higher nowadays; Sena- tor-elect Vare has discovered how costly a Pennsylvania primary can be. And the voters of that State are discover- ing— although so far with no great show of indignation that buying votes is not enough. Other subterfuges may be necessary in order to roll up a safe majority. Thus the investigation of the Philadelphia system discovered one vote recorded as cast by a man who died ten days before the election was held, and in one session of the court twenty-five witnesses testified that their votes had been falsely counted for Vare. Five members of one election board are already under arrest for fraud. In thirty dis- tricts of Philadelphia not one vote was counted for William B. Wilson, Vare's opponent. What is to be the outcome of this scandalous buying and stealing of votes? The Senate certainly should refuse to seat Senator Vare. But what are the people of Pennsylvania going to do? Nothing daunted by disclosures relating to their three-million-dollar pri- mary, they elected the machine candidate in November. Or are they about to prove that they did not elect him and that he won the election by fraud alone? AMONG THE ANNUAL REPORTS of the Cabinet officers the Postmaster General's stands out as the striking, for he reports that he has cut his last year's deficit in half, reducing it by $19,772,047.87 to $19,972,379.42, and this in the face of an increase of more than §70,000, 000 in the salary roll. There was an im of 9.36 per cent in postage paid on mail, and the air mail earned $801,865.05 in excess of ordinary postal rates. Among the Postmaster General's commendable recom- mendations for legislation are one to exclude firearms from the mail, another to contract for group life-insurance for postal employees, and a third to reduce the postage rate on second-class transient matter. All of which shows clearly that if the Post Office Department is ever put on a purely business basis and the Postmaster General dropped from the Cabinet, where he has for generations been merely the political henchman of the President, the department can be made self-supporting. As for the other reports, those of the War and Navy departments are, as usual, demands for more men and more money, while the Attorney General backs up the President in demanding that the prohibition and anti-trust laws be made more stringent. LITTLE BROTHER DIAZ, down in Nicaragua, has learned something from association with the State Department in Washington. He knows that one of the safest ways to fight an opponent is to call him a Bolshevist. And so, since Mexico has recognized the rival Sacasa regime in Nicaragua — and at least Sacasa has more constitutional right to call himself President than Diaz — Diaz howls loudly that Sacasa and the Mexicans are all Bolshevists. It is absurd. It. is still more absurd for the Associated Press to cattle 1,500 words of Diaz's ranting to the United States, and for respectable newspapers to print them. The bulk of Diaz's propaganda is suspicious. So far, he has proved that Calles has recognized Sacasa, as he should, and that some Mexicans have shipped arms to him. Meanwhile Diaz him- self is aided by United States marines and aviators; our gunboats blockade the ports in his behalf; our State De- partment and press associations act as his press agents. It is a vast honor for a man who leaped into the Presidency from an ill-paid job as secretary of an American mining corporation; and shoddy business for a great nation. Who is behind it? JAPAN IS WEIRDLY MIXED of medieval and mod- ern. A Buddhist priest who attempted to present a petition to the Crown Prince provided himself with a dagger to disembowel himself after so sacrilegious an act ; and the. chief of police who did not prevent his reaching the running-board of the royal automobile re- signed in shame. On the other hand, Japan's Farmer- Labor Party has all the modern frills. The right-wing labor unions retired when the new party decided to admit Communists to membership. Oddly, however, it was the strong Peasants' Union which insisted on including the radicals. Now there will be two labor parties. Between them they represent only 150,000 organized workers, while the latest census figures report 3,128,000 men and 1,562,000 women in industry (the latter a significantly modern fig- ure). In any case, registration under the new Manhood Suffrage Act is proceeding so slowly that Japan may have to fight another election in large part on the old selective franchise. In diplomacy, meanwhile, Japan is ahead of the West. She is actively in negotiation with China for re- vision of her thirty-year-old commercial treaty, and her methods reveal a thoroughly up-to-date understanding of the farcical art of international intercourse. The Japanese Minister and the Chinese Foreign Minister conferred for three days before China presented her note suggesting revision. Every comma, apparently, was discussed before the note was sent. And even then it was not published! THE UPPER SILESIAN municipal elections last month were very unsettling. The Poles had hoped for a de- cisive victory, and the heavy German vote in the industrial centers was a blow. The absurdly complicated arrangement of frontiers made by the League of Nations to accommodate Poland in 1921 doubtless contributed to the result. The

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 653 rural vote went Polish, but the six chief industrial towns and districts turned in 165,000 votes for the German party, 132,000 for Polish candidates, and 9,200 for Communis and mixed candidates. Kattowitz, the provincial capital, re- turned 34 Germans and 26 Poles. Five years of Polish propaganda, the prosperity resulting from the British coal strike, suppression and terrorism where needed, and liberal welfare work just before the elections were counted on to swing the balance in Poland's favor. But the tradition of German skill and capital which built up the industry of Upper Silesia (and incidentally Poland's interest in this province) is deep rooted. Moreover, the current dialect, "Wasserpolnisch," is so much more like German than Polish that in some cases Polish propagandists were forced to address their audiences in German to be understood at all. And the Germans used to good advantage the contrast be- tween social progress in Germany since the revolution and conditions under the Polish dictatorship. MUSSOLINPS AMBITION to make the Adriatic an Italian lake is stirring the Balkans again. This time he seems to have negotiated a treaty virtually annexing Albania. Naturally, Jugoslavia is alarmed. Not that the Serbs are devoted to the cause of Albanian independence — merely that if Mussolini succeeds in pocketing Albania they fail. Albanian revolutions in the last decade have succeeded one another with startling rapidity, and while Italy has gazed fondly on one party Jugoslavia has nursed the other. Nintchitch, the habitual Foreign Minister at Belgrade, has resigned in indignation, and at this crucial moment old Nikola Pachich, who was Serbia's Prime Minister in pre- war days and has occupied the post intermittently ever since, has died. If Pachich's death brings Stefan Radich to the helm, as seems possible, it will be almost the veteran's greatest service to his country. Radich is a Croat, and his leadership would do much to unite the racial groups of the •"Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes." "TNTERALLIED CONTROL" of Germany will cease 1 on January 31, 1927. That is good news. The out- come of the Geneva negotiations is a bargain, but a friendly bargain, reinforcing the significantly growing good-will between France and Germany. The control commission, sitting in Berlin and prying into factories all over Ger- many, has been an irritation from the start. Enforcement of the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles is to be turned over to the League Council. That body too may have to settle the moot questions of the German fortifications in the East and of Germany's export of semi- manufactured materials capable of use in war. Both these questions go to the Council if the Conference of Ambassa- dors cannot settle them; Germany's proposal to refer them for arbitration to the World Court at the Hague was re- fused— because, the correspondent of the New York Times avows, the members of the League Council have "a better idea of what was in the minds of the persons who drafted the Treaty of Versailles." It is bad business to tie the League to that treaty. THE HALL-STEVENS FAMILY have been acquitted. In most civilized countries private persons unjustly ac- cused of crime may be indemnified from the public treas- ury. The British Parliament appropriated £5,000 in the Beck case. Wisconsin and California allow an indemnity not to exceed $5,000 in any ease of erroneous conviction of a completely innocent party, France, making concrete Voltaire's proposal, also confines the indemnity to persons unjustly convicted. But Germany, Austria, Hungary, Den- mark, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, and many of the Swiss cantons permit a wrongfully accused person to claim com- pensation from the state for the extraordinary sacrifice which he has borne. This is civilized. The state in the public interest of prosecuting crime takes from an innocent person his liberty and lays on him an extraordinary ex- pense. The people of the state should bear in common a loss which they have unjustly imposed on a single individ- ual. The indemnity also helps to reestablish a person's unjustly impugned reputation in the community. Our States should take up this matter by general legislation. A federal bill, making the United States responsible in case of erroneous conviction in the federal courts, introduced in 1913 by Senator Sutherland, now justice of the Supreme Court, was lost in the excitement incident to the war. Such a humanitarian measure should be revived. IN THE SURVEY GRAPHIC'S long list of distinguished issues none is more stimulating or more provocative of thought and discussion than the recent number on "Woman's Place," edited by Mary Ross. Here we have an impressive summary of the results so far of the Women's Revolution, which may mark the first half of this century more deeply than any other social change. The emotional conflicts that confront the modern woman, the profound choices that are forced upon her, the subtle interactions in home life, in the relations of the sexes, in factory and office are here discussed lightly yet with informed wisdom. If the issue is free of merely spectacular testimony it is even more amazingly free of simple and general dicta. It is concrete and particular and balanced; if it appears par- tisan to the modern woman its bias is mainly a record of the way of life that the present and the future seem to offer. It is a fascinating textbook of woman in the modern world — worth keeping, after reading, as an historical docu- ment to look over in later years when women shall have found their sea legs and the impressive activities of the advancing women of today will seem like the earnest and awkward yet somehow promising movements of a landlubber on his first day out. IF THE HAND OF PROVIDENCE had reached down and arrested the policemen who, on December 12, arrested ninety-eight persons in Irvington, N. J., for violating a 1798 law against working on Sunday, it would have been appro- priate. For the policemen, too, surely violated the law in performing their labors. They arrested bus-drivers, trolley conductors, merchants, gasoline vendors, bootblacks, and even the reporters and photographers who, for hire, had assembled to catch a news story. But nobody arrested the officers of the law or Recorder Frederic Stoddard, who fined each law-breaker — except himself and the policemen — two dollars. Clarence Darrow, who, at a recent Nation dinner, declared that the way to change an unpopular law is to dis- obey it, is thus proved both right and wrong. For the Blue Laws have certainly not been obeyed; for a full century they have been blandly, openly, and persistently ignored. Yet when, as in Irvington last Sunday, they are obeyed their absurdity becomes so evident that they must surely be brought nearer to repeal than by a century of neglect.

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654 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 Christmas Puddin' A bag pudding the King did make, And stuffed it well with plums, And in it put great lumps of fat As big as my two thumbs. THERE wire kings in those days. In our time kings r make plum-puddings. Perhaps that is why g their thrones. But though royalty does not now mix bag puddings, that modern king of kings, the i on a larger scale than ever. A press tch from tpital of puddingdom, tells us Savoy opened the plum-pudding season weeks ago and by early November had already made table dish for consumption in the speak of keeping the home puddings h continu to the epicure than itry mix his first plum-pudding of the season. For thirty yea' embled his assistants about him eral weeks before Christmas. Then, with a flourish that might be taken from some quaint religious cerem bas pjured the first bottle of brandy into the ling mixture. A diminutive page-boy always makes »cription like that one gets an inkling idity of Great Britain. Plum-pudding, under the upon which the sun never sets, is not merely a food; it is a British institution. It may almost be called the B -it institution. Indeed it is probably the reason why the British have a Hag that the sun never sets on and that others rarely sit on. Christmas pudding, they like to call it in England, al- though the term should be reserved for an unusually rich and mellow one, specially destined for the holiday season. ".Mix your puddings several weeks in advance," advises the chef of the Savoy, "and let the flavor improve." Several That would never have done in the good old days when King Arthur did the cooking. In less opportunist times than ours the open season for plum-pudding-making began as soon as summer was out of the way, but the product was preserved for the holiday season of the er, for its contents were such that if could be depended upon to carry out the principles of Dr. Cone; every day and in every way it grew better and better. In a tip-top plum-pudding is so good that it is as excel- lent cold as hot. That it is often eaten that way is recalled by the story of the family butler who asked his mistress solicitously: "Will you heat your pudding cold or shall I 'eat it for you?" We Americans have never got anywhere with pudding; neither in the making nor the eating of it. Pie is our na- tional dish, and it is fit and proper that it should have no serious rival in our affections. In the direction of pud- dings we have a few weak sisters: rice, bread, tapioca, cabinet. They are baked puddings and as such are not really puddings at all. They are Huffy, unsubstantial con- fections which digest in two or thrrte hours, whereas a real pudding is a sturdy dish for heroes and strong men. It is not baked but boiled in a bag like King Arthur's; and it doesn't leave you with an empty feeling a few hours after eating. It has a staying quality which has passed from it into the English people; it grapples the inside of the stomach and goes with you for the rest of the day. The national wealth of Great Britain must go into Christmas puddings if one may judge by the Savoy recipe: Twelve ounces Malaga raisins, 12 ounces currants, 12 ounces suet, '.) ounces flour, 4 ounces chopped apple, 1 ounce orange peel, X ounces brown sugar, half pint milk, 12 ounces Smyrna raisins, 12 ounces crystallized peel, 10 ounces bread crumbs, 1 ounce ginger, 1 ounce citron peel, 1 tea- spoonful salt, (> eggs, quarter of a pint of brandy or sherry. All the dry ingredients should be well mixed together. A little extra mixing well repays the trouble. Beat the eggs and add them to the milk, then pour over the dry ingredients and again mix thoroughly. Pack into greased molds, aid boil for six hours at the time of making. The puddings should be boiled for a further six hours when wanted for use. The best sauces are white, custard, or brandy sauce. We do not make many puddings like that — fortunately, perhaps, because this is no country in which to eat them. When a true Christmas pudding does get itself made among us it serves chiefly as a table ornament. Nobody eats more than a bite or two — again fortunately. For America, al- though a land of many blessings, has not a climate adapted to bold eating. It lacks the stimulus of those cold, pene- trating fogs, of that moisture-laden, marrow-piercing air. In our earlier outdoor days we were fair-to-middling eaters, but. latterly there are everywhere signs of decay: con- sommes, salads, custards, and such Hubdubbcry. Any American who has ever tried to eat his way through a day with an Englishman on his home grounds has tasted life. lie starts off at, nine o'clock (thank heaven, the English have a reasonable breakfast hour) with porridge, followed by finnan haddie or other salt fish, which leads up to a bountiful plate of bacon and eggs, a pot of tea, and a gen- erous portion of toast and marmalade with which to top off. The middle of the day calls for a light, soup (say, puree of split pea), an evanescent mutton chop (two inches thick), a bursting potato, and a vegetable trifle like boiled cab- bage. When this lias been washed down with a pint of bitter one has laid a fitting foundation. He may dam up the lost of his stomach with plum-pudding, confident of some permanency in an otherwise mutable and dissolving universe. But at four o'clock one puts one's legs under the table again for tea, toasted scones, and a few trivial slices of plum cake — presumably designed to clamp the pudding down. What an Englishman eats after that no American has ever found out, because he's stretched out on a sofa asking for his passport home. No, puddings are not for Americans, but they are the mainstay and the standby of every Briton-born. If not his first thought, they are at least his last, as evidenced by the dialogue in an East End fried-fish she]): "Gimme some fried fish." "Hot or cold?" "Hot." "Eat it here or take it with yer?" "Eat it here." "Folk or fingers?" "Aw | in disgustj, gimme puddin'." Some folks think it's patriotism that has made Great Britain great. Tommy rot ! It's puddin'.

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 655 Calvin Coolidge, Socialist THAT was such a sensational message which President Coolidge sent to Congress on December 7 that the New York Times placed over it the thrilling and unex- pected heading, "President Urges Caution on Congress." Superficially it is a cheerful Christmas message for all of our citizens — but only superficially. True, in reporting on the state of the Union he found it "impossible to charac- terize it other than one of general peace and prosperity." To this he added, with his delicate sense of what is new and startling: "In some quarters our diplomacy is vexed with difficult and as yet unsolved problems, but nowhere are we met with armed conflict." With this assurance to his read- ers that we have no private war going on under cover un- known to the public, he launched into a panegyric on economy: "Nothing is more destructive of the progress of the nation than government extravagance." But this is not the most striking part of Mr. Coolidge's message, nor is the early keynote which reads thus : "What the country requires is not so much new policies as a steady continuation of those which are already being crowned with such abundant success." He sagely advises that it would "be greatly for the welfare of the country if we avoided at the present session all commitments except those of the most pressing nature. From a reduction of the debt and taxes will accrue a wider benefit to all the people of this country than from embarking upon any new enterprise." However, he would have "a balanced portion of the surplus revenue" applied not to the reduction of the debt but to the reduction of taxation. Nevertheless, he favors "a speedy reduction of the debt as already required by law and in accordance with the promises made to the holders of our Liberty bonds" ; but he also sees no reason why we should not come to the relief of the taxpayers by "making reductions in the income-tax payments which accrue on the 15th of March and June, 1927." These are his "convictions stated with full knowledge that it is for the Congress to decide whether they judge it best to make such a reduction or leave the surplus for the present year to be applied to retirement of the war debt." Having thus clearly and succinctly stated his opinions, Congress will, of course, know just how to act. We confess to an uneasy feeling that the President, who has till now been rated as a very Gibraltar of conservatism, has succumbed to the insidious and soul-destroying propa- ganda of socialism. With alarm we find his keynote to be .advocacy of a socialistic dealing with the cotton situa- tion, urging that 4,000,000 bales of cotton be purchased and withheld from the market, thus interfering with the normal functioning of the great law of supply and demand, which is the very heart of private business. More than that, he urges "a reduction of about one-third in the [cotton] acreage in the coming year." The virus has, however, affected him even more deeply than this. We find him urg- ing the lowering of all the freight rates of all the railroads for the benefit of all the farmers, demanding further con- solidation of the railroads, and, most sinister of all, praising the Government Inland Waterways Corporation under which the government operates boats on 2,500 miles of navigable streams, a violent government plunge into private business. At point after point he wishes to put the government into private business; he wants to broaden and strengthen fed- eral credit agencies which compete with private banks; he wishes to throw open more public lands for grazing in competition with privately owned lands; he calls for the development of those cooperative associations which some of our leading business men declare to be a step toward com- munistic marketing; he urges a legislative interference with the private bituminous coal industry by Congress in that lie asks for the passage of legislation to enable him to interfere in any struggle between employers and employees, and in time of trouble to distribute coal and to fix the price of coal for the consumer. Next, he insists that the govern- ment rigidly supervise and control the private radio business by a radio board and the Department of Commerce. Nor are these urgings that the government compete with private enterprise to be offset by the declaration that he is "in favor of reducing rather than expanding govern- ment bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people." When he declares the next moment for a stricter enforcement of the prohibition amendment, advocates the extension of the Mississippi River transporta- tion system, and refrains from urging the immediate trans- fer of our government-owned merchant marine to private hands we can readily see that unconsciously he has yielded to subtle influences which, as the Daughters of the Revolu- tion and the American Legion so well know, strike directly at our fundamental liberties. What will these patriots do about it? We tremble as we await their decision. Claude Monet, 1840-1926 THE death of Claude Monet is in a sense the death of impressionism itself. The thousands of impressionist pictures that are being turned out now, and that are likely to be turned out for generations to come, are at best the work of epigoni, at worst the result of a lifeless formula with slight relation to the life of our time. The impressionists were a typical product of their experi- mental, individualist epoch. Nineteenth-century France, oscillating between revolution and reaction, republic and empire, civil and foreign war, witnessed a parallel oscilla- tion in its cultural life. In art the classic and romantic, the realist, naturalist, and impressionist schools followed in rapid succession, each in its turn envisaging new aims, adopting new methods, accomplishing new triumphs, and each contributing its mite to the body of aesthetic riches which placed nineteenth-century France in the forefront of Europe. Other schools may have exercised a wider influ- ence than impressionism; few have provoked more acrimo- nious controversy. Impressionist exhibitions were signals to battle in which every statute in the code of literary etiquette was violated. But the ferocious onslaughts of its enemies were more than matched by the passionate defense of its friends, Duret, Huysmans, Zola, Mirbeau, Mauclair, who in the end forced the recognition and acceptance of the new doctrine. Of this movement Monet was the most consistent protagonist. It was one of his own canvases ex- hibited in 1874 which gave the name to the movement; and since the age of sixteen, when Monet exhibited for the first time, and for almost seventy years thereafter, his work and person illustrated the halting beginning, the gradual de- velopment, and the culminating perfection of the entire impressionist school. Impressionism sought to grip and stay the momentary impressions of things, men, and events, to render concrete and permanent the fleeting, changing aspects that colored and characterized the life of the nineteenth century. "Tout

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656 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 est a peindre." Crooked alleys and spacious boulevards, rickety shanties and magnificent cathedrals, the race track, the bar room, the dance hall — all the variegated modernity, crossed at certain points by traces of the medieval and ancient epochs, entered the impressionist's angle of vision. Monet himself painted still-lifes, genre pictures, portraits, but it was light playing on field, sky, and water which formed the true subject of his most characteristic pictures. commonly accepted practice among artists to divide the march of seasons and the passage of hours into summer, winter, spring, and fall, and morning, evening, day, and night, is arbitrary and artificial. There are numberless gradations within these divisions; every hour of the day is different from every other hour of the same day. The world is to the impressionist a stream of unique sense-impressions seen once and never to be repeated. Accordingly, Monet painted his haystacks, water lilies, poplars, cathedrals. The new aims which the impressionists had set them- selves required a revision of old methods. While some infiu- may be traced in part to .Japanese art, and to Con- stable and Delacroix, more important still were the scientific discoveries of Chevreul and Rood. Color was raised to a higher pitch and greater variety by concentrating light upon it. A more vigorous brushwork was practiced and the technique of pointiUisme was developed, in which spec- tral colors were use 1 without being mixed on the palette but placed in small dots and in complementary juxtaposition on canvas, where, seen from a certain distance, they blend, giving the desired hue with great brilliance. Even hadows were made aglow with color and vibration. His eyesight failing and his general health weakened, Monet passed his last years at Giverny. He had lived long enough to see the triumph of the principles for which he fought. Impressionism, which began as a rebellion against the academy, ironically enough was later sanctified in aca- demic circles and even used as a club against the newer tendencies. It is gratifying, however, to know thai Monet himself was more tolerant toward thee newer tendencies; and, remembering perhaps his own early struggles, he had even words of praise for their "esprit de bataille et do vi r e." Friar Bacon AT a memorial meeting in honor of the late Professor Newbolt of the University of Pennsylvania two mem- bers of the Department of Chemistry at that institution announced the performance of an odd experiment. Working upon a hitherto unknown formula recorded in cipher by Roger Bacon, they succeeded in producing a certain salt of copper, and, though Die cumbersome formula is useless, suit of the experiment is to vindicate Professor New- bolt's reading of a strange manuscript and to remind the public again of one of the most remarkable adventures of modern paleography. About fourteen years ago a well-known dealer brought to this country a fascinating vellum volume of which the documentary history could not be traced farther back than 1665, but which appeared to be an original production of )• Bacon. Adorned with various drawings of cell de- ment and other microscopic details of plant structure, and having the superficial appearance of a treatise on alchemy, it was eagerly scanned by scholars on account of the half-historical, half-legendary position of its author as a man centuries in advance of the scientific knowledge of his contemporaries and possessed of secrets not known to others until they were rediscovered centuries later. The text of the work was mere gibberish, but, since Bacon was reputed to have concealed much of his knowledge rather than increase an already dangerous reputation as a magi- cian, a cipher was suspected. Various experts failed, how- ever, to make anything out of it until Mr. Newbolt announced before a meeting of the American Philosophical Society in 1921 that he had found the key. Under a lens each letter was seen to be composed of a number of separate strokes, and these strokes were the symbols used in a known system of Creek shorthand. Pursuing this discovery Mr. Newbolt was able to decipher considerable portions of the text and, to his amazement, brought to light records of historical events, astrological observations, and bits of philo- sophical and scientific theory which had doubtless been securely locked there since Bacon died late in the thirteenth century. In the opinion of some, the manuscript demon- strated his knowledge of the compound microscope, and certainly he had observed certain details of living organisms not again noted for four hundred years, until the days of Leeuwenhoek and Hamm. Unfortunately, however, the cipher was not completely unambiguous. It seemed to allow considerable latitude for the exercise of ingenuity in inter- pretation, and there were some, not wholly convinced, who argued that perhaps Mr. Newbolt, though perfectly sincere, was reading into the mysterious symbols the contents of his own unconscious mind, so that he died without having won entire acceptance for his reading. Now, however, the experiment at Pennsylvania seems to have applied the best possible sort of objective test, and the result is both to vindicate Mr. Newbolt and to add sup- port to the long-enduring legend of Friar Bacon. Not only will it awaken the keenest interest of all serious medieval- ists and doubtless stimulate someone to complete Mr. New- bolt's translation but it will come as a comfort also to those of romantic disposition whom it pleases to see pic- turesque legends maintained. Nor does the support come any too soon, for the fame of the friar has been sadly dimmed of late. In the days of Shakespeare every street urchin had heard of the wonderful brazen head which he was supposed to have made speak and many had seen him appear as a sort of Faustus upon the contemporary stage; today not everybody can distinguish him very clearly from "the author of Shakespeare's plays" and his legend has not escaped the destructive criticism of scholars. In his monumental "History of Magic and Experimental Science During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era" Lynn Thorndike not only questions the old story of his persecution by the church but attempts as well to prune of its extravagances the legend of his almost superhuman wis- dom, stoutly maintaining that Bacon was more conspicu- ously a man of his age than one who transcended it. Now, however, the remarkable cipher throws a new glamor about his name: he was engaged in making actual, detailed, scientific observations, and for some reason, real or fanci- ful, he did think it necessary to record his thoughts in a laboriously indirect fashion. For once then, minute inves- tigation comes to the rescue of romance, and we are at liberty again to fancy the friar, solitary in the cold cell of his cloister, penetrating secrets which were to be his alone for centuries, one more example of A mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 657 On reading the first batch of home newspapers after an absence of three weeks in Europe

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658 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 Doheny — A Portrait in Oil By RAYMOND CLAPPER CONSOLED by the presence of his family and his staff of high-priced lawyers. E. L. Doheny sits in criminal court at Washington bearing with the patient countenance of misjudged virtue the insinuations of government prose- cutors who charge that he gave a Cabinet officer $100,000 t naval oil reserves worth $100,000,000. This florid little man is smiling in such a friendly way that we feel unkind even to suspect him. We listen to his able counsel and almost believe that the republic is an ingrate to try this man for criminal conspiracy. For Mr. Doheny, it seems, is the unfortunate victim of a malady somewhat like that of the lamented Midas. Everything he touches turns to oil. He can't help it. In the early seventies he started, penniless, south from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in charge of a bunch of shave-tail mules. For every one of those mules he finally brought back a fine large oil company paying enough dividends to support for the time being most of the good lawyers in Washington, D. C. He prospected for gold and silver in New Mexico, discovered the Los Angeles and other Cali- fornia oil fields, went into Mexico and discovered the Tam- pico fields, and finally pried open the great Elk Hills naval oil reserve in California. This last deal, he said, should return him $100,000,000, and his earlier ventures also were not without profit. Mr. Doheny took the witness stand and told pai t of this story. He told how he had been the town surveyor in Atchison, Kansas; horse-trader in Oklahoma, soldier in the Indian wars, school-teacher, law student, miner, oil pros- pector, making fortunes and losing them, finally coming out as the largest property holder in Mexico, many times a mil- lionaire. Young members on the jury had read such stories in dime thrillers. Here was a worthy model for Horatio Alger in the flesh. Riches have never kept him from Doing Good. Some- times one feels, listening to his able counsel, that he was a dealer in good deeds rather than oil. He was president of the (very) Practical Patriots' League of Los Angeles. His friend President Obregon in Mexico needed money. Mr. Doheny is glad to oblige with a $10,000,000 loan. His friend in Washington needs money. "Here, Ned, put this $100,000 in the brown satchel and take it down to Albert." His country needs help. The Japs are coming to attack us. The armament conference won't save us. The navy must have oil tanks at Hawaii. "I'll save the country from the Japs. I'll build you some tanks without one dollar of profit if it takes every cent I've got." Some have suspected that he went into Mexico to make money. It is true that he did buy up 280,000 acres near Tampico for slightly more than $1 an acre from the descendant of a Spanish family which had held the land since the sixteenth century. This man had no idea his land was being bought as one of the world's richest oil fields. But as Doheny said, "years later, he was still my warm friend and never expressed any regret that he had parted with the property which afterwards proved to be more valuable than he supposed it to be." The original discoverers of this wonderful oil region were Americans [Mr. Doheny said in a letter to Mark L. Requa, United States Fuel Oil Administrator, March 15, 1918]. Their proposed efforts in Mexico were welcomed by the government of that republic, which desired to stimulate new industries therein; by the railroad company near whose line the first development was undertaken and which hoped to and did benefit by the development of a superior locomo- tive fuel supply at .r>0 per cent of the cost of that which theretofore had been imported for its use; by the mer- chants of Tampico and vicinity whose business promised to be enhanced by activities thus initiated; by landowners of the region about Tampico who anticipated wider mar- kets for their products and better prices for lands which might be supposed to contain petroleum. Even the laborers, known as peons, who could not then realize the advantage which might accrue to them, have since shown their ap- preciation and gratitude, by kindly feelings and helpful actions, for the treatment which these Americans accorded to them and which became possible only through the successful carrying on of the plans of these prospectors. In its earlier years this was a somewhat discouraging venture. Nearly $3,000,000 was spent before any substan- tial revenue developed. Many stockholders dropped out. Doheny picked up their holdings. From a one-eighth owner, he became the holder of 40 per cent of the stock. Com- panies in which he is interested control 1,500,000 acres in the Tampico district, operate thirty-one tank vessels and hire many more, own 1,700 tank cars and 600 miles of pipe line. The Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Com- pany, which got the Elk Hills naval oil lease, had a net operating income in 1925 of $32,000,000 after depletion al- lowances were taken out. Its assets are about $189,000,000. Although control of this gigantic holding company has passed into the hands of the Standard Oil of Indiana since the naval oil leases were made in 1922, Doheny retains a large interest in it, and in some twenty or more other oil and related concerns. When there is anything to be done, Doheny lets nothing stand in his way. Toward the end of the Wilson Adminis- tration when he was in difficulty in Mexico, he hired Demo- cratic job-holders as fast as they would come to him. McAdoo drew $250,000 in salaries from Doheny for pressing his oil claims in Mexico. Before Franklin K. Lane resigned as Wilson's Secretary of Interior, Doheny arranged to take him on his pay roll. He also took Lane's bright young ecretary, J. J. Cotter. Former Attorney General Gregory was hired jointly by Doheny and other oil interests to handle claims for them. Possibly the initiative has not always been on the side of Doheny. It was Fall who wanted the $100,000. Doheny has many times found hard-up politicians only too eager to take his money. Probably his code of political ethics has suffered considerably from associations. Perhaps he played the game according to the only rules he knew — rules already set when he came on the scene looking for a stake. And he had the courage to take the witness stand and defend that code against cross-examination by one of the ablest lawyers in the country. This is the man who told the Senate committee: "I am just an ordinary, old-time, impulsive, irresponsible, im- provident sort of a prospector." Just about as improvident as Calvin Coolidge.

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation G59 An Air Law for America By M. W. ROYSE THE long arm of the law has reached up at last into air- space. With the passage of the Air Commerce Act the last "free domain" may be said to have passed out of exist- ence, over the protests of those who urged the old States' rights theory to prove that each State owned its airspace with no room for federal meddling, and of those who dra- matically pleaded for one natural medium unlimited by man- made law. European airmen have never stopped wondering at our backwardness in aviation. America, with its long distances, its comparatively few railroads and great resources should be leading the world in air transportation. As it was, until this year, we could not credit ourselves with even one com- mercial air-transportation line. Aviation reports broadcast the fact that thousands of Americans take air passage each year but these passengers are merely up for a joy-hop and not travelers going from one place to another. There is no actual air traffic. Europe, on the other hand, in spite of its miniature distances and criss-crossing railroads, its alleged old-world conservatism and post-war economic troubles, has developed a complete air-transportation system. So com- plete has this air development been that practically every large city in Europe has air connections with others. To- day Europe can be crossed in one-fourth the fastest train time at only twice the railroad rates. Air development in America was difficult as long as our government remained aloof, withholding from aviation even the ordinary licensing and inspection aid given shipping and the railroads. Pilots without licenses flew airplanes which had never been inspected, resulting in hundreds of crashes. Insurance rates mounted skywards and financial circles re- fused to support the industry. The public came to regard aviation as a dangerous sport and the airplane as a stunt machine whose chief function was to thrill people at fairs. Few Americans today think of aviation as an everyday means of transportation. "Free air" proved itself a disastrous luxury for Amer- ican commercial aviation. Government regulation, if car- ried out with some degree of efficiency, could have prevented many of the 508 crashes of the past three years. These crashes were caused by unairworthy machines, errors in piloting, lack of terminals, routes, and weather data. Gov- ernment reports attribute 91 per cent of all the accidents to the itinerant fliers who operate without a fixed base, "through inexperience and the use of cheap and unsafe equipment." Until very recently there were no air routes, licenses, and inspections, no weather reports for airmen, no government terminals except military fields, although there were 124 aerial companies already in existence with 162 private airports located throughout the country, with some 1,100 airplanes in operation. Recently a plane crashed near Garden City, killing its passenger. Upon investigation it was found that its pilot was not a licensed airman. His main occupation in life was selling cigars and sandwiches near the flying field. Between hours he had taken a few lessons in flying, later buying a machine and embarking in the passenger-carrying business. This pilot legally was in- nocent, as no license or inspection regulations existed and he had therefore broken no law in risking the lives of his passengers. The past six years have seen hundreds of such cases. To the average person any pilot clad in helmet and goggle is sufficient assurance of a safe flight. Rarely is a pilot asked for his certificate of competency, or for an in- spection card showing his plane to be airworthy. Private air schools of one sort or another are still graduating pilots with a bare four hours' training. Until the air law goes into effect these "graduate" pilots will be touring the coun- try, risking the necks of thousands of passengers. It is popularly thought that the past six years have served their purpose as the pioneering stage of commercial aviation in America. What really happened was a mush- room growth of small dealers who sold war-stock airplanes to ex-service pilots who in turn barnstormed the countryside as "gipsies," stunting at fairs and in general giving people the thrills of a flight. Occasional crashes helped spread the popular notion that aviation was a dangerous sport fit only for the young and bold. Gipsy flying made experienced air- men out of pilots, but it also gave the circus stamp to com- mercial aviation. Contrast this "pioneering" with the six years' experience of European air lines, operating under the control of licensed pilots on regular schedule time and com- peting with rail and water transportation. Our new air law is at least a good start. It provides for a Bureau of Civil Aeronautics in the Department of Commerce. This bureau, under an Assistant Secretary for Air, has charge of federal inspection of aircraft, crews, and airdromes and the establishment and enforcement of air navigation rules. It will also furnish aids to air navigation by approving and charting air routes, establishing air light- houses and signal stations, furnishing suitable weather re- ports, and providing at the government fields, in cases of emergency, supplies and repairs at their fair market value. It is to be hoped that there will be no rigid restrictions tending to stifle new experiments. The Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air is given plenty of latitude for real action. There is, of course, a danger that he may create inspection bureaus which, as they did in England, may interfere with scientific research by hemming in experi- menters with rigid bureaucratic regulations and over-strict artificial standards. This danger is more than apparent, and has already appeared in the preliminary draft of a proposed code. Last fall an Englishman, after building a light-motor airplane to be sold at cheap popular price, found that the inspection officials had altered his design so much as to make his machine an expensive regulation airplane. Most of the light parts in this design had been made heavier. These changes called for a larger motor which in turn greatly increased the price and destroyed all the commercial value possessed by the original design. If wisely executed our new air law will in no way hamper experimentation. Special provision is made for trials giving the individual complete freedom to test and fly new inventions no matter how freakish they are so long as they do not endanger the public safety. No machine, however, will be permitted to carry passengers unless it has been inspected and licensed as a public carrier. European air laws carefully protect the public against the unproved freak machine, but they in no way prohibit the building and testing of such experimental

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660 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 freaks, from helicopters to tailless and wingless machines. Safe air travel will be the primary aim of the new Air Board. Public confidence in air travel must be created. To accomplish this, air accidents must be decreased to a per- centage lower even than railroad casualties. In Germany a rigid system of inspection and licensing has helped cut acci- dents to a negligible ratio. The following experts' list of "six requisites for safe flying" will serve as a basis for the new air regulations : 1. A machine, sound aerodynamically and structurally. 2. A reliable engine of sufficient power. o. A competent, conservative pilot and navigator. 4. Airports and emergency landing fields, sufficiently close together to insure gliding to safety. 5. Nation-wide weather forecast, specialized and adapted to the need of fliers. 6. Adequate charts of air routes. To make air travel safe much more is needed than regula- tions. There must be well-equipped airways. A competent air line between New York and Chicago must have emer- gency fields every fifty miles for forced landings, and the airports must be large enough, and must be properly drained and maintained, all of which involves a high outlay of capital. In Europe no private company has been able to do this. European commercial aviation, after a seven years' tryout, seems to fall for the present into that category of industries which cannot exist without direct government aid. American aviation men resent this. They declare that no government help is wanted or needed. But this hardly tallies with the results of the first six months' operation of our first American airline or with European experience. Until airplanes can be built and operated at reduced costs with greater carrying capacity, less fuel consumption, with more reliable power and more certain navigation instru- ments, in other words, until air transportation is made safer and cheaper the independent air line will find itself hard pressed making ends meet. Not an airline in all Europe, notwithstanding the great air development, is making profits. The most efficient airlines, such as the Dutch KLM, bring in but 60 per cent of the operating costs. East spring the g eatest air transportation system in the world, the Junkers concern, with ramifications extending into Asia, went bankrupt with a loss to the German Government of over $5,000,000. The total receipts of the average line oper- ating in Europe is about 50 per cent of the cost of opera- tion. The various governments by means of direct cash sub- sidies supply the deficit. A privately owned air line, operating here or abroad, has three means of support open to it. It can receive direct cash subsidies from the government on the basis of forming a vital arm of the national defense. Secondly, a private line can appeal to municipalities, local governments, and civic bodies on patriotic grounds and as a public utility. The German lines in this way have persuaded many municipali- ties and most of the local states to buy large blocks of their shares. Airdromes and free local publicity are also obtained in this way. Thirdly, an air line can operate independently as a private concern similar to any other private business, with only mail contracts to bolster up its income. For America the first two methods, direct national subsidies and indirect state or municipal subsidies, may be dismissed at once as opposed to American tradition. Only the third method is open here to airmen, and on this basis several air lines are now in operation, with mail contracts as the only guaranty of traffic. Following the European practice, chambers of commerce and other local organizations were appealed to for help. Cities along the air route responded by promising to send a minimum amount of mail via the air. It is still far too early to judge, but one air line has already changed ownership, and the largest air line operat- ing through the Middle West is finding its pioneering ex- tremely costly. Another plan — well known in Europe and not untried here — has been proposed as the practical solution for Amer- ican commercial aviation. It is federal ownership and oper- ation of several main trunk lines. This would involve no radical step, as it should be recalled that our federal air- mail service has been in operation for eight years, during which time it has established a world record in efficiency. In the fiscal year ended last July the federal air-mail service covered about 2.5 million miles, nearly half of which were flown at night. Schedules were maintained to a degree not far below that of many railroads, 93.73 per cent of the scheduled trips being completed on the entire system with even a better performance record of 94.22 per cent for the New York-Chicago night service. Our air-mail service is pointed to everywhere abroad as the only contribution we have thus far made to air transpor- tation. Only the government could have undertaken and car- ried through so enormous an undertaking as the coast-to- coast trunk line, with its emergency fields, lights, stations, weather-reporting system, and night-flying equipment. The transcontinental route from New York to San Francisco alone includes eighteen regular, fully equipped air stations and ninety-two intermediate landing fields. Operation costs for the federal air mail last year amounted to $2,782,422. Cost of operation always exceeded its revenues, but the annual deficit had steadily been decreased. Had the gov- ernment retained its air-mail service and simply widened its service to include passengers we would have had gov- ernment-owned-and-operated air lines. The experiment would have been interesting. Personnel and equipment, airdromes, emergency fields, signal service, and a vast tech- nical bureau were already on hand. The service was noted for its efficiency. Not a breath of scandal touched its repu- tation. It was altogether an ideal setting for the inaugura- tion of government air-transportation lines. The govern- ment, however, has taken the opposite direction. Fourteen private lines are already carrying mail. By next summer our entire air-mail service will be under private control and operation. It is only partly true that commercial aviation, as some critics would have it, is only another weapon in disguise, to be kept running in peace time and used in war. The system of air lines in Europe no doubt plays a major role in the plans for national defense, and it is well known that the real object of the foreign air subsidies is military air power, but the ultimate value of aircraft lies in its purely civil function as a great reducer of time and distance. Aerial transportation is not a paying proposition now, but the fact remains that in the airplane we have a means of reducing our present traveling time by 400 per cent, with unlimited possibilities for further development. The new air law, if enforced by wise regulations, will at least give American airmen a fair chance — their first chance — at commercial aviation. The odds for the present are against them, judg- ing by European standards, but it is not unlikely that American methods may show Europe how to turn an air- transportation line into a profitable business.

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 661 The Unimpeachable Gift VIKING BOOKS for more than a season 3 discoveries from 3 countries POWER by Lion Feuchtwanger From Germany comes "one of the great romances of the twentieth century." — The Literary Review. $2.50. THE TWO SISTERS by H. E. Bates From England comes this novel of youth by a twenty-one year old author — the discovery of Edward Garnett, dis- coverer of Conrad, Galsworthy and W. H. Hudson. $2.00. THE TIME OF MAN by Elizabeth Madox Roberts In America Elizabeth Madox Roberts "steps with her first novel to the front rank of American writers." A Book- of-the-Month Club Selection. 47th Thousand. $2.50. MOHAMMED by R. F. Dibble The story of the prophet, politician, lover, warrior and man. Carl Van Doren in The Nation says: "This gorgeous story Mr. Dibble tells robustly and shrewdly." $3.00. GAUTIER by John Carbcr Palache An informative and entertaining volume on Gautier, Balzac, Baudelaire, and other of Gautier's circle, combining biogra- phy, anecdote and criticism. Illustrated. $3.00. The SECOND BOOK of NEGRO SPIRITUALS Carl Van Vechten in The Herald Tribune: "I predict that this new collection will be just as popular as the first, and deservedly so." With 61 songs and an introduction. $3.50. 30 Irving Place THE VIKING PRESS New York City ARETINO Translated by PUTNAM IN TWO VOLUMES PRICE $17.50 SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY BROKEN NECKS by BEN HECHT THROBBING HUMAN STORIES PRICE $2.50 PASCAL COVICI ■ Publisher - CHICAGO THE MODERN LIBRARY REVIVES ANDREAS LATZKO'S MEN IN WAR A BOLD, BLAZING BOOK, FROWNED ON IN 1917 BY A GOVERNMENT THAT WAS BUSY LADLING SENTI- MENTAL SLOP ABOUT THE WAR TO THE PUBLIC, NOW OFFERED AGAIN COM- PLETE AND UNEXPURGATED OTHER RECENT ADDITIONS JAMBS JOYCE S DUBLINERS LUDWIG LEWISOHN'S UP STREAM GEORGE GISSING S NEW GRUB STREET DANIEL DEFOE'S MOLL FLANDERS 95 CENTS A COPY AT ALL BOOKSTORES Send for Catalogue of the 125 Titles MODERN LIBRARY, Inc., 71 West 45th Street NEW YORK When writing to advertisers ph:asc mention The Nation

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The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 "The most beautiful of all the Lincoln biographies." Chicago Tribune. Carl Sandburg's ABRAHAM LINCOLN Fifth Printing 105 Illustrations I wo I ol unies boxed, $10.00 Harcourt, Brace and Company 3S3 Madison Avenue, New York "A fresh Lincoln con- tribution is an event, though none ha s ever turned out so lug an event, so distin- guished and unusual, as Carl Sandburg's." tl>A M. Tahhki.i . "Will become a per- manent part. of American literature." .V. )'. rimes "Good for a life- time." Saturday Re "A masterpiece . . . a glowingly beautiful piece of prose." The Bookman Christopher Robin Plays Again! : ^ V/INN lE'TH^fboH ) /A'A'/AI'LNE /< " -SHEPARD ^V CTHIS PHENOMENAL 500K bq the Author of "IDhen We IDere Very l]oung*" LEAD1NQ -FICTION AND NONACTION SALES E. P: Dutton :& Co. The Monumental Masterpiece whit f LOVE - LIFI by Will "UNDOUBTEDLY a great work. Here Lucretius, Spinoza, Goethe, Schopenha ALBERT & CHARLES BONI, TURGENE\i The Man, His Art and His Ag by Avrahm Yarmolinsky The only biography in any language c I the strange, mystic, turbulent Russ( \ Tator genius. An analytical soul stud in the modern fashion, a dramatic huma history. Dr. Yarmolinsky has recreate the glamor and intellectual passion of a glittering and elt, gant literary age. lie shows us the development of thl creative mind, going blindly forward to its goal, yet urget always by an immitigable and predestined power III us $4.0( index. Royal octavo, black, gold and green. THE NEGRO In American Life by Jerome Dowd A full and unbiased history of the Negro race in this country. What is the future of the Negro? Segregation? Or emigration ? Or a gradual infusion into the composite American race of the future? Jerome Dowd has given 25 .years to a study of this tre- mendous problem. He has produced a book' intellectually stimulating to the general reader, invaluable as an authority to the sociologist. Royal octavo, 610 pages, index, brown, black and red. <£C r\c\ THE CENTURY CO., Publishers of Endurin* Books ^ ' 7%, DARK DAWN DODD AEAD By MARTI Author q Another dramatic st- ZONA GALE in N. Y. Hei invention, living beings ant sorbing reading." JOHN COWPER POWYS balancing remarkable and other and for adding to rf weird, eerie, and uncanny DOROTHY SCARBOROUC 'Shows conclusively that r author ... an achievement $2.00 DODD, MEAD & CO., When ivriting to advertisers please mention The Nation

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 663 (cfoable Qift tver 150,000 copies in Germany N NATURE jlsche >ver whose composition the spirits of Plato, i\ rwin must have presided." — The Nation. Two volumes, boxed, $10. OO 66 Fifth Avenue, New York Sherwood Anderson imerica's most dis- ictive novelist. One the most original velists ever heard . He seems to de- 'e from no one and have no relation any contempo- ry." — H. L. Menc- n in Vanity Fair. TAR A Midwest Childhood by SHERWOOD ANDERSON "When one decides, as any reason- able person must decide, that so far as writers of fiction under fifty years of age are concerned the United States makes an immensely better showing than England, Sherwood Anderson undoubtedly plays a great part in that calculation." — Rebecca West, N. Y. Herald Tribune. "Sufficient in itself to vindicate his uniqueness of being and his impor- tance as a commentator on Ameri- can life. TAR is all the lonely boys in small Middle-West towns during the last half of the nineteenth cen- tury."—Herbert S. Gorman, N. Y. Times Book Review. 2nd Edition. Large 12mo. $3.00. Limited auto- graphed edition, 325 copies, $10.00. —GOOD BOOKS — BONI AND LIVERIGHT, N. Y. >STBNSO Geese" thern Minnesota. Ik says: ing. "It has vitality. Further it is ab- has an unusual gift for acters against one an- • melodrama something rns the effect." Saturday Review says: woman is no one-book ion and power." i Ave., NEW YORK DODD AVEAJD "Belongs to all time" FORTY IMMORTALS by BENJAMIN DeCASSERES The Story of the World's Great Civilizers Invigorating, dazzling, brilliant, creative essays on the foremost writers of modern times, including Nietzsche, Whitman, Maeter- linck, Blake, Strindberg, Hugo, Ibsen, France, Stendhal, Flaubert, Hardy, Cabell, D'Annunzio, de Gourmont, Saltus and others. What "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant is to the history of thinking, "Forty Immortals" is to the history of fine writing. NO American critic has the background of Benjamin UeCasseres; no other American writer is as intimately acquainted personally with the inner workings of the minds of the world's greatest litterateurs. Maurice Maeterlinck says: "There is more knowledge and wisdom in one page of lienjamin DeCasseres' critical writing than an ordinary human being can digest in a lifetime." //. L. Mencken writes: "Unhackneyed, brilliant . . ." New York Times declares: "Benjamin DeCasseres in 'Forty Immortals' comes nearer to achieving the purpose of constructive criticism than anybody else we can recall to mind." $3.50 at all bookstores. Seven <^rts PUBLISHING COMPANY 160 Fifth Avenue, New York ENJAMIN FRANKLIN THE FIRST CIVILIZED AMERICAN By Phillips Russell "One of the greatest biographies of our time." [N. Y. Eve. Post] "A great kick is given to history by defablyizing Franklin." [Richmond News Dispatch] "The book is as lively and charming as the man it depicts." [Chicago Daily News] "The most brilliant biography of the year." [Philadelphia Record] THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR FIVE DOLLARS At All Bookstores or from the Publishers - BRENTANO'S - New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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664 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 These Modern Women The Peacock's Tail ANONYMOUS MOTHER aspired to have a home of her own free of mortgages, children who would grow up and settle mar her, each in a home free of mortgages; and a solid place in the respect of the New England rural community where her ancestors felled primeval forests and slaughtered wolf -packs. This ambition could have been realized almost without effort in the natural course of things had she not, ironically, wished also for a "smart" husband. This yearning was the colored thread in the fabric of her make-up. She waited until her late twenties for Prince Charming, support- ing herself by school-teaching. An oddity of sex-selection: this little brown hen of a woman, with pink cheeks and dark pecking modestly away, pretending to look only at the wheat-grains before her, and watching all the while for the multi-color of a peacock's tail. icks and exciting men are hard to find in the steril i untry oi northern Vermont; but mother with a hard eye rejected the well-to-do and the dumb. Her repu- i as a pedagogue and disciplinarian waxed as she marked time and looked through schoolhouse windows for m of a poet's hair. Life played a story-book trick. Into the drab neighbor- where she pounded the three R's into slow-witted heads came a romantic troubadour, the like of whom had illuminated the place before or will again, lie was a young man of twenty-one who was going through the country admiring the scenery, reading Keats under trees, and teaching neighborhood "singing schools" by night to pay his way. Photographs taken at the time show a tall, beautiful youth, with hair thrown back from an intellectual brow, a sensitive face, and eyes burning with — let us say genius, for so it seemed to mother. They were dark-blue . expressive, glowing. Mother knew what she wanted and lost no time in annexing it. Alas, for the home free of mortgages, the building of a substantial family clan. These essentials in her picture of the good life she was never to have. She underwrote her genius husband while he tilted at windmills. He had to be financed through bar examinations, through the stage of getting a professional foothold. Clients were few and were largely under-dogs, for father had a poet's passion for the issed and a poet's dislike of being bored. He wrote fiery pamphlets protesting against injustice in various forms — for the printing of which mother paid. Mother is rounding out this year a solid half century of school-teaching. Her six children were born prudently in vacation time. I came in the Christmas holidays, the first, child of an incongruous and bitterly unhappy marriage. I was physically backward and mentally precocious. "At the age of twelve months you were a fat, clumsy baby without a tooth, and you looked ai your toys and poked them instead of playing with them. You would never build houses with blocks, but you began learning the alphabet from them when you were a year old. You would hold up blocks and ask questions about the pictures and letters. By the age of seventeen months you knew the alphabet, but you weren't so good at walking. You tumbled and got many bumps." So wrote mother when I asked her for details. Mother wrote, too, that I was a sickly child, that my life, in its first few months, was despaired of. I was much dandled and hovered over. My father walked the floor with me night after night. Was this spoiling the beginning of the yeasty ego, the Luciferian pride which makes me hanker for a superman? I want a man like my father! Not like father as he actually was, but like father as he seemed in the first eight or ten years of my life. This is a large order. No living person can give me the excitement I got at eight years old when father took me on his knee and in vivid Anglo-Saxon words "popularized" for me the theories of Darwin. He was a walking Book of Knowledge. He was delightful; he loved me, he was my slave. I want a man like that. And he'd better not fall down, as father did to my undying grief and disillusion, in prac- tical details of living which any moron manages with ease. He must not play the violin while the upper field is waiting to be plowed. The myth of this man, the urge to find him, has been at once my greatest spur to adventure and achievement and a pest of the first magnitude. His actual non-existence is chronically annoying; but that doesn't prevent my seeking. It pushed me out of my backwoods environment; it sent me traveling, experimenting, studying. It prodded me until I could earn my living. It put me into strikes, an amateur Joan of Arc. It projected me into the Middle West in the campaign which gave Wilson his chance to keep us out of war; it has pinned my hopes on Utopias of all kinds. Whenever I find my energies flowing out in a large and embattled way I can, in five minutes of reflection, discover trails which twist and tangle, cross and recross, join at last, and lead back to a tall man with dark-blue, animated eyes, sitting in a smoke-browned New England kitchen, talking passionately, talking, talking. . . . My sister, a year and a half younger, did not share my adoration of father. She found him, on the contrary, an unendurable bore. She ran away from the conversation that charmed me. She, too, was a precocious child — but her precocity differed from mine. She had no curious hunger for the alphabet, no special affinity for the printed page. Put she could run swiftly on sure feet at the age of nine months, and she used with skill the blocks and toys which I had only looked at meditatively. When we were old enough to help about the house, my cakes burned and my jelly would not "jell"; for me the cows refused to yield their milk, and horses, feeling my hands upon the reins, ignored me. But my sister excelled at housekeeping and managing the farm animals. She loved to drive the har- rows and horse-rakes. She was famous for fast running and high climbing. But with all her daring and capacity for man's work she is not a feminist. She is a well-adjusted wife and mother, and a leader in Farm Bureau and rural- school activities. There is not an impractical fiber in her

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation (>5 make-up. No trace of father is visible in the silent, prudent, capable man she chose for a husband. Is the modern woman conditioned by what the Freudians call a "father complex"? Do her emotions search for satisfactions that never existed and thus lose their relation to biological processes? Perhaps this is true, and yet — There was mother, a stodgy, quiet woman, not an intel- lectual, and herself without a scintillating father; mother and her one aberrant quality: a desire for a colorful mate, a disgust with all dull men. Physically I am almost a replica of mother. Yet I carry in my harassed inwards the conflicts of both my parents. I could, I think, write extraordinary literature — if I did not have to toil on bread-and-butter copy. That is like father. I have mother's liking for security and stability. I have been married ten years, satisfactorily as marriage goes, to a man a trifle like father. He cares too much about amusing living to be a proper Rotarian and go-getter. Yet he does not measure up to the myth — no man could. How- ever, I have weathered my disappointment; I stand off and look at the situation from the outside, laugh at it, manage it a bit. Only this saves my very agreeable husband from a horrid fate. I consider our marriage permanent. The realities of marriage have had a tendency to terminate my long quest. In making a tolerable life of sex and friendship, in earning my living, in fighting for the kind of work I want, emergen- cies have arisen in which it has been necessary to look at impedimenta critically and to modify feelings and habits of dubious worth. So a pioneer crossing a ford might be compelled to throw overboard grandfather's clock — might discover, too, as he watched its ancient form go bumping down the stream that he was glad to be rid of its bulk and its everlasting ticking. My common sense long ago convinced me that my search for a Prince Charming should no longer be conducted with a view to practical results. It is still true, however, that the same old dynamo furnishes the mo- tive power for my actions. As a little girl I worked for good report-cards to draw a friendly glint from father's eye. I would come home from Normal School in my teens and preen before him in my new learning. After childhood was over and I turned to the business of earning a living and finding a mate, there were years when I scarcely gave my father a thought. But as a young newspaper reporter 1 dogged the footsteps of intellectual men. I gave tactful publicity to learned professors (pro- viding they were tall), to handsome violinists, to a shrewd corporation lawyer who let me browse in his private library, to a railroad vice-president who poured forth copious lan- guage in answer to my questions. Long after it was clear to me that I was only bored by the organization of labor groups I kept on in order to enjoy the conversation and the approval of a certain liberal leader who reminded me of father. Somewhere I have read of a musical composer who worked best when assailed by the smell of rotten apples, a smell which no doubt evoked an emotional satisfaction of childhood. Before he began the day's work he filled the drawers of his desk with them. In some such way 1 try before beginning a piece of creative work to talk a bit with some man who is older and presumably wiser than I, whose mind sparkles and who improvises well as he talks. I am exacting in selecting these fathers. As long as I can believe in the overwhelming superiority of any one of them he casts a spell, and I can put through, after being with him, an enormous quantity of work. But as time goes on the number of such men tends to diminish. At thirty-odd it is hard to find a man who will respond to every question with a cascade of creative talk and who can toss unheard-of systems of philosophy through the air like a juggler's balls. With unfortunate celerity I catch Homer nodding and he is ruined. Often, when younger, I suffered poignant grief when a father toppled; but now I take such catastrophes with philosophy. I no longer work on movements. My energies are bent on achieving an income which will enable me to write realistic novels. Do I want to do good work for the joy of creative effort, for the satisfaction of putting my life across? I believe I do — yet dimly, as through a vapor, I see the future: my books written, and some very, very great father, Bernard Shaw, Einstein, goodness knows who, com- ing forward to speak to me kindly and blow off a shower of glittering intellectual sparks — for me, personally. [This is the fourth article in The Nation's series of anonymous personal records of well-known modern women. The next will appear in our issue of January 5.] The French Family Commits Murder By ROBERT DELL Paris, November 10 THERE have been few cases in the history of crime rais- ing so interesting a psychological problem as that of Mme Lefebvre, convicted at Douai on October 30 of the murder of her young daughter-in-law and condemned to death.* Here is a cold-blooded and premeditated murder committed without provocation by the highly respectable and respected wife of a wealthy citizen of Roubaix, de- voutly religious, professing and practicing the strictest code of morality, and, from the traditional point of view, an irreproachable if irascible wife and mother. * On December 12 President Doumergue commuted Mme sentence to life imprisonment. Lefebvre's Mme Lefebvre's history is that of any woman of her generation belonging to a "bien-pensante" family of the wealthy French bourgeoisie. She was educated in a con- vent and brought up under the restriction that French tradition imposes on a young girl. Never, one may be sure, did she read a book that was not "convenable pour la jeune fille" or fail in submissive obedience to her parents. Mar- ried at an early age to a husband chosen by her parents, after careful inquiries into the financial situation of his family, she remained true to the traditions in which she had been reared and followed them in bringing up her own family. The French family of tradition — happily the tradition is beginning to break down — is one of the most tyrannical

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666 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 institutions known to man. The affection of traditional French parents for their children is despotic and they ex- pect their children up to any age to remain under their con- trol. The French mother in particular — for in France the mother rules the household — expects her sons to be tied to her apron-strings as long as she lives and their wives, too, when the sons marry. Mme Lefebvre's two sons had been brought up in this tradition and were completely terrorized by their mother, whose will was their law. In the witness box during the trial Andre Lefebvre, the husband of the murdered girl, referred to his parents as "Papa" and "Mamma" as though he were a small child instead of a prosperous notary getting on toward forty. Mme Lefebvre seems never to have liked Andre's mar- riage with Mile Antoinette Mulle. She had consented to it, of course, or it would never have taken place, but not will- ingly. To begin with Mile Mulle's dot was only :$30,000 francs. Mme Lefebvre would have preferred her son to make a richer match. For she possessed to excess what in moderation has always been considered in France to be one of the qualities of a "bonne bourgeoise" — avarice; so much so that the fact was notorious in Roubaix and was the one flaw in her otherwise spotless reputation. Antoinette Mulle '• at first to accept Andre Lefebvre on account of his mother's avaricious and domineering character, but was persuaded by her brother to overcome her hesitation. Ac- cording to the evidence at the trial, she was fond of her husband after marriage, at any rate, and was evidently an attractive girl with a lovable character. Even the defense could find nothing to say against her. The short married life of this unhappy young woman was a martyrdom. Her mother-in-law's persecut on began two or three days after the young couple had started on their honeymoon. Mme Lefebvre wrote to her son com- plaining that Antoinette had shown a lack of respect by sending her a post card and demanding frequent letters. The honeymoon was to have lasted six weeks, but before the end of that time Mme Lefebvre ordered her son to return on the ground that he was neglecting his work and spend- ing too much money and said that, if his wife would not come back, he could leave her behind. She had insisted, by the way, that they should travel second-class and stay in the cheapest hotels. When the young couple were settled in their new home, Mme Lefebvre never left them in peace. She interfered in every detail of their lives and tried to exercise a minute control over their expenditures. It was a crime to spend a sou on a theater, to dance, or to order a new frock. But the greatest crime of all was that Antoinette consigned to the lumber-room an old suite of furniture in a dilapidated con- dition which Mme Lefebvre had given her for a wedding present, having no further use for it, in addition to a neck- lace of imitation pearls which she tried to pass oil' as real ones. Antoinette, who seems to have had a more inde- pendent character than her husband, tried to resist her mother-in-law's tyranny, but she appealed in vain to her husband to help her. The miserable creature was entirely under his mother's domination. The girl poured out her woes to her brother, who advised her to try to make the best of it and to be reconciled with her mother-in-law. A reconciliation was arranged, but on Mme Lefebvre's side it was not sincere. Her natural jealousy of the woman whom her son had married — which perhaps no mother entirely escapes — became bitter hatred, and the hatred was still more intensified when she learned that Antoinette was about to become a mother. "Never," she said to her son, "shall you have a child of that race." On the way back from a stay at Vichy Mme Lefebvre bought a revolver at St. Etienne. One day shortly after- ward Andre Lefebvre took his wife and mother for a drive in his car, at Mme Lefebvre's request. He drove himself and the two women were sitting together behind him. Mme Lefebvre asked him to take a certain lonely road known as Hie "Way of Solitude" and as they passed a shrine or chapel she had the car stopped while she went in to say her prayers. When they had started off again, she took the re- volver from her hand-bag and shot Antoinette dead by her side. Andre's characteristic exclamation was: "Oh, Mamma, what have you done? How will you ever be able to explain it?" And his mother triumphantly replied: "At last you are free!" The defense set up at the trial was the only possible one — that of insanity. As usual the doctors differed. But their difference was due to the fact that their points of view were different. The experts appointed by the court unanimously reported that Mme Lefebvre was not insane and was responsible for her actions. From the legal point of view they were undoubtedly right. Mme Lefebvre cer- tainly knew what she was about and was capable of being deterred by fear of punishment. It may safely be said that she would not have committed her crime had she not counted on the leniency of French juries, as well she might. Apart from the almost universal acquittal of wives that have murdered their husbands from jealousy and other pro- tagonists in crimen pa&sionnels, a Versailles jury not long ago acquitted a retired officer, also a defender of the tra- ditions of the French family with strict religious and moral principles, who had beaten his small son to death. On the other hand, Professor Maurice de Fleury and the other eminent pathologists called for the defense were also right from their point of view, which was psychological. But the psychological view of crime would produce a change in the treatment of all criminals, if it were adopted by the law. As the law stands Mme Lefebvre's acquittal on the ground of insanity — or abnormality — would have been monstrous. The most interesting question is how she came to con- vince herself, as she undoubtedly did, that she was justi- fied in executing the rebel against the sacred traditions of the French family and the lawful authority of mother-in- law. Anybody acquainted with the theories of Or. Freud will recognize how they fit in with this extraordinary case. In the Driftway Had man mastered the secret of flying a thousand years ago, there would be only a few languages in the world today, Sir Alan Cobham, famous British air pilgrim, who arrived recently on his first visit to America, told the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce last night at a dinner in his honor in the Waldorf-Astoria. By inference, he predicted that aerial transportation eventually will bring all people to the use of a universal tongue. "It is quite evident," he said, "that, in the main, lan- guages were formed by isolation and lack of communica- tion. Speedy transportation naturally means greater in- tercourse between the nations of the earth, and this in itself will do much to blend the general trend of thought." THE above paragraphs from the New York World indi- cate considerable misapprehension in the mind of Sir Alan, his reporter — or both. If, at the moment when Adam

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 667 and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden because of abusing- the premises, they had been presented with all the means of communication that mankind has today, it is prob- able that we should not be afflicted with as many languages as now exist. But if this gift had been reserved until the comparatively recent moment of only a thousand years ago, the Drifter doubts if it would have done much more than prevent the various dialects that have grown up within European languages. And if the only gift in the way of communication had been the airplane in its present stage of development, the chances are that its influence upon language would have been a fraction less than nothing at all. * * * # AMONG means of communication that of transportation is by no means the most influential in the direction of a uniform language. We have hail ships since the dawn of history, we have hail railroads for a hundred years, but they have made no perceptible headway against the bar- riers of language. The printing press has been the one great and effective agency so far, but although it has been sapping and sharp-shooting for the past five centuries it has done little more than partially obliterate dialects and encourage people to know more languages than one. The fact that the printing press was a going concern when the United States was born doubtless prevented the development of a group of dialects such as grew up in Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and other countries that were settled earlier, but it did not prevent the introduction to the Western Hemisphere of three distinct European languages. What the radio may accomplish in the future nobody knows, but it is unlikely that it will ever be as effective in unifying language as the printing press. So far as concerns the air- plane, it is a vast mistake to suppose that speed in trans- portation is the prime consideration. For most people speed is not so important as cheapness, and the airplane has a long way to go yet before it becomes as cheap as the steamship or the railroad. # * * * * AND anyhow why should anybody suppose that it would be a blessing to the world to be reduced to one lan- guage? If French were abolished, for instance, restaurants could no longer make up a dinner menu that would seem worth a dollar, while without Latin druggists would have to cut their prices 50 per cent. There are more books and periodicals in English than the Drifter can read now — what would he do if there were a single world language? And suppose this airplane-made universal tongue should turn out not to toe English, some of us would have the dickens of a time trying to learn it. The DRIFTER Correspondence Treason ! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: "Treason has raised its hoary head" — so begins your editorial of December 1 on tax adjustment. You lament that if a refund were made 80 per cent of it would go to 1 per cent of the taxpayers. This must indicate that 80 per cent of the tax is paid by 1 per cent of the taxpayers. Such a dis- tribution of the tax burden should be entirely to the liking of The Nation. Why complain when the movement of the funds is the other way? "Hit the corporations" has been the slogan of all federal tax legislation to date, especially any sponsored by the radical group whose praises you so earnestly ami continually sound. As one interested in several small corporations ami holding a tiny interest in sonic large ones. 1 have hern the unwilling witness and victim of enough injustice in federal tax matters just a hit peeved at this editorial. "If this he treason " Well, treason's head will he quite a hit hoarier before 1 change my viewpoint — or get any tax refunds, I'm afraid. Mankato, Minnesota, November C. R. Butler Another Modern Woman To tiii: Editor ok The Nation: Sir: We were packing chocolate-covered cherries on the night shift in a candy factory. We pack from the belt con- veyor which carries the candy from the clipping machine through the cooler, and our hands move fast, but we talk. The younger woman wants to know what she is missing by not being married. She makes the older woman answer thus: "Sure I'm married; do I look like a chicken? Me oldest Kirl is sixteen. I got six kids. Work hard? My God, with six kids, whatchu think? Yestday I washed eight lines clothes meself. Today I iron them. I work all the time by night in factory. Last week I worked in hemp factory. I give it up, too hard. Me girl she earn good money in factory; but she's girl, she need money herself. Me husband and me we always fight now. I have always to keep still and give in. It looks not nice for the children. I say, 'Yeh, yeh, you right,' and he keep still too. We fight about the children. He wants I should be strict and teach them bedder. I got no time; I should worry what he say. I'm tired of me husband. Sixteen years long time to live with man. Get tired of dress, house, friend, everything, husband too. "But I'm not crazy. I got six kids. They need father. They need eat. Anyway, who know what devil I get if I leave me husband? I know what I got." And, turning to the younger woman: "You better get married anyway. Married is bad enough, but single is worse." There is one of These Modern Women for you — an ultra- modern woman, product of our up-to-date industrial system: mother of six, housekeeper for eight, wageworker, all in one. Brooklyn, N. Y., December 5 S. F. Friedum The Background of Art To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: It seems to me that the issue goes deeper than Mr. Pearson has made it in The Plastic Artist in America in your pages. Until modern times, art has always depended for its patronage either on religion or on some form of aristocracy. Religion being in its very essence mystical naturally sponsors an art that is abstract rather than realistic. The more mystical the religion becomes, the more abstract and expressionist is the art; witness Byzantium. A sophisticated aristocracy dislikes the brutal facts of life and turns also to expressionism in art. Both, then, lead to the same result. But now aristocracy is dead, and the Christian religion is no longer a patron of the arts. Babbitt has replaced them. What would he want with a Cezanne? He wants facts. And the modern artist, like all artists, is ruled by the taste of his patron. It isn't his fault that art has become a compila- tion of "documents"; nor is it Babbitt's. For both are results of a larger force — call it the scientific democratic wave. Until art shall again have a spiritual emotion to express, or an aristocracy to delight, it will probably remain in its pres- ent slump. I think also that Mr. Pearson is perhaps unfair in his choice of authors. Suppose he had picked Sinclair Lewis and Francis Thompson; would opposing critics, authors, and readers agree that they both were artists? Venice, October 28 Gurdon HOWE

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Books and Plays What Will She Do with Seven Fat Years? By CLINCH CALKINS What will she do with seven fat years Now that her seven lean years are over Whose throat is baked with the parching tears She would not shed for a faithless lover? She is used to a broken pitcher, She is used to an arid well. She knows a terrible tale of drought Which her tongue cannot tell. To one who has filled, when the fields were failing, Her empty sacks at an empty grange, And sought waste grain in an ancient flailing Enough will be strange. First Glance IT is the business of a novelist, as it is the business of any artist who employs the imagination, to show us a world we never saw before and shall never see again. Out of the level chaos of nature he lifts for a moment the peak of his own consciousness; though we shall see other peaks we shall not see precisely this one. Even the so- called realist is doing nothing else — at least for me — than I have said, for surely there is no world here and now that all of us perceive alike; the realist gives us a new earth even if he only proves the importance of what we have been looking at all the while. "H. D.," who might have been expected always to con- fine herself to the unique idiom of her astounding poetry, has written a novel. But its idiom is not very different from that of her poetry, thanks to three predecessors in prose, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce; and its world is identically the same — though effort is required to perceive the identity. The world of "Palimpsest" (Houghton Mifflin: $3.50) is a wider one than its author has employed before; there are more persons in it, more events that can be given common names. The three sepa- rate parts of the narrative have separate scenes — ancient Rome, modern London, and modern Egypt; and though they have a single heroine, she has separate names and exists in separate ages. She is one woman — and so, unmistakably, is all this world one world. It is her world, too, and it is "II. D.'s". "So sure was that world, so distant, yet so clear, so definite, so precise that no casual treachery could blight it. It was so personal a world that Mavis with all her years of tenuous probings had not even seen it. . . . Behind Lon- don there was another London. It was just to keep that other London that she had blinded them all, almost blinded herself by her attitude, her pana~he, her not quite di- minished glory." So speaks Raymonde in the second and best of the three narratives which compose the took. So in different words had spoken Hipparchia in the first, and so speaks Mrs. Fairwood in the third. The three of them are one in their struggle— described with the utmost subtlety — to hold fast some inner world where, and where only, life may go on without interruption in obedience to the necessities of the soul. It is the desperation with which the three women clutch this hidden place that makes "Palimpsest" a peculiarly modern novel ; when has it ever been so needful, for those wishing to live, that they should do so privately, guarding with the jealousy of the first Stoics the little or large domain they have marked out for themselves? It is the form the action takes — if it may be called action — that guarantees the world of "Palimpsest" to be personal with "H. D." I should not like this to be con- strued too literally. But both Hipparchia and Raymonde are poets. They have been called "cold," the writers of "cold" verses. And Hipparchia can reflect that when her lovers complain of her unfeeling she is at "the very exalted height of ecstasy" ; while Raymonde, outwardly composed, knows herself within to be "a sort of lightning-rod for all the meters." This may or may not be "H. D.'s" answer to those who have called her own poems splinters of Greek ice. Those who know them for the passionate things they are will need no answer. They should read the book, however. It is not only a most remarkable and beautiful book; it is as well an explanation and an amplification of our most reserved poet. MARK VAN DOREN The "Different" Negro The Negro in American Life. By Jerome Dowd. The Century Company. $5. ]\yfR. DOWD is not a newcomer in the field of the Negro. He •*■ *■ has been studying him for more than twenty years. Though he is a Southerner he has no violent antipathy toward the Negro, even while honestly believing him happiest "in his place." He is affiliated with the Inter-Racial Movement, and he is obviously deeply sincere in his desire to see as little friction as possible between the two racial groups. With such a back- ground, one would expect a pronouncement from his pen to throw important light on the problem. One realizes with regret, however, that Mr. Dowd's habits of thought have not changed. Some years ago he attempted to make a study of the cultures of Africa. Two volumes of that work appeared, and no more. They are worthless. The sloven- liness of intellectual habit shown in them was such as to make them useless for serious reference. The arrangement of the data was careless; Mr. Dowd's sources were most superficial; what monographic material existed was ignored. We have the same use of data in this book; it may be distinguished for its omissions. Unfortunately these include the most recent and im- portant work, mostly published in scholarly journals, and prac- tically unavailable to the general reader. It is obvious that Mr. Dowd does not know these papers. This is true not only in the biological sciences, where such lack of knowledge might be ex- cusable, but in his own field of the social sciences. Let us see how serious these omissions are. Mr. Dowd first gives a resume of the historical background of the American Negro. Naturally he refers us to his own work for the African cultures, but not even to mention Phillips's standard work on slavery is inexcusable. Next comes a consid- eration of the Negro in the North since the Civil War. The thesis is that the Negro does not fare any better here than in the South, though most of the data presented come from sources (with the principal exception of the Report of the Chicago Race Commission) the scholarly character of which is at best doubt- ful. Then comes a discussion of the Southern Negro. We learn

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 669 that Jim Crow cars are not any worse than the cars used by whites on branch lines, that lynching is bad but that whites are lynched as well as Negroes — always the shading, always the comparison of Negro conditions in the South with the oppressed peoples elsewhere in the world, on the supposition, I take it, that several wrongs make a right. And, again with few exceptions, neglect of the best source material. Part Four might better have been omitted. It discusses the part the Negro played in the World War, although just what relation this has to the author's subject is hard for me to see. The usual heroism is remarked, the usual cowardice, and one gains the impression, rather in spite of Mr. Dowd, that Negroes behaved about as the white troops did. We next come to Negro migration, and two naive points — that Negroes didn't migrate from the South because of poor treatment but because of blind economic causes, and that Negro migration hasn't hurt the South anyway because more whites than Negroes have migrated — are developed. The section is short and shortsighted in its discus- sion, both of the causes and of the results. The bogy of the dis- satisfied and trouble-making Mulatto, notably in the person of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, is held before the reader as the cause of much trouble. And the important work of such men as Charles Johnson and Abram Harris is quite ignored. We then come to the Negro in literature and in art. En- tertainingly enough, whites who write about Negroes are first considered. Octavius Roy Cohen is mentioned, though not Du Bose Heyward, while Thomas Nelson Page is described as "the outstanding literary exponent of the Negro of Virginia"! Then Negroes who write about themselves are mentioned — that is, some of them. Countee Cullen is recognized, but not Langston Hughes; Walter White is mentioned, but not Jessie Fauset or Eric Waldron. In the discussion of Negro folk-songs, Mr. Dowd knows of no one since Krehbiel, in spite of the excellent work of Odum and Johnson, James Weldon and Rosamund Johnson, Dorothy Scarborough, and others. On the stage, we are told of Gilpin but not Robeson. And so it goes. The final three sections deal with proposed solutions of the Negro problem, the Negro future, and Paths of Hope. First we are told how Mr. Dowd chopped cotton with Negroes, played with Negro children, and all the rest of it. Then a short chap- ter is given to the argument of those who believe in racial equality — their views, incidentally, being quite misunderstood, since a statistical equality does not argue an individual one. The chapter on the inequality of races is much fuller, and the sources much more complete. It is unfortunate that Reuter's argument as to the social causes for the better position of the Mulatto is included here, as it gives a false impression of the position of Professor Reuter. But then we come to racial dif- ferences. Mr. Dowd discusses brain structure, hut he does not even mention Bean's well-known work, disproved though it has been. He apparently has not heard of the remarkable work of Professor Todd on anatomical differences between Negroes and whites, or even the army measurements of Davenport and Love. He prefers Burmeister, and, looking in the bibliography, we note the date of this work as 1853 ! He restates the myths about the thick cranium of the Negro, his peculiar body odor, his lack of ability for sustained effort, and many other things. His chapter on the psyche of the Negro recites all the old standard stereotypes; while in his discussion of intellectual differences be- tween Negroes and whites, Ferguson's monograph, which did most to establish difference — falsely, I think — is not even men- tioned. The army psychological-test results are of course quoted, but through a secondary source. The discussion of the biological and psychological results of race mixture shows an extraordi- nary ability to miss the point of the matter, although the socio- logical consideration is somewhat better. The notoriously unre- liable census figures for the number of mixed Negroes are quoted. The rest of the book is taken up with a consideration of the solution of the Negro problem. Everything that has been said is repeated in some form or other, and the solution, other than "good homes, less politics, and more vision," consists, as far as I can see, of a pious hope for hotter relations. That these can come while conviction as to innate invidious differences persists, I cannot believe. And this book strongly hinders its own pur- pose by bolstering this hypothesis. Melville J. Herskovits The Melancholy Bull Guy de Maupassant. By Ernest Boyd. Alfred A. Knopf. $5. The Life, Work, and Evil Fate of Guy de Maupassant. By Robert Harborough Sherard. Brentano's. $4.50. THHE works of Guy de Maupassant neither require nor, in- deed, permit much critical exegesis. No other writer to whom the adjective "great" could possibly be applied was ever at once so striking and so meager. There is no class of readers to whom his stories are not interesting, yet their limitations are almost as patent as their virtues, and when Mr. Boyd, in the course of his excellent biographical study, has remarked that "whatever power Maupassant's writing had came through the stimulation of two senses, one of which was the sense of vision," he has said nearly all that a critic can say. There is no evidence that Maupassant lacked the power to convey to his reader anything that interested him, but the range of his in- terests if not his technique was fatally limited. Whatever was visible seemed real to him, but in all the vast world which the eye cannot see only direct sexual attraction was other than an unsubstantial illusion, and his stories, for all the richness of their concrete detail, are either barren of feeling or mo- notonously insistent upon the one emotion of which he was capable. As his madness closed in upon him he added, to be sure, the nameless fear which possessed him, but the dominant impression which his works leave is of a world curiously desic- cated, of life as seen by a man incapable of participating in the majority of the emotions which give it its flavor. And despite the much-praised objectivity of his method, no deliberate "confessions" were ever more self-revealing. Maupassant was accustomed to boast of his athletic feats, sex- ual and otherwise, but the impression one gets as one reads the account in Mr. Boyd's vivid pages is that of a man intol- erably bored by human existence because certain essential ele- ments of the human being had been mysteriously left out of his make-up. Nothing, not even his own dazzling success, seemed able to lift the burden of his ennui. He was bored by work, bored by conversation, and even, it would seem, bored by the unvaried, unceasing pursuit of women which occupied him from his sixteenth year until he was locked in the cell of the mad house. A psychologist would probably say that his indiscrimi- nate, mechanical amativeness was the result of a "sterility complex," and one of the delusions of his madness, which Ted him to plant a tree to "grow little Maupassants upon," would lend support to the theory; but women were also, like the boat- ing which occupied much of his time and the rather stupid practical jokes in which he habitually indulged, the refuge of a mind, in many respects essentially childish, which had never learned to jeeupy itself with mature interests. The deceptive robustness of his physique, coupled with the somberness of his mood, earned for him the title of "the melancholy bull," but he was probably never other than a sick man, suffering from some spiritual malady whose first sign was a sort of atrophy of the soul which never let him enter fully or wholeheartedly into the business of living. Both the long, rambling, and enthusiastic biography of Mr. Sherard and the succinct, coldly judicious study of Mr. Boyd leave no doubt that the immediate cause of Maupassant's final madness was that "general paralysis" of which syphilis is probably always the necessary condition. To Mr. Sherard it is also at once the explanation of and excuse for all the unpleasant abnormalities of his hero's character; but Mr. Boyd, concerned only with facts, does not undertake to pronounce

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670 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 very definitely upon the relation (if any) between this disease and either those of Maupassant's peculiarities which were manifest before its definite appearance or the general charac- teristics of his work. And yet the question is one obviously relevant in the biography of a literary man in which the description of abnormalities of one sort or another plays a very large part. "The paretic is both born and made," one authority on the subject once remarked, and another was accustomed to say that it was the result of "syphilis and civilization." It is not, that is to say, the inevitable result of infection with Spirochaeta pallida but the result of the effect of that organism upon a is system already either definitely morbid or subject to unnatural strains; and hence, though Maupassant's end was in rise surprising, it is in the condition which preceded rather than followed his definite infection that we should look for the most significant signs of any nervous condition which may be supposed to have had a connection with the characteris- tics of his work. Born of a neurotic mother and of a father wl i was a notorious rake, his inheritance was bad. One of his very earliest literary efforts deals with two lovers who die of sexual excess, and there can thus be little doubt that long be- fore any acquired infection could have reached his brain he had already been mastered by the morbid preoccupation which remained with him to the end and which hovers over all his work. Perhaps it will remain always impossible to speak with any assurance of the precise nature of his disorder, but it is evident that it had a direct influence upon his work. The higher centers of Maupassant's nervous system never acquired the full organization which would have made it possible for him to understand the life of his fellowmen as they themselves understood it. He remained, in a sense, incomplete, and the effects of that fact can be traced in both the virtues and the de- fects of his work. Because of it the famous detachment of his stories was possible, but because of it also they represent a vision of a world from which most of what is most characteristically human has been abstracted. Joseph Wood Krutch "Ad Maiorem Gloriam Dei" Kiddush Ha-Skem: An Epic of 1648. By Sholom Ash. Trans- lated from the Yiddish by Rufus Learsi. The Jewish Pub- lie, tion Society of America. J^IDDCSH 1IA-SHEM (Sanctification of the Name), for the •**■ sake of which tens of thousands of Jews offered up their lives, is merely the Hebrew equivalent of a similar phrase, "Ail maiorem gloriam dei," in the name of which the Holy Inquisi- tion burned them. This may strike an infidel as paradoxical, but it must be renumbered that courses in Comparative Religion were not in the curriculum of the theological seminaries of the time. On the occasion of the mass martyrdom of the Jews of the Ukraine, which is the theme of Sholom Ash's epic of 1618, there were other considerations besides "ad maiorem gloriam dei." The Ukraine was then a Polish March, parceled out into vast feudal estates. To the Polish princelings who were the absentee landlords of the Ukraine their Jewish vassals were convenient middlemen, serving as managers of their estates, as tax farmers, and not infrequently (though most unenthusiasti- cally) as garrisons for them in the hostile countryside. To this day in the Ukraine there survive synagogues with projecting upper stories, very much like our colonial blockhouses, which testify to the time when the Jews were not. permitted to build a house of worship unless it could be turned into a fort in the event of a Ukrainian uprising. The Polish clergy in their efforts to convert the Greek Orthodox population to Catholicism also made use of the Jews. To degrade the Greek orthodox faith in the eyes of the peasants, the keys of their churches were delivered over to the local Jewish tax farmers, who were thus forced into a dangerous and doubly unpopular role. The result was that when the Cossacks under their hetman Chmel- nitzki revolted, the Jewish settlements of the Ukraine were blotted out in an orgy of slaughter and bestiality — unparalleled until the Denikins and Petluras of our own day showed their prowess in the same locale. It is the impact of these latter horrors that gives force and solemnity to Sholom Ash's narrative, published in Yiddish after the war. To see them in aesthetic perspective he has gone back to the events of 1648; but there is a glow in his recital which is not a reflection from the past. The simple plot from which he projects his epic of a people dramatizes the Jewish settlement of the Ukraine, and from that background marches on to the grand climax of the book — the self-immolation of the Jewish community of Tulchin. Here and there when Mr. Ash leaves his real protagonist, the Jewish People, to take up with mere individuals the epic fluffs out into rather flimsy romance. This is particularly true of the superfluous tinkering with the loose ends of the plot that follows after the magnificent chap- ters describing the Tulchin episode. This is the fourth of Sholom Ash's works to be translated, and it makes an important addition to the growing library of Yiddish literature accessible in English. In the efforts to save the expiring language, the most recent suggestion offered is that Latin characters be substituted for the Hebrew. It is a provocative idea, but in the meantime it is advisable to go the whole hog, and, adding English words to Latin characters, translate to safety the best of the Yiddish literary treasures. There is a large-sized, interested public among both Jews and non-Jews. Why the Modern Library, which has room for the masterpieces of so many other languages, doesn't include a sin- gle Yiddish title is a mystery veiled in limp leatherette covers. Alter Brody A Masterpiece in Lo^ic Statement mid. Inference. By John Cook Wilson. Edited from the MSS. by A. S. L. Farquharson. Two volumes. Oxford University Press. $10.50. JOHN COOK WILSON (1849-1915) has long been an enig- " matic figure to students of philosophy who have not enjoyed the opportunity of personal residence in Oxford. His name was constantly mentioned with respect amounting to reverence by other British philosophy rs who acknowledged indebtedness to his views; by Oxonians he was regarded as the most influential teacher of philosophy in the university. Yet he published nothing save a considerable number of textual criticisms on Aristotle and other classical writers and a few articles on mili- tary cycling — from neither of which was it possible to gain any very clear idea of his philosophical position! One was obliged to take his importance solely on trust. Hence the un- usual interest for the philosophical world of the posthumous publication of Wilson's lectures on logic, the fruit of twenty-five years of application to the subject. The two large volumes, a model of judicious editing, were compiled by Mr. Farquharson of University College mainly from student lecture notes, supplemented by passages from Wilson's personal memoranda and his correspondence with Bernard Bosanquet and other philosophers. Under the circumstances a certain amount of verbal inconsistency and confusion was in- evitable, but despite this the volumes fully justify Wilson's reputation. The work is easily the most important thing in its field in English since the publication of Bosanquet's "Logic" many years ago. It should be read in connection with the latter, since it is largely devoted to a correction of the Bradley-Bosan- quet point of view. Those two great writers made of logic the royal road to philosophic idealism, but at the cost of confound- ing logic with epistemology and metaphysics. Cook Wilson set himself the task of disentangling a logic which should be a science of human thinking, neither more nor less. Opposed to

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 671 idealistic logic, he was almost equally opposed to the symbolic logic of such philosophers as Bertrand Russell. Although him- self an able mathematician, he refused to identify logic with mathematics. With something of the type of mind of the great Scholastics, he excelled in drawing subtle distinctions — splitting a hair into a thousand hairs — and yet keeping his ultimate bases close to common sense. Where James and Schiller were helpless before the deadly dialectic of Bradley and could only reply in the different language of psychology, Wilson fenced with a weapon as delicate as Bradley's and met the enemy on his own dueling-ground. Had the two volumes now first published made their appearance a few years earlier they would have played an important part in the contemporary British and American revolt against idealism. Even today, after that revolt has been at least temporarily successful, they may serve to furnish the new movement with the realistic logic of which it stands sorely in need. At any rate, apart from metaphysical implications, Wilson's theory of universals, of statement, of judgment, and of inference henceforth forms an indispensable chapter in the history of logic. Every serious student of phi- losophy will desire to own "Statement and Inference" as a part of his equipment. Ernest Sutherland Bates Smollett The Letters of Tobias Smollett, M.D. Edited by Edward S. Noyes. Harvard University Press. $3. SMOLLETT is one of the few important authors of the eighteenth century who have not yet come into their own. No critical biography of him exists and he has not even been admitted into the fellowship of the English Men of Letters series. Up till recently scholars, balked by their ignorance of the facts of his life, have left him and his works severely alone; but apparently Smollett is not to remain in retirement much longer. Last year we had Professor Buck's painstaking study of "Pere- grine Pickle," and now Professor Noyes, another eighteenth- century enthusiast from Yale, has brought out a complete col- lection of Smollett's letters — complete, at any rate, as far as we know. Professor Noyes has been diligent and fortunate enough to run to earth fifteen letters never before published. The remaining fifty-odd letters are now for the first time gathered together and annotated in such a way that Macaulay's schoolboy, or his lineal descendant the man in the street, can understand some of the difficulties that confront the future biographer of Smollett. This novelist, doctor, historian, playwright, and pam- phleteer was too busy and too pugnacious a man to be a charm- ing letter-writer. Whenever he wrote to a friend it was for a specific purpose — often an appeal for financial assistance — and he was hardly ever able to surrender himself, as the great letter- writers have done, to gossip and nonsense. The last letter in the book, an undated fragment, indicates what a delightful correspondent Smollett might have been if he had not been so overburdened with work. "Many a time do I stop my task and betake me to a game of romps with Betty, while my wife looks on smiling and longing in her heart to join in the sport; then back to the cursed round of duty." Smollett was always strug- ling to keep the booksellers supplied with copy. Sometimes it was a novel, but more often it was mere hackwork — a universal history, a compendium of voyages, or a translation of "Don Quixote." About half of the letters are written to Scotch doctors, for Smollett's circle was medical rather than literary and he always seems to have preferred the society of his own compatriots. Boswell and Horace Walpole tell us so much about the literary, political, and social life in London that it is hard to remember that there was still a great deal which escaped their attention. They knew little about Smollett's coterie of Scotch doctors, in- cluding the Hunters, two of the most distinguished surgeons of the day. Among the other correspondents are Garrick, with whom Smollett quarreled and was afterward reconciled, and John Wilkes, the demagogue. It was to Wilkes that he wrote the well-known letter about Johnson's Negro servant, in which ferred to Johnson as the Great Cham of Literature, and which Boswell misprinted in the first edition of the "Life," mis- taking Cham for Chum. As Professor Noyes admits in his introduction, the present collection of letters is interesting chiefly to the special student of Smollett, but for anyone who cares for that vigorous personality this excellently edited volume is indispensable. Arnold Wiiitridge Books in Brief Comparative Philosophy. By Paul Masson-Oursel. With an Introduction by F. G. Crookshank. Ilarcourt, Brace and Company. §3.50. In his introduction Dr. Crookshank expresses confidence that this book "cannot fail to excite interest, to attract atten- tion, and to provoke discussion, if not challenge." Possibly it might have provoked more discussion had it not appeared at virtually the same time as the English translation of Oswald Spengler's mighty work. Masson-Oursel, who never mentions his German predecessor, employs in the narrower field of philosophy proper what is outwardly the same comparative method as that which Spengler employs in dealing with whole cultures. But inwardly there is a difference between them something like that between an eagle and a pair of spectacles. Where the German is bold and dashing, synthetic, recreating whole periods with an imagination at once grandiose and detailed, the Frenchman is cautious and hesitating, analytic, plodding slowly through an intricate forest of facts from which he never fully emerges. And yet the man of laborious talent is superior to the man of swift genius in one respect. Where Spengler repeatedly implies, although magnificently disproving it in his work, that the representative of one culture can never understand the representatives of another, Masson- Oursel's avowed aim is the pursuit of a world philosophy to which each culture shall contribute. And, to render him full justice, he makes no pretension in this volume to do more than indicate the need and possibility of such a philosophy. In this he is successful. After reading the chapters in which he essays the comparison of European, Hindu, and Chinese thought in respect to their logic, metaphysics, and psychology — pedantic as these chapters are — one can no longer limit one's horizon quite complacently to that of the Western world. Mental Tests. By Frank N. Freeman. Houghton Mifflin Com- pany. $2.40. The enterprise of measuring general and special abilities has probably more fruits of research to show for a quarter-cen- tury of effort than any other single phase of psychological in- vestigation. Professor Freeman's work is an excellently organ- ized and clearly presented summary of this immense field of facts and figures. His historical survey accounts for the pres- ent status of intelligence testing, its wide variety of forms, its off -shoots in the way of tests of personality, and the statistical techniques which have been developed to treat the assembled data. The book contains valuable- bibliographical references, test reproductions, and an exhaustive inventory of group tests, containing all the information relevant to their administration. The author undertakes an elaborate analysis of the construction Df tests, their materials, devices, and scoring, helpful to teachers who would adapt old forms to new uses. The resume of ex- perimental results adequately covers the fields of education, vocational guidance, and delinquency, but is incomplete in other spheres of application, especially with regard to the phenomena of feeble-mindedness and superior ability.

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672 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 The Nation's Poetry Prize nriHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for ± the best poem submitted by an American poet in a contest conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. This year in addition a second prize of $50 and a third prize of $25 will be offered. The rules for 1926 are as follows: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Nation, 20 Vesey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. 3. No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- ances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt of each manuscript, however, will be sent from this office. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will be impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a definite sequence may, if the author so desires, be counted as a single poem. 6. The winning poems will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation.to appear February 9, 1927. 7. Besides the winning poems, The Nation reserves the right to purchase at its usual rates any other poem submitted in the contest. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation, Poems should in no case be sent to them personally. Art Modern Art: Genesis or Exodus? ^T^ O tell the full story of modern art is to tell, first, how it * began with Monet's portrayal of the fleeting aspects of nature and Cezanne's preoccupation with its solidity; second, how it gradually departed from the appearance of reality by which these artists were still bound and plunged into forms of expression whose tendency was to distort, dissociate, dissect reality so far beyond recognition that the morphological identity between the painting and the objects painted was lost; third, how finally a new departure became apparent everywhere which brought together, as it were, the split and broken parts of reality, gave them normal shape and position, and thereby established a sort of new realism which, however, profited by the experiences of the schools immediately preceding it. The current International Exhibition assembled by the Societe Anonyme at the Brooklyn Museum, one of the most comprehensive in recent years, is devoted mainly to the middle phase of the evolution just outlined; the last phase is repre- sented feebly and the first not at all. A brief reference, how- ever, to the first phase — the origins of modernism — will make the status of the exhibition more easily comprehensible. All of the artists mentioned in this article except Monet, Cezanne, Carra, and Herbin are on view at the Brooklyn Museum. Monet, the most typical of all impressionists, sought to arrest the momentary transient aspects of reality. "II faut peindre comme peint un rayon de soleil." And since effects of sunlight always vary, Monet painted one and the same field, pond, or church ten, fifteen, twenty times the same day, pro- ducing as many different pictures. But as such passing phe- nomena were of much shorter duration than the process of painting them, the impressionists were obliged to rely on memory as well as observation and to record their impressions by posterior reconstruction. Precisely this was made the central doctrine of futurism. The futurist picture had to be "a synthesis of what one remem- bers and what one sees." Only where the impressionists re- quired twenty canvases to paint one object during a single day, the futurists painted on a single canvas twenty positions of one object in motion. And where impressionist pictures always ad- hered to unity of place and time, futurist pictures disregarded this unity and recorded such snatches of reality — a profile, a room, a park — as may crowd the memory without apparent causal connection. The expressionists went even further. Instead of the im- pressionist's visual effects and the futurist's memory images, the expressionist used his art as a means of making his inner urge manifest. Kandinsky, one of the leading exponents of the school, paints color harmonies which, depending on their degree of abstraction, he calls impressions, improvisations, compostions. Like Bergson he has used many an intellectual argument to dis- prove the validity of reason. He conceives art as born of "an inner contemplation which is inscrutable." Franz Marc also thought of art as religious and metaphysical. His favorite subjects were animals, and he painted them not "as they appear to us but as they really are." The ethereal color harmonies and naive grotesqueries of Paul Klee make him the most intro- spective of all expressionists. His "disseitig bin ich gar nicht fassbar" is perhaps the limit to which metaphysical aesthetics can go. Contemporaneous with these subjective movements were movements impersonal and objective stemming from Cezanne. The great aim of Cezanne was to convert impressionism into "something durable like the art of the museums." To this end he substituted solidity, hard outline, mixed tones for the im- pressionists' airiness, diffused contours, and spectral colors, and devised his formula for representing nature according to the "sphere, cone, and cylinder." The works of Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, and Duchamp in their first cubist period were much in the manner of Cezanne with perhaps slightly bolder distortion. A logical examination of pictorial laws — "j'aime la regie qui corrige l'emotion," said Braque — led to the decomposition of objects according to their structural articulation and their reconstruc- tion according to plastic considerations of line, plane, color, volume, texture-contrast. The constructivists — Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, Pannaggi — took over from the cubists' geometrization of form and texture- contrasts and eliminated the last vestiges of reality. They sought to relate their work to the present industrial order and scientific progress by using the materials of the one — iron, concrete, glass — and emulating the logical precision of the other. Gabo and Pevsner attempted to substitute the relations of voids for those of solids and thus like Apollinaire's bird of Benin to create masterpieces out of thin air. Just as the main currents here described reached their cul- mination, a new turn toward reality made its appearance. The futurists Carra and Severini, who had preached the destruction of museums, now work in a most museum-like manner, as do also the metaphysicians de Chirico and Paladini. The cubists Herbin, Metzinger, and even Braque left dissociation to their followers and took to still-lifes, figures, and landscapes. Al- though this movement is spreading with amazing rapidity, it is difficult to say where it may ultimately lead. Its artists utilize freely the experiments of their forerunners. The abstract ten- dencies are still very active. Critics who legislated reality out of art may feel somewhat discomfited ; that they should hence- forth legislate less readily or that the public should take their casuistry less seriously is perhaps too much to expect. Louis Lozowick

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 673 FIFTH AVENUE RESTAURANT 200 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK A LUNCHEON RESORT FOR THE DISCRIMINATING CLIENTELE — THOSE APPRECIATING UNEX- CELLED CUISINE AND SERVICE. ?7. For further information, address the Director, THE TRAINING SCHOOL for JEWISH SOCIAL WORK 210 WEST 91st STREET NEW YORK CITY ^HEADACHF 'An excellent magazine!' -George Jean Nathan HALDEMAN-JULIUS QUARTERLY THE big second issue (256 pages) of the Haldeman- Julius Quarterly \> now read) a beautifully printed, intelli- gently constructive magazine. Excellent contributions — scoresof pictures, reproductions of paintings, drawings, etc. The Quar- terly is highly endorsed by such men as George Jean Nathan, Joseph McCabe, Harry Hansen, John Cowper Powys, Upton Sinclair, E. W. Howe, etc. Comments include: "a remarkable achievement," "an interesting magazine," "informative and unique," "the richest intellectual feast," etc. The Haldeman-Julius Quarterly is a large magazine: the bi^ January number contains 256 pages, and no advertising! A six months' Trial Subscription (see below) gives you this big immediately, and also the first issue, making a complete file. The Quarterly's purpose and tone is indicated by the contents of the big second number, now ready, as follows : CONTENTS. JANUARY. 1927 Editorials. ... By E. Haldeman-Julius Lindsborg, Kansas : The Prairie Toirn Whose Art and Music Have Given It Fame By Clarice Cunningham The Art of Oscar Bboussb Jacob- son: Reproductions of Ten Paint- ings With an Ap- preciation by William Cunningham Frock Coats : An Unusual Short Story . .By Nelson Antrim Crawford The Triumph of the X-ray: Prog- ress in Scientific Achievement With Roentgen Rays. By Maynard Shipley Alma Levine: An Episode of the Palmer Raids By James Fuchs Miguel Covarrubias : A Mexican Boy Brushed by the Wings of Genius.. By Marcet Haldeman-Julius Young Oklahoma's Contribution to American Poetry: Critical Essay on Young Voices Being Heard Out- side the State By William Cunningham The State of Arkansas : An Ap- praisal of the "Wonder State" and Its Possible Future By W. G. Clugston W. T. Benda and His Masks : Calm Repose. Subtle Drama, and Girls With Almond Eyes By Lloyd E. Smith Rationalism's Debt to Immanuel Kant: The Launching of Pure Reason Against Tottering Theology By J. V. Nash Theodore Dreiser: An Apprecia- tion : He Looks at Life Honestly. Calmly, Sympathetically, Helplessly By Louis Adamic The Ability to Think Construc- tively : A Sincere Regard for the Truth Is Going Begging in America By Oscar Lewis The Human Origin of Morals : The Evolution of Morality Is Natural — Not Divine By Joseph McCabe Rudyard Kipling's Twelve Immor- tals : A Jury of Fifteen Selects a Dozen Men as the World's Greatest By E. Haldeman-Julius How a College Professor Makes Hls LIVING: The Problem of Maintain- ing a High Standard in the Lives of the Educated By Hubert Fuller Memory and the Man : A Summary of the Significant Facts About Our Memories By Leo Markham Professors and Popularization : A Protest Against the Scientists Scornful "Hang the Public!" By Carroll Lane Fenton The Diary of a Methodist Profes- sor : Life and Learning as It Really Is in a Southern College By Andrew J. Lamb Roger Baldwin Visits Los Angeles : An Evangelist of Liberty in the City of Revivals. .By Louis Adamic The Romance That Balzac Lived : How the Great Interpreter of the Human Comedy Lived and Loved. . By Ralph Oppenheim The First American at Tut-Ankh- Amen's Tomb : Dr. James II. Breasted Reveals the Truth About Ancient Civilizations By J. V. Nash The Art of Self-Culture: Acquir- ing, Widening and Deepening a Certain Attitude Toward Life By John Cowper Powys The Evolutional Enigma ; Is Man. Over-Developed, Doomed As Were His Dominant Predecessors ? By G. D. Eaton E. W. Howe : Unbuncombed, Unsenti- mental, Clear Thinking and Prac- tical By George Jean Nathan An Editor's Notes and Impres- sions : An Informal Survey of the Fascinating Panorama of Life.... By E. Haldeman-Julius Speaking of Finer Things: A Little Tale of High Ideals in Moronia. . . . By Hildegarde Smith An Intuitionist Conception of His- tory : Out of Germany Comes an Iconoclastic Revolution of Values. . By Isaac Goldberg The Methodist Machine : Why I Did Not Enter the Methodist Ministry By Henry W. Thurston Sexual Rationalism : Notes on a Changing Valuation of Behavior. . By Isaac Goldberg The Moorish Civilization : How Its Conquest by Christianity Threw Back Progress Five Centuries By Joseph McCabe Dr. John Roach Straton's Museum : A Few Suggestions That May Bring Joy to the Fundamentalist God By Carroll Lane Fenton The Abolition of Capital Punish- ment: Can Vengeance Upon the Transgressor Be Socially Justified? By V. F. Calverton GENERAL DRUG CO., MONTHS' TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION Here is your opportunity to secure no less than 448 pa^o-. o'er^ellent reading, together with more than 203 illustrations, for $1. Send the blank below with a dollar bill and get a six months' trial subscription to the Haldeman-Julius Quarterly. ACT AT ONCE! PIN $1 TO THIS BLANK Haldeman-Julius Quarterly, Dept. Q-6, Girard, Kansas I enclose $1 for 6 months' Trial Subscription to the Haldeman-Julius Quarterly. Begin with the first number. Name Address City. .State 94 N. Moore Street, New York When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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International Relations Section The Real Hungary By G. E. R. GEDYE nt Bethlen's party, as Mr. Gedye predicted, won erichelming victory in the December elections. The : was done in instalments. On Decemlx r 8 candidates lected in 103 districts, in all but four by public ballot- ing. The Government icon 102 seats. Wachtler, a Uemo- >:as the only Oppositionist dieted, even Count Julius Andrassy being defeated. On December 10, 91 more dis- voted by open ballot; five opponents and 86 supporters of the Government were elected. Among the successful opponents wire Count Albert Apponyi and Anton Sigreey, moderate Legitimist sup-porters of the Hapsburg succes- sion. He j)as, the terrorist, was elected as a government port( r.] Vienna, November 21 THE "Kingless Kingdom" of Hungary, whore elections are being held in December, is generally recognized to be an unfortunate country. If the interests of a people are to be identified with those of its rulers, this judgment would have to be revised. No regime in Europe has been more successful in turning national misfortune into personal profit. Hungary is usually presented to the world as a land of peace-loving, hard-working peasants, crushed by the Treaty of Trianon, yet harboring no revengeful thoughts. It is a country which has been martyred by Bolshevism, say its official propagandists, yet which is now wisely ruled and happy in its parliamentary institutions — a country which 3 the repose implied by its absence from the columns of the foreign press. Its only desire, apparently, is to be left alone by its neighbors and eventually to return to the irchy which it abandoned undo- pressure in 1920. It is a cleverly drawn picture, but not one which is ible by students and friends of the Hungarian peo- rhey sec Hungary as a nation in shackles in part . M part reriveted by its present rulers. It appears to them as a country artificially maintained in a state of almost feudal medievalism in the interests of an oligarchy, its press muzzled, its people forbidden freedom of speech and opinion -a country in which this oligarchy spends large sums in artificially nourishing dreams of revenge on its bors and in secret preparations for their realization. The .Magyar rulers seem to impartial observers to be hold- ing in an Eastern bondage an unfortunate subject popu- lation which alone of Central European peoples fails to participate in the new liberties acquired by its neighbors. I do not wish for one moment to minimize the injustice to Hungary by the vindictive Treaty of Trianon. De- sirable as it was that her non-Magyar subjects should be freed from compulsory allegiance to the Thousand Year Kingdom which in a thousand years had failed to assimilate them, it was not right or expedient that on all debatable points their wishes should have been made law. The boun- daries of Hungary were drawn with little regard to her national claims or to her economic needs. It may be doubted, however, whether the bulk of the Magyar popula- tion thus placed under alien rule has suffered more than e left to the tender mercies of the Magyar oligarchy. In Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, and Jugoslavia, if he has been oppressed in the matter of language and education, the Magyar peasant has shared in the distribution of land which followed the break-up of unwieldy latifundia. In Hungary there has been nothing but a mockery of land reform; the adult peasant labors on the land of his lord from sunrise until sunset for the sum of tenpence per day, his wife and children for sixpence or sevenpence. Yet the Esterhazy family owns more than three-quarters of a million acres of land, of which Count Paul Esterhazy alone owns 300,000 acres. More than eight-and-a-half million acres — 33 per cent of all the arable land in Hungary— is owned by only 1,130 landowners. If you visit any Hungarian landowner, keep your hands thrust deep into your pockets, unless you wish to have them kissed by the first cringing peasant who realizes that you are a guest of his lord. Before every motor-car on the rough tracks that do duty for roads in Hungary the peasant stands with bowed head, hat in hand. Count Michael Karolyi, the well-meaning but unsuc- cessful president of the short-lived Hungarian Republic, is always spoken of by the present rulers as "the Traitor" — and justly, for did he not try to institute land reform and thus betray what its rulers understand by "Hungary" — the interests of the oligarchy? Since Bolshevism ousted him and gave place in its turn to the White Terror, every pre- caution has been taken to fasten the yoke more firmly on tin neck of the peasant. Though school attendance has de- creased and school hours have been reduced the number of teachers has been nearly doubled, the additional personnel having for its main task the teaching of nationalism. In their free time the smaller boys learn the elements of sol- diering in "Pathfinder" organizations; from the ages of 14 to 21, by the law of 1923, youths are forced to join the "Levente" and to attend its drills. This organization is supervised by officers of the old army, and is simply a militia disguised as a gymnastic association. Thus is the prohibition of military training set at naught. Where formerly a gendarmerie post of six men sufficed for six to ten villages, there is now one such post in every village. No wonder that 05 per cent of the national and municipal niie , of Hungary is spent on government servants. Liberty fares little better in the cities, where misery invisible to casual visitors who admire the flamboyant beauty of the wealthy quarters is so extreme that in Buda- pest alone there were recently sixteen suicides in one day. In the courts prosecutions for speaking against the R< Admiral Horthy, are numerous, and savage sentences are inflicted. Perhaps the most useful weapon for stifling pub- lic opinion is the law making it an offense to say or write anything which might damage the name of the country abroad. It can be imagined, perhaps, to what an extent this is stretched to cover any utterance disagreeable to the ruling classes. The press is under special disabilities; the sale of any paper on the streets can be prohibited by a simple departmental order. In the same way, a paper can be suppressed for any length of time; there is no trial in the courts and no remedy. To glance at three outstanding examples of the work of the law courts in the past twelve months may be in- structive. Last year, Edmund Beniczky, a former Home etary, asserted that the Regent, Admiral Horthy, had been privy to the White Terrorist plot to murder Somogyi, a Socialist, editor; he stated that, as Home Secretary, he himself had cognizance of the orders given by the Regent to prevent the punishment of the murderers. Finally, he

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Dec. 22, 1926] The Nation 675 declared that Count Bethlen also knew of these matters and that his — Beniczky's — statements were absolutely true. He was sentenced to three years' penal servitude after a trial which took place for the most part in camera, but was released after a few months. Count Bethlen made no statement on the matter. Last winter, after strong pressure had been exercised by the French, Prince Louis Windischgraetz, M. Nadossy, Count Bethlen's all-powerful Police Minister, and other Hungarian aristocrats were put on trial for the forgery of franc notes. They declared that they had acted from patriotic motives in the interests of Hungary (that is, the oligarchy). Count Bethlen testified at the trial as to Prince Windischgraetz, saying: "I know him as a gentleman and I know him to be incapable of having acted from sordid motives." Before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry Count Bethlen admitted that he had learned of the proposed forgeries as early as 1921, and had given instructions that they were to be stopped. The sentences imposed on the forgers were amazingly light and have just been reduced. This summer Rakosi and Weinberger, two Communist leaders, and their associates were put on trial. These two men had held office under the Communist regime in Hun- gary and had returned from Russia to try to organize a new Hungarian Communist Party. Nothing worse than this was proved against them; they were sentenced to eight years' penal servitude apiece, double the sentence imposed on the franc-forgery ringleaders. During the trial prison doctors proved that the prisoners had been brutally beaten by the police to extract confessions; the judge brushed aside the admitted evidence as unimportant, saying to the defense, in effect, "Well, all right, they were beaten. What of it? Get on with your case." This torture of prisoners is, in fact, an accepted thing in Hungary. As to the past horrors of the White Terror, these do not bear description. The White Terror murderers are unpunished, though they are all known, and one of the worst of them, Ivan Hejjas, who had nearly 200 persons, including his own brother-in- law, done to death in the wood of Orgovany, is standing as a candidate at these elections. How is it that liberal opinion abroad knows so little of the real Hungary? Soon after the advent of the present regime Count Bethlen received the sage advice: "Get the City and Wall Street behind you, and the British and American press will be bound to follow." Every demand of international finance was complied with and foreign capital attracted to the country. The direction of press propa- ganda in Great Britain and America was placed in skilful British hands. Every endeavor was made to propagate the legend of "Count Bethlen, Hungary's Strong Man," and to suggest that if he were upset only Bolshevism would fol- low and invested capital would be lost. Hence it would be dangerous to publish anything unfavorable to his regime. The Hungarians saw to it that any British or American journalist coming to Budapest was carefully nursed; lavish hospitality, apparently spontaneous, was dispensed on a regular system, and the visitor shown just what it was de- sirable for him to see. Some visitors have even found very useful financial tips being tendered them. Resident Hun- garian correspondents of British papers, if they were not already connected with the Hungarian Foreign Office, could always be dealt with by the methods applicable to all other Hungarian subjects. Determined and skilful attempts were made by British agents of the Hungarian Government to discredit with their papers in London and New York all Psycliological Abstracts A new journal published monthly by the American Psycho- logical Association. The first number will appear in January. Professor W. S. Hunter of Clark University is the editor and there is a board of distinguished cooperating editors from America and Europe. The Journal will be international in scope and will contain abstracts of current books and articles in the field of Psychology and kindred subjects. The following topics will be covered: General Topics in Psychology; Sensation and Perception ; Feeling and Emotion; Attention, Memory and Thought; Nervous System; Motor Phenomena and Action; Plant and Animal Behavior; Evolu- tion and Heredity; Special Mental Conditions; Nervous and Mental Disorders; Social Functions of the Individual; In- dustrial and Personnel Problems; Childhood and Adoles- cence; Educational Psychology; Biometry and Statistics; and Mental Tests. The Journal will lie of value to all persons desiring to keep in touch with the psychological literature of the world. Price $6.00 a year (overseas $6.25). Kindly make checks payable to Psychological Abstracts. In order to secure the January number promptly, subscriptions should be sent at once to H. S. LANGFELD, Business Editor Princeton University PRINCETON, N. J THAT FRIEND OF YOURS— AND CHRISTMAS? Sty? iManrlj^ster dlttariiatt WEEKLY of course: t Christmas comes but once a year but The Manches- ter Guardian Weekly every week to be a constant reminder throughout the year of your interest and affection. To a friend zvith English affiliations it would be an especially appropriate gift. A suitable greeting card giving your name as donor will be sent. MAIL THIS COUPON To The Manchester Guardian Weekly 220 West 42nd Street, New York City. I enclose three dollars for a year's subscription to THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WEEKLY, to be mailed direct from Manchester, England, to : Name Address Order by When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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676 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3207 persons writing in Hungary who were not resident in Buda- ind therefore largely immune from the combination y and subtle threats employed there. What of the future? Count Bethlen has rushed through Parliament a House of Magnates Act consolidating the ■chy and benefiting the Hapsburg archdukes. With : 218 out of 240 constituencies, where the :it has to declare on the hustings before the magis- ndarmes, and his feudal lord whether he is for or against the Government, the latter is sure of an- dient majority. Whether or no Count Bethlen's e in suddenly ordering an election for no apparent try to restore the monarchy, the people of Hungary will have no chance of voicing their will at these How long they will remain mute and f the dictator it is impossible to ible oppression provokes in time desperate and terrible remedies, and international finance should remem- ber that, backing Hungary, it lacks a medieval tyranny. Contributors to This Issue Raymond Clapper is the Washington correspondent for 1 News. M. V. Royse teaches Government at the College of the f New Yrk. .r Dell is The Nation's correspondent in Paris. \LKINS is a poet and essayist now at the I'm y of Wisconsin. .J. Herskovits, of the department of an imbia University, is making a special study Negro. Alter Brody is a New York poet, playwright, and critic. Ernest Sutherland Bates, formerly professor of philoso- phy at the University of Oregon, is living in Now York. ARNOLD WlUTRUDGE is author of a recent critical work on Louis Lozowick, painter and illustrator, is a contributing G. K. R. GEDYE was for years correspondent of the London in Central Europe. The I'eacork's Tail a: a jxx I. A»»/~wC/"'/~l\I/ r\I ADV A uraphlc human-interest •tory of th* IVHJol_AjW LMArS. I ilf, ,f the people in Soviet Ro»ia todvr. by An » IVrier. Cloth. $1.00 postpaid. Auk for book catJilotc OHAKLES H. KEKR & OO. M7 East Ohio Strex't, Uh!ca«. DURANT SAYS NO ! be announced SATURDAY, JANUARY 8th, 8:30 P.M. CARNEGIE HALL ts: $1.10, $1.(35, $2.20, $2.75, $3.30, including tax. ON SALE at Box Office or by mail or at offices of LEAGUE FOR PUBLIC DISCUSSION ^\[l^l^^TK N. B. Out-of-townera can reserve a printed ad verbatim report of this by 1 1 nut I m" $1 now. THE PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE Program Dec. 10-2.r> AT COOPER I NION (8th St. and Astor Place) At 8 o'clock ADMISSION FREE Sunday, December I !i Earl Barnes "The Future of the Teach- ing Profession." Tuesday, Dec. 21 — L. Pierce Clark "A Psychological Interpreta- tion of Leonardo Da Vinci as Sciential and Inventor." Friday, Dee. 24 — No Meeting— Christmas Holidays. AT MANHATTAN TRADE SCHOOL (Lexington Ave. and 22nd St., at 8 o'clock) Single Admission, 25 cents Reduction for 19 Woodycrest Ave, New York City CHRISTMAS VACATION [•'or an enjoyable and intelligent Christmas Vacation ko to DELAWARE CLIFF LODGE in the mountains of Northern New Jersey. leam heat, electricity, fireplace, radio and all home comforts. Skating pond in front of the house. All other v. r>ni I'oi fin I pi infoi mat ion s< rfliERG, I U F.;i I 208th Street. Call Olin' ille THEATER Modjacot Shpeel 5f id dish Ma rionel te Theal re 95 Seco.id Ave. Orchard 7162 Playing every evening — Saturday and Sunday matinees ',"i::: DYBUR, and other Puppet plays WANTED ~\7~ OUNG woman, preferably ■*■ with sonic experience at making contacts, for special work in advertising department of The Nahon. Compensation moderate at the start. Write, giving detail-, in- cluding telephone number, Box 1000, care The Nation. Do not phone or call. American Tfaephone and Telegraph Company" AMD ASSOCIATED COMPANIES BELL SYSTEM On* Policy, One System, Universal Service When writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

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The Nation FOUNDED 1 8 6 C Vol. CXXIII NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1926 No. 3208 Contents EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS 677 EDITORIALS : Government by Crooks ? f,S0 Epicures in Crime 681 Walter Damrosch Retires Books and Behavior 6S2 THE FUGITIVES. By Hendrik van Loon 683 THE ANNUAL CHRISTMAS SIDE-SHOWS. By Eugene Lyons 684 A THIRD TERM FOR COOLIDGE ? Bv Frank R. Kent 685 COMMUNISM ... A RELIGION? By Louis Fischer G8G FRANCE AND GERMANY. FRIENDS. By Ida Treat 688 BERTHA, THE SEWING MACHINE GIRL. By Ann Washington Craton 689 IN THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter 690 CORRESPONDENCE 691 BOOKS. MUSIC. PLAYS : Commentary on John x. 84. By S. Foster Damon 693 First Glance. By Mark Van Doren 693 Democracies at War. Bv Keith Hutchison 693 The Holy War. By Allen Tate 691 The Democratic Ideal. By Lewis Rockow 694 Marmaduke Pickthall. By Wilbur Ncodham 695 End of the Aztecs. By Cleveland B. Chase 695 Novels in Brief 696 The Nation's Poetry Prize 696 Music: A Few Happy Moments. By Henrietta Straus 696 Drama : The Easiest Way. By Joseph Wood Krutch 697 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION: Opposition in the Soviet Union 698 OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD, Editor Associate Editors LEWIS S. GANNETT DOROTHY GRAFFE VAN DOREN ARTHUR WARNER JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH Managing Editor Literary Editor FREDA KIRCHWEY MARK VAN DOREN Contributing Editors JOHN A. HOBSON LUDWIG LEWISOHN H. L. MENCKEN NORMAN THOMAS CARL VAN DOREN DAVID BOEHM. Advertising Manager Subscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United States and Mexico ; to Canada, S5.50 ; and to foreign countries of the Postal Union, $6.00. THE NATION, No. 20 Vesey Street, New York City. Cable Address : Nation, New York. British Agent of Subscriptions and Advertising: Miss Gertrude M. Cross, 13, Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England. ONCE MORE THE UNYIELDING MAN in the White House has shown that he can be turned and twisted like any town alderman. On December 9 Mr. Coolidge wrote to the editors of the Army and Navy Journal, in reply to that journal's insistent demand for more cruisers, that "my views are epitomized in the annual message and budget message presented to Congress this week. I am convinced the estimates submitted .provide adequately for the services; and economic [\] administration will . . . maintain the navy in a high state of efficiency." The day this letter appeared in the press the strong man was waited upon by members of the House Naval Affairs Committee, whereupon he forgot all about his messages, "economic" administration, his program of economv, and his pledge to stand by the budget estimates, and consented not only to the three cruisers which he himself had held up since 1924 but also to a new program for building ten more new cruisers at the enormous cost of $105,000,000. Thus Economy Cal! It is represented that new facts presented to Mr. Coolidge suddenly convinced him that we were drop- ping to fourth place in the cruiser race; at any rate he who declared on December 7 that "No navy in the world, with one exception, approaches ours and none surpasses it," and on December 8 that to begin work on even three cruisers "would be unfortunate at this time and not in keeping with our attitude toward these [disarmament] negotiations" has joined the ballyhoo Tor international competition in cruisers. It is stated that this is to be a warning to Great Britain and Japan that "the United States is ready to keep pace with them." Which reminds us that it was Calvin Coolidge who on October 2G, 1925, at Omaha, declared that "in spite of all arguments in favor of great military forces, no nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace or to insure its victory in time of war." The President, evidently, has neither the power to think clearly nor the backbone to carry out his own policies. BEFORE THE FALL-DOHENY acquittal fades out of the public mind we must protest against the assump- tion that the Executive or any of his assistants has the right to withhold facts from any court whatsoever. The Executive has the constitutional right to withhold from Congress information the publication of which it deems inimical to the public welfare, but we have never heard that an official has the right to conceal facts when they are demanded by a court in a regular judicial procedure. That the judge in the Fall-Doheny case refused to insist upon the production of the Gleaves documents upon which the alleged Japanese war scare was based reflects gravely upon his conduct of the case besides establishing a precedent which lawyers must recognize as extremely dan- gerous. It is an unfortunate coincidence that Secretary Wilbur, who took this high-handed position, comes from the same California town in which Doheny was a leading figure when Mr. Wilbur began his career; that he was only recently chief justice of California makes his action still more regrettable. The suppression of the Gleaves reports together with Mr. Coolidge's sudden plan to build thirteen more cruisers can only have unfortunate echoes in Japan. THE SITUATION AS TO MEXICO hourly grows more serious. Secretary Kellogg threatens that if President Calles does not yield before January 1 the United States will withdraw recognition, raise the embargo on the export of arms to Mexico, and refuse all American credits. This means a deliberate effort to overthrow a neighboring govern- ment. Lifting the arms embargo can only mean that the Government intends to look with a blind eye upon expedi- tions against Mexico organized in America. Such action is sure to rally the Mexicans to Calles and to put him in a stronger position than he now holds. Instead of toppling him, as intended, it might make him impregnable. Still worse for the American oil interests — whose obedient ally Mr. Kellogg, erstwhile prosecutor of the Standard Oil, has now become — may be the reaction from such a policy. It may lead, in retaliation, to still more radical action against their properties. Overthrow of Calles, on the other hand, could only produce years of chaos and bloodshed, which might satisfy Mr. Kellogg and Mr. Sheffield, but would hardly pro- duce dividends on Mexican oil holdings. Stockholders may well contrast the defiant American attitude with the acceptance of the new order by some of the English oil companies. If the American oil men are wise they will decide before the New Year to follow suit.

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678 The Nation [Vol 123, No. 3208 LET US BEGIN THE NEW YEAR with a vote of thanks to the Senate for defeating on a point of order eral Andrews's request for a > ! appropriation for his "under-cover men" in the prohibition-enforcement army. This money v. ded to be used secretly, and without at spies, go-betweens, and agents urs. Wi r honest enforcement of the Vol- Act as long as it is on the statute-books— in contrast nee Darrow, who wishes to kill it by civil ( ence. But we have no more use for underhand spy v. In the prohibition battle it is, iuse there are any number of open i kled at once. In the lace, this underhand spying is almost always undertaken bj drels or by men who, if they are not scoundrels when they begin, speedily become so. It is almost on a par with the mosl ling police practice of all - of policem th street women and then ite them. We w eral Andrews to show thai nt is superii the bootleggers and their criminal tribe: but as a beginning let the government itself the dirty business of the snooper and the spy. WE HOPE that the Senate will now promptly ratify two treaties —that abolishing poison gas and the part with Turkey. r Borah has thrown himself into the fight for the former with courage and determination. In the face of protests from the American Legion and many chemists- all of whom were doubtless horrified when Ger- many began her "barbarous" chemical warfare General Pershing, as the fair, honest, and just fighter he is known to be, has come out against poison gas. If we decline to join the other nations in barring poison gas we shall make hypocritical our insistence that we are for genuine dis- armament. As for the treaty with Turkey, that does noth- ing more than ratify the existing status and sirrfplify it, by permitting the resumption of regular diplomatic relations. We are aware that men and women of conscience oppose ratification on sincerely held grounds. They see in accep- tance of the treaty approval of all the acts of past and pres- ent Turkish governments of which public opinion disap- We cannot agree, and the majority of the Ameri- cans living and working in Turkey as business men or missionaries also favor ratification. The best way for the United States to aid Turkey to the right kind of position in the family of nations is to enter into those treaty relations which make for peace and give us an opportunity to influence Turkey as a friend. GERMANY'S MINORITY CABINET lias been forced out. It was a "center coalition," and could carry on only when the Socialists on the Left, or the Nationalists on the Right supported it. Tin's time the Nationalists wanted a thoroughgoing Right orientation while the Socialists denounced it for tolerating the secret enlargement of the Reichswehr disclosed in the recent Feme trials. Readers of The Nation will recall Louis Fischer's article, Is Germany Disarmed? in our issue of October 20. Secret organizations of reactionaries have drilled openly in Germany; real repub- licans have been barred from the army of the German Re- public by its monarchist officers; political murders even have been committed by secret organizations led by Reichswehr officers. If the High Command has not been aware of these machinations it has been culpably negligent — and the Social- ists who forced these issues on the attention of an unwilling Reichstag deserve credit as truer German patriots than those who, concealing facts, have increased foreign suspicions. The old Cabinet will carry on until after the holidays. Mean- while a new uncertainty reigns in Eastern Europe, because of the Lithuanian coup d'etat. A reactionary military clique has ousted the Cabinet which had negotiated a friendly treaty with Russia, and the suspicion naturally arises that Poland's dictator, Pilsudski, has or will have a linger in the pie. 1MIE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES has passed a compromise bill dealing with the alien property and American claims against Germany. It will return 80 per cent of the sequestrated property, giving to the owners cer- tificates for the other 20 per cent, entitling them to share in payments made to the United Stales under the Dawes Plan, apart from the Rhine army costs. The Americans holding claims against Germany are to receive payment for 70 per cent of their claims now, taking certificates for the balance. The unallocated interest fund, accumulated down to March 1, 1!)2:5, amounting to $2(5,000,000, is to be used for the American claimants, the original alien owners to receive cer- iificatcs in return. This is an improvement on the original administration bill, which provided for outright confiscation of the interest, but we must express astonishment at the statement in the President's message I hat we have "scrupu- lously observed" the principle that private property may not be confiscated in time of war. Has the President heard of the Chemical Foundation case, even more outrageous be- cause it took place after the armistice? Inasmuch as the owners of the sequestrated property, and of the ships, radios, and patents taken over by the Government itself, are glad to take what a niggardly government will permit them to have, the bill probably deserves support in the Senate. But it would make our national record a little more savory if the United States undertook to guarantee the certificates against any default in the Dawes Plan. We owe the money; why not promise to pay if ourselves? WHO CAN VALUE UTILITIES? Can a federal judge, linked by family ties with the traction com- pany upon whose rates he is passing judgment, throw out the testimony of as eminent an authority as Delos F. Wil- cox, on the specious plea of company counsel that Mr. Wilcox was not an engineer and had never worked for a street- railway company? In the Denver Tramways Company ea e, to be heard soon on appeal by the United Slates Supreme Court, Judge Robert E. Lewis made such a ruling when a special master rendered his report after months of testi- mony. The city's case was virtually nullified, but the newly elected Elan administration, with Rice W. Means as City Attorney, continued impassive, having failed to criticize in any way the master's high valuation or to protest against Judge Lewis's family connections and expressions of preju- dice. Public-utility valuation is an intricate subject, full of moot points, involving economics, accounting, engineering, and, above all, public policy. It calls preeminently for a mind which can correlate these many aspects and arrive at a comprehensive judgment. In the course of his wide experi- ence in public-utility matters Delos Wilcox was chosen by the post-war Federal Electric Railways Commission to analyze the voluminous testimony given before it; and the commission styled his analysis "a complete and masterful

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 679 study of the whole electric-railway problem." Various other authoritative experts who have appeared for the cities are, fortunately, the product neither of engineering schools nor of company employment. Judge Lewis's decision, if allowed to stand, would bar such men and make valuation and rate hearings field-days for the companies. HOW MUCH MONEY do "white-collar" workers receive? The most recent and comprehensive answer is from the Massachusetts Department of Labor and Indus- tries, covering a survey as of May 1, 1926, of 1,075 estab- lishments in representative districts of the State. The number of persons classifiable as office workers was found to be 22,427, of whom 36.5 per cent were men and 63.5 were women. This is about 12 per cent of the total num- ber of office workers disclosed by the federal census of 1920. The Massachusetts survey reveals a sharp difference between the earnings of men and women and some decidedly low averages for large groups of the latter. Among men 6.4 per cent receive less than $16 a week, 13.7 per cent less than $20, 25.4 per cent less than $25, 40.1 per cent less than $30, 67.8 per cent less than $40, 81.7 per cent less than $50, and 18.3 per cent $50 or more. Among women 13.7 per cent receive less than $16 a week, 38.4 per cent less than $20, 70.4 per cent less than $25, 89.2 per cent less than $30, and 98 per cent less than $40! Various morals suggest themselves; the reader may pick his own. We are content merely to compare the returns of these "white-collar" employees, generally unorganized, with the earnings of 824,313 union workers in the United States, employed in the building trades, in printing and publishing, in baking, on street railways, in laundries, and as team- sters, chauffeurs, or longshoremen. These earnings, as given by the federal Department of Labor for the year ended with last June, averaged $52.12 for a full-time week. There's a difference. Can any bright boy guess why? THE POLICE HAVE WON the strike of the textile workers of Passaic, New Jersey — for the strikers. With the signing of an agreement between the Botany Consolidated Mills and the union this bitter industrial controversy of a year's duration is virtually settled, for, although some companies have not yet capitulated, the sur- render of the most influential employing group undoubtedly fixes the terms which the others will eventually accept. The 10 per cent cut in wages — already at the impoverishing level of $12 to $22 a week — which precipitated the strike has been rescinded, and the workers have won in addition collective bargaining, recognition of their organization, and preference for union members in reinstatement. The workers have not obtained the closed shop, a wage increase, nor reduced hours, but the last two demands were not put forward for any except bargaining purposes. And to celebrate the vic- tory what could be more appropriate than that the union should spread a banquet and invite as honorary guests the Sheriff of Bergen County, the police chiefs of Passaic and Garfield, and other administrative and judicial officials whose lawlessness and brutality raised the strike from a local protest of unorganized and inarticulate aliens to a national fight for civil liberties and common decency? SO WE PROPOSE A TOAST to the various bullies and buffoons in high places who imagined they were helping the employers by permitting the clubbing of peaceful pickets. the breaking up o( lawful meetings, and the promulgation of an absurd edict of "martial law," whereas in fact they created a nationwide moral and financial support for the strike and a determination and devotion among the strikers without which the struggle would have been abandoned and forgotten months ago. Although begun by a helpless and almost voiceless group of workers, the strike has been one of the most eloquent and resounding conflicts in recent years. Ignored if not scorned at the outset by the national union of the trade, the United Textile Workers, the strikers rallied under communist leadership but eventually won their way to organization and protection under the American Federation of Labor. It is inspiring also to reflect that a press and public which are apathetic to many wrongs have been singularly responsive to the cry of oppression from Passaic and did not dismiss it after a few brief weeks in the preoccupation of other matters. But we must not forget that a dozen prisoners still suffer in Jersey jails on what seem to be outlandishly impossible charges of using bombs in the strike. They must be freed and those who tortured and beat them must be prosecuted before we can leave the battlefield of Passaic — for another. THERE ARE DOMAINS which science should not enter — or at least where the thought of its entrance is appal- ling. For example, a man today may sit in the privacy of his bedroom — even in the ultra-privacy of his bed, and, thanks to the wonderful invention of the telephone, may carry on a conversation with the most beautiful lady he knows. He may have laid his wig on the wig-stand; his pajamas may be minus their top button; there is, in short, no limit to the possible extent of his dishabille, but the colloquy may be of the utmost propriety and decorum. Sci- ence, however, intrudes; the television apparatus makes it possible for the image of the telephone speaker to be con- veyed simultaneously with his voice. Privacy is gone, com- fort is gone, the early hours of the morning are lost in primping and preening, all in order to carry on a short con- versation over the telephone. THE INVENTORS OF THE TELEPHOTE, of course, have no designs on a man's privacy. They plan for the image of a baseball game or a peace conference to be con- veyed as speeches now are transmitted over the radio. They picture images of the opera, bright lights, gorgeous cos- tumes, the tenor, the basso, the contralto, the lyric soprano with her golden hair in a braid down her back, floating into the family sitting-room along with the music. A desider- atum indeed, for those who care for opera; just so with the prize-fight, the symphony orchestra, the Kiwanis banquet, the bedtime story of the benevolent rabbit and squirrel. But there is no guaranty that the benefits of the telephote will end with the transmittal of public activities. The inventors have imperiled the home. Nor is this the only direction from which it is threatened. In New York City a skyscraper 110 stories in height has been builded in the brain of an architect; its site has been chosen, plans for it have been filed, there remains only a question of time before it begins to hurl its steel girders into the clouds. The caverns in which pedestrians move about are becoming even darker and colder; the sun never enters. The New York home is increasingly lighted by artificial light and warmed far from the beneficent rays of the sun. Invention has made New York a city of cave-dwellers.

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680 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 Government by Crooks? ARE we headed for that? The question inevitably sug- gests itself when we read of the acquittal of ex-Secre- tary Fall and Mr. Doheny and recall the escape of former Attorney General Daugherty and the former Alien Property Custodian, Thomas W. .Miller, because of a "hung" jury. We admit in both cases the dilheulty of proving conspiracy. That is technical and anything but easy to get over to a jury. Yet the fact remains that the Fall-Doheny jurymen were apparently moved by maudlin sentiment for a gray- haired, broken-down old promoter and his Cabinet ally, Fall, the man who had been his pal in the hard-pan days of their yoi th. For some days the friendliness of the jury to the defendants had been so manifest that the reporters prophe- sied an acquittal. The lawyer for the accused admitted that his client Fall had lied about the $100,000 note in order to protect Doheny: "Lie? Of course he lied and every red- blooded man in New Mexico is proud of it." There v. denying the $100,000 transaction, or its juxtaposition to the Doheny lease of the naval oil reserve, or that this secret transaction about which Fall so proudly lied was anything but an above-board business deal. There was no denying such a personal relationship between a public official and a public bidder was grossly improper and indefensible. But by means of mushy sentimentality; the apotheosis of frontier morals; an absurd naval scare that could never be substantiated; an appeal to gaze upon Mrs. Fall, "daughter of the matrons of Sparta and Rome" and "a mother of the West who in the sunset of life has taken her place by the side of her husband," and the delicate suggestion not to lift the shroud of a dead President, the jury was blinded to its duty and led to free the defendants. On both sides counsel ted to the art j of the legal blatherskite and the govern- ment's performers came off second best. We do not hesitate to brand this a miscarriage of jus- tice; for every essential issue in this case has already been adjudicated. The United States District Court in Los Angeles has declared: (1) that the actions of these two men were shrouded in secrecy in order to conceal them and to deceive ress and the public; (2) that the conspiracy between Fall and Doheny is proved; <?,) that Doheny's company was a specially favored bidder; (4) that Doheny and Fall were in cahoots as to the royalties. That court was clearly of the opinion- -since upheld by the Court of Appeals, and now before the Supreme Court — that "the injury that has been done the nation, as well as the distrust of public officers that it has caused cannot be overestimated." What would it say now as to the extent of that injury in view of a jury's acquitting where the facts were so clear to it and the first court of review? We are aware, of course, (hat these two defendants may still be tried for bribery (a charge, it would seem, easier to prove than conspiracy) — and may re- ceive their punishment for that — but the net result of the verdict is surely to increase throughout the United Stater the belief that there exists one kind of justice for rich men and another for the poor; that if you only steal a large enough sum you are safe; that if you are a poor wretch who has just stolen, for the fourth time, a sum, say, of fifty dollars you may go to jail for life, as has actually happened in New York under the Baumes law. Why should people think differently with this appalling record? "High-grade lawyers," it seems, can accomplish anything. Why should the people feel differently when in addition they read that in defiance of public decency and elemental morality the Governor of Illinois, himself ordered by an Illinois court to pay back $1,000, 000 to the State Treasury for illegal State expenditures during his incumbency, has just appointed Senator-elect Frank L. Smith to the United States Senate to fill the brief unexpired term of the late Senator McKinley? Warned by their own party leaders not to let this take place, both Governor Small and Mr. Smith defied their party as well as the decency of the Senate. This man who, as chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission, "shook down" the public-utilities magnates in his State for contributions to his primary campaign funds running above a hundred thousand dollars, is not to wait until March 4 to present his credentials; he is to be seated at once if the Gov- ernor has his way — as if to do the bidding of the man who helped him to buy his seat. He is not even to await the find- ings of the Senate committee headed by Senator Reed which has inquired into the circumstances of his primary cam- paign. The Senate and public opinion alike are to be flouted with a brazen indecency unparalleled in recent history. Well, the gauntlet is flung down and the issue is whether we are to be governed by and for and with crooks. That it is, whether Colonel Smith's soul is as white as snow and he is so steeped in rectitude as to be unaffected by that public- utility money and its implications, or whether he is there as the bond-servant of the donors. We have been through an orgy of corruption in high office and also of the purchasing of such office on a scale not even surpassed in the Adminis- tration of President Grant. If the Ohio gang is to go scot- free, if men about whose huge campaign receipts there can be no question are to be seated in the Senate, then let us at least cease to be hypocritical. Let us admit to all the world that we have sunk to as low an estate as any Central American republic. icape of Fall, Doheny, Daugherty, and their tribe is not what matters. The nation could afford even to lose its richest oil-fields if it learned its lesson. To punish a half dozen sinners would not alter the system under which they reached high office and aided one another in corruption. The menace lies in the fact that the nation still sleeps; that business men feel relieved that the system has not been upset; that jurors see nothing wrong when Cabinet secre- taries secretly accept hundred-thousand-dollar gifts from old pals who happen to be oil magnates, and give away the public lands; that our national conscience has been numbed. Governor Small and Colonel Smith at least seem to have dug their own grave. The Washington dispatches report that if Mr. Smith presents his credentials not ten Senators will vote for him. If true, let us be grateful for that. If there is any other outcome in this and the Vare case, if juries continue to free men who have soiled the United States Cabinet itself with their corruption, let us haul down the Stars and Stripes from the Capitol, hoist the black flag with a dollar mark on it, and proclaim our shame to all the world.

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 681 Epicures in Crime THE Fall-Doheny acquittal suggests not only that we Americans have no passionate aversion to government by crooks, as indicated in an accompanying editorial, but also that we are becoming epicures in crime. We delight in — or at least we accept complacently — whatever is elegant, refined, and served on silver platters, at the same time that we turn savagely upon that which is crude, commonplace, or outmoded. If we are not becoming epicures — not to say snobs — in crime, how does it happen that in an era of strik- ing public indifference toward political corruption and dis- honest business transactions we are witnessing a spectacular outburst against such simple, old-fashioned crimes as burg- lary and highway robbery? It is not just a case of the rich man against the poor man. When the rich man is so ill- advised as to commit an unrefined crime we pursue him as relentlessly as if he were poor, although of* course his money buys a better defense, and when it comes to hanging there is undoubtedly a feeling in the average juryman's noddle that a noose chafes a neck used to a greasy shirtband less than one coddled with a white collar. That wealth is no blanket protection against militant American morality is proved by our intolerance toward the Countess Karolyi who broke our First Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit radi- calism"; and our treatment of the Countess Cathcart, who violated one of the higher numbered commandments — chiefly, perhaps, the eleventh, which reads, "And above all thou shalt not be found out." Epicures in crime? If not that, how can Americans take so indifferently — even jocosely — the doings of our politi- cal and commercial gunmen and at the same time grow so hysterical over the acts of the old-fashioned revolver brand- ishers? The New York courts have been unable to convict Daugherty and Miller, but the State recently enacted in the Baumes law a code of increased vigor against the criminal resorting to older and more vulgar methods. According to this law a judge is required to send a man to prison for life if convicted of a felony four times, without reference to any mitigating circumstances, and the prisoner is deprived of any opportunity for parole. Thus a certain Negro, amiable in his cups, who for the fourth time in his life appropriated an automobile and went off for a stolen joy ride, was sen- tenced to life imprisonment; another whose record was sixty days in 1919 for third-degree burglary, sixty days in 1920 for petty larceny, two years in 1924 for third-degree burglary, and who was so unfortunate as to get into a fight with one of his fellow-stevedores and be arrested for as- sault, also will spend his life in prison. These are not desperate criminals, yet they receive the sentences usually allotted to such and the State prisons now are reported to be virtually filled. Formerly it was easier to plead guilty and rely on the possible leniency of the judge; now crimi- nals stand trial in the hope of a jury disagreement. From June 30 to November 15 the number of indictments in- creased almost 100 per cent, although the same months in 1925 showed only a 10 per cent increase. The Baumes law was intended to put the fear of jail — if not of God — into the heart of the unaristocratic criminal, but six months' experience with the above provision has called forth vigorous public disapproval from two district attorneys, several judges, and some of the leading news- papers. Yet the community at large, in violation of all that centuries of experience with penology should have taught, has been stampeded into a belief that cruel and long punish- ments are a protection against crime. Contemplation of this of mind has led Heywood Broun to say in the New York World that "the community has hardened its heart against the criminal. And also," he adds, "softened its head." That our sudden fui old-fashioned criminal is unintelligent is demonstrated by the historical evidence that a reduction in crimes of violence has gone hand in hand with a lessening in the severity of punishment and an increased respect in the communit; tie sacred- ness of human life. The importance of increasing rather than lessening the respect for human life makes it especially tragic that the ria which in New York has led to some of the exag- gerations of the Baumes law has produced agitation for the restoration of capital punishment in at least two States where it is now happily non-e One of the most progressive aspects of criminal law in the United States is the start that has been made toward the abolition of the death penalty. In eight States — Mic i'hode Island, Wisconsin, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, North and South Dakota — capital punishment no longer exists, and the complete elimination of this relic of barbarism ought to be a goal everywhere. But so far from a gain of new ground there now seems to be danger of losing some of the old in the fright and ignorance of public opinion in the face of the so-called "crime wave." In North Dakota there is talk of restoring the death penalty and in Michigan a bill has been introduced into the legislature which would revive capital punishment in that State. Four States — Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Missouri — restored capital pun- ishment in the hysteria against radicalism immediately fol- lowing the World War; it would be a tragedy if others stepped backward too. And while we are in a frenzy to revive cruel and obso- lete punishments it never occurs to us that a federal law limiting drastically the importation and transportation of revolvers would do more to end gunmen and banditry than all the jails and gallows ever created. Walter Damrosch Retires 'ALTER DAMROSCH is to lay down the baton after forty-two years of orchestral conducting. Not really to retire from the world of music — that is unthinkable. As long as he lives his interest in music and musical education will — must — continue. But the burden of leading the New York Symphony Orchestra he is now to shift to others after having devoted himself to it since 1903. He confesses to sixty-four years; it seems incredible, since it was surely only yesterday that he was "the young Damrosch," deter- mined to follow in the footsteps of his great father, Leopold Damrosch, one of the best of the many gifts to the United States from musical Germany. But sixty-four is a good retiring age; Walter Damrosch deserves leisure for those other things dear to his heart which every active man puts by for the day when he retires — a day which for most never comes. It is true, of course, that Walter Damrosch never rose to his father's heights and that his conducting could never be called inspired — it has always been uneven, at times bad. Severe criticisms of his conducting and musical taste have appeared in The Nat inn as well as elsewhere. There was at first a feeling that the son was following his father less

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682 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 because of an artistic urge than because of the temptation to profit by a sire's success which makes so many young men the law-partners of their prosperous fathers. Such feelings in regard to Walter Damrosch have long since been cha lity of the man; his tireless industry, his growth o music outside of the concert hall, | lis unsparing efforts to make good musj( es, his sponsorship of talent rvedly recognized, and was a pleasure to record a few years ago his taking of ican orchestra for a trip to Europe -a most happy tit rewarded by more than one government. rever be set his service, when :.t conductor ipolitan Opera, in Lilli Lehmann to this often brought upon him • that composer and his v. familiarization in the American musical world. As a program-maker he is of the very b opinio] 1 about his orchestra. There time when his alliance with Harry Harkness ■dinary devotion and munificent generosity imperil the successes of other and n .led organizations- the Philharmonic, for in- mnd that it could not permanently use Mi-. Damrosch. T rs are long past. There is nothing dinary in the spiritual and intellectual growth of America in ■< than its new appre- ciation of the orchestra. The establishment of great musical as far West as Oregon has had its counterpart in New York where the Philharmonic is crowded, tick* the Philadelphia Orchestra are unavailable, and the Minne- apolis, Cincinnati, Boston, and other orchestras play to in- More than one great orchestra New York certainly needs; its musical growth h hit up with the Symphony. Whether the hitter's deficits are as great as ■.-ere in 191-1 when Mr. Flagler became its sole sup- porter we do not know; his purse has seemed limitless, and the reward has been his of anticipating and justifying a If the partnership with Damrosch is dissolved, it is gratifying to know that this generous citizen and patriot will continue to serve the musical world. Hooks and Behavior AT the bottom of the censorship question is another ques- tion which, so far as we know, has never been ade- quately considered. What is the effeel of any book, good or bad, upon the conduct of its readers? It is generally as- sumed that a "good" book is "good for" human beings; everyone has heard it said of some work or other that "no one can rise from the reading of it without being a better man." People over the earth have claimed as much for their , whether they were Mohammedans, Buddhists, Con- fucianists, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jews, or Chris- tians. And Coleridge claimed as much for "Tom Jones," which he defended even against those who pointed to the dreadful episode of Tom and Lady Bellaston. Are such claims legitimate, and if they are, what do they mean? And does it follow that there are certain hooks the reading of which leaves one a worse or a more dangerous person? The general question has been answered, but not ade- quately, by Gertrud Baumer, a member of the Democratic Party in the German Reichstag. She was writing to the Vossische Zeitung in answer to widespread criticism in the German press of a censorship bill presented to the Reichstag. The bill is designed to discourage the publication of violent and otherwise "low" fiction of the sort which, it is reported, circulates in abundance today among the youth of the new republic. Frau Baumer said: It may be true that, on the whole, no great material harm is done by acts of burglary committed by youthful gangs after reading bad detective stories. What is true is that usually much harm is done to youth by these books. The question therefore is, should bad literature be permitted to get in the way of good literature and triumph over it? Which is worse — the risk that a book which may not be regarded as KM) per cent bad may be placed by mistake on the black list or the risk that one child's life be ruined by such a book? Whatever the merits of this reasoning, Frau Baumer's argument has prevailed in the Reichstag, with the result that committees of investigation will he empowered, when six of their eight members so agree, to prevent any book or illustration from appearing anywhere in Germany hence- forth. A court of appeal, to be established at Leipzig, will have we know not what mollifying effect. Frau Baumer's reasoning is probably very had — or it may be perfect. Wo do not know or care which. The point is that we are tired of reasoning per 8e in this connection. Are there no facts? Is there not a science of psychology, even one of physiology, that could throw light upon the processes set up in the mind, in the body, when a book is read? The body, presumably, is important, since it is with body that a boy goes out of the room in which his mind has been absorbed and gets a gun, points it at some unsus- pecting citizen on the street, and, perhaps, pulls the trigger. That is the process which Frau Baumer highhandedly lines when she speaks of burglaries "committed . . . after the reading of had detective stories." She admits that there may be doubt concerning the amount of harm done by these burglaries; she has never thought, to ask, it would seem, whether the burglaries were caused by the books. And she imply, by the way, that "good" defective stories would not. bring about the same results? The best detective stories we know are not about patriotism or platonic love; if they were we should not know them. Neither Shake- speare nor the Bible is wholly occupied with virtue. If psychology and physiology could elucidate the processes we have spoken of, and if they could establish that books do influence conduct along with the imagination, there would still be the problem of deciding what actions or thoughts are good and what are bad. Ft hies would come in there, and ethics, fortunately or unfortunately, is so far not a science; it. changes with every decade. Doubtless it will ays be difficult to know what is really "harmful" to "youth," and after that to say for certain that society is not just as well off with a little harm going on here and there. It is all very hard. And meanwhile the censorious are al- ways raking over books and plays in America, looking for evil, and the House of Lords is considering a bill to pn the publication of divorce-trial proceedings in English news- papers in order, says Lord Burnham, proprietor of the Daily Telegraph, to render to the rich that protection of silence concerning their sins which is now enjoyed by the obscure poor. In England, then, they seek to leave such things to the imagination — which no government has thus far learned how to suppress.

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 683

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684 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 The Annual Christmas Side-Shows By EUGENE LYONS ALL year round the main ring under the big top is occupied by Prosperity— a big blustering fellow; lagician, acrobat. This way, ladies and men! Hi its, he tunnels through moun- tains and reaches across oceans, he picks up the Int. pe and South America and juggles them dizzy. d to his strength and teats and jolly pranks. liar surpluses for the government; billion liars in extra dividends; oodles of money— >ur Luce Sam for a loan. .Millions in bonus. deserving em] tie for every man, woman, and child; a ,-ery mai n for every job. . old daj lums and sweatshops? i the big boy m tuff, but thi , i i Christmas liarity inn. ii iur name in the paper; buy Lure in the paper, maybe on the front are, and Dr. Frank te. or ye have alv\ ou." Under cashing in on the Christ- N'ew thr!1 year, unique displays, in 'ion, old-fashioned slums, widows for the "thrill of giving," thi are deserving cases. Worked hard all their lives. The kind of men and women this nation needs — plodders, humble, thankful, no grumblers, no bolsheviks. Come right in and see them they smile while they suffer! Take Case 31 a mother: "For twenty years she had ibbed floors, but a little more than a year ago the corpo- i at ion discharged her, gave her a year's extra pay. Because he has been unable to obtain other work." And another mother in Case 29, this one with four children: "Every morning at 3 o'clock the mother rises to trudge through the deserted streets to a Brooklyn ofiice-building, where she scrubs floors till daybreak. Late in the afternoon she leaves her home again and works for three hours in the evening. But her earnings are insufficient." Case 53 : a family of eight. The father "had under- mined his health in hi truggle to support this largi family. Fie had held three jobs at once counterman in a restaurant from six in the morning to noon, waiter in another from noon to six, dishwasher in a third until eleven at night." Or Case 15: "Jim, a sturdy boy of 16, is work- ing in a box factory at $8 a week and doing his best to take a father's place in the lives of his two young sisters. . . . | The barker does not mention the paper-box strike against the $8 wage] . . . Their father, a street cleaner, died of tuberculosis some years ago, leaving the family almost penniless. For years the mother went out washing until the heavy work told on her health. ..." Yes, sir! one hundred in a row, and not one of them got that way from coupon-clipping. Honest, respectable wrecks, of whom the Times can be proud. This is not charity for loafers; all are guaranteed destitute through overwork. Come and look quick. The show will soon shut down for a year. Delectable slums; peep-shows of half-blind women and their broods basting mountainous piles of gar- ments, making artificial flowers, beading gowns, and sup- ported by charity. Take a good look before the curtain is drawn. This way, for Christ's sake, this way. And remember, contributions are tax-exempt. No fea fter-effects, After Chri torn the show will positivelj close. On the front pares, on the floor of ess, everywhere, big boy Prosperity will perform alone. His ballyhoo brigade does its stunts twelve n in the year.

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 685 A Third Term for Coolidge? By FRANK R. KENT Washington, December 18 SENATOR MOSES was right. The real business of this session of Congress is Presidential politics. Always reasonably frank, with a new six-year ticket in his pocket, the gentleman from New Hampshire can afford now to be franker than before. It was just after the election that In- expressed himself to the above effect. No truer political words have been said in some time. What's the use of writing about the session? What's the use of commenting on the silly and repetitious solemnity of the Coolidge message or the feebleness of White House leadership? Where's the good of talking about tax reduc- tion, farm relief, and tariff changes? Every posted person knows that nothing will be done about any of them. The undignified and mortifying conciliation of insurgent Sena- tors, the utter loss of Presidential dignity in the Coolidge- Nye incident, the White House invitations to the once black- listed Shipstead — none of these things indicates a cohesive party or a constructive program. All there is back of them is Presidential politics — Presidential politics played in a small way but unmistakable just the same. That is all any- one is interested in in Washington this session and 1 can afford to be as frank about it as Senator Mo, Here are the facts — as things stand today Mr. Coolidge is the leading candidate for the Republican 1023 nomina- tion. There is, however, considerable doubt that he can again "make the grade" notwithstanding the general and well-founded belief that the power of the Presidency is such that a White House incumbent can always secure a renomi- nation. As to Mr. Coolidge wanting another term, that is too obvious to argue. No President ever liked the White House better than he. No President ever wanted to hold on to it more. When he leaves it will be because he has to. If and when he announces that he will not be a candidate to succeed himself, it will be because his prospects have faded and he is afraid to take the chance. In the last six weeks he has made his desire to stay evident in a hundred ways, and nowhere more plainly than in his conferences with the correspondents. He wants it but he doesn't want to fight for it — and he won't. He wants to get this nomination the way he got every other nomination he ever had, beginning with that first one for Alderman in Northampton— that is, by being the organi- zation candidate, by having back of him the machine and the machine leaders. If he does not get it that way he won't get it at all. He will make no fight because he never made a fight. In the whole of his political career there is no record of a fight. That is a curious thing to say of a man who has been a successful candidate for public office 13 —or is it 14— times, but it is true nevertheless. It can't be called fighting to be the machine candidate in the primaries and run on the ticket of the dominant party in the general election. That is the Coolidge record from his first office to his last. He is not a fighter, he's a fixer. If he can fix things so that behind him will be massed his party organization^ he will go after this nomination, tradition or no tradition. Otherwise not. His game is quietly to line up behind him the machine — and anyone who thinks he is not working at it is not very observant. That's all he is working at. In his small armadillo way he is hard at it all the time — placating some leaders in one way, others in another, using federal appointments, favors, White House invitations and indorsements — particularly invitations — with considerable political cunning and skill. Not long ago he wrote a letter of indorsement of a newspaper, owned by a Washington political writer, who is sending the letter out as circulation bait. What he is really trying to do is creep up on the nomination. By the end of this session, perhaps, it will be easier to tell whether he is making progress backward or forward. It is interesting to note the factors in his favor and then those against him. There is first the fact that as dent he has vast patronage power, prestige, and pre- rogatives which put any other candidate under heavy handi- cap. Second, he has the support of the great bulk of the newspapers of the country and is still popular with the people, though perhaps his popularity has begun to wane. Third, three years of party propaganda havi larly effective in magnifying his achievements, mini- mizing his failures, and keeping an heroic picture of him in the public mind. Fourth, he still has control over the National Committee, to the chairmanship of which his close friend, ex-Senator William M. Butler, though rejected by the voters of Massachusetts, clings at the request of the President. Fifth, if prosperity still prevails next year, the great business and banking interests, which are under no delusions as to Mr. Coolidge's real size, will none the less be averse to a change. He suits them, and their dominance in the Republican Party is such that they may through pres- sure bring into line for him reluctant and recalcitrant Old Guard leaders, who thoroughly dislike him and if left to themselves will not support him. That's one side. It's the side you hear most about in Washington just now, but there is another. When the Coolidge assets as a candidate to succeed himself are set down they do seem sufficiently formidable to make his nomi- nation inevitable. In a stronger man they would be. With him, however, it is a question whether the assets will not in the final test be outweighed by the liabilities. The list of the latter is longer, but scales won't begin to turn one way or the other for some time yet. To present the arguments against him there is — First, the third-term tradition. It is all very well to talk about his "seco: d elective" term but that phrase won't stick. Should he get another, he will have been President two years longer than any other man in our history. The limi- tation that Washington and Jefferson regarded as wise and to which Grant and Roosevelt yielded as final is to be broken for Coolidge? It does not seem sane. Second, the agrarian revolt in the great Republican States in the West is real, and political history shows that when they become aroused, the Western farmers have their political way, or something unpleasant happens to the party that stands in the way. That they are deeply stirred no posted person doubts. It is true that inexorable economic laws may again operate as

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686 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 they have in the past to mitigate agricultural grievances, but on the other hand these may grow worse. In any event, the sentiment in eleven normally Republican States consti- e well-known Corn Belt is strongly anti-adminis- tration. A significant instance of the readiness out there to disregard party lines was given in the last campaign when Republican Representative Dickinson of Iowa went into Illinois to urge the election of Democratic Representa- tive Rainey. A third argument is that there is in the field a Presidential candidate inherently stronger than Mr. Coolidge — Frank 0. Lowden. It may be that his age — 66 — or his health, or some other reason will keep Mr. Lowden from making another fight but there is not the least doubt that at this time he is a candidate. In 1920 he missed the nomination by the narrowest margin. In 1924 he refused a unanimous nomination for Vice-President on the Coolidge ticket. For eight years he has devoted himself to studying agricultural problems, to farming, to a quiet strengthening s fences, to making friends. Today he has a stronger backing, more potential political power, and a better chance than any other man except Mr. Coolidge. He looms larger than any other. Popular, able, rich, with a fine record and an attractive personality, Lowden is the real candidate. The farmers are crazv about him. He is the agricultural hero. To sum up the other Coolidge liabilities, there is the inherent feebleness of the man himself, the admitted fact that he is largely a combination of machine support, party propaganda, and accident. There is the further fact that Old Guard leaders cordially dislike him personally and resent the accident that projected him into the White House and enabled him to be nominated in 1924. But for the death of Mr. Harding no one would ever have seriously suggested Mr. Coolidge for the Presidency. The fact is he was so negligible a quantity that he might easily have failed for rcnomination as Vice-President. He was in Washington in 1922 a political joke and would still be but for the glamor of the Presidency. Finally, there is the belief that the Republican nomi- nation next time is more or less a "set up," that because of the split among the Democrats and their complete lack of an issue, the Republican 1928 nomination is equivalent to an election. Of course, they may be mistaken but that is the way they feel now. Under such circumstances it seems to the machine leaders all the more disastrous to let the nomi- nation go to Mr. Coolidge by default. They are not going to do it if they can help it, but it comes down to this — if they can't beat him with Lowden they can't with any one. At least that is the present opinion of the "talent." Communism ... A Religion? By LOUIS FISCHER />'r( mber 22 TilLUL is of course freedom of worship in Soviet Russia, and as many churches are open as (he devout wish and can afford to maintain. Nevertheless, the coun- try is bathed in atheism. The youth, when it is not frankly "godless," has no contact or sympathy with religion. The urban proletariat has been infected by the spirit which the Bolsheviks propagate. Even peasants have grown skeptical. They have seen Communists defile their churches with "Red" meetings and have witnessed the burning in effigy of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, aye, of Cod Himself. Yet no hand from heaven struck these infidels down. Churches, synagogues, and mosques are filled but not so well filled as in the past. More arid more couples prefer the congratulatory resolution of a workers' club meeting or the good wishes of the chairman of a local soviet to the blessings of a priest, and Red baptisms or "Octobrinas" take the place of christenings. "Holy Russia" stands in the sign of atheism. What is to become of her? What do the Communists offer for the religion they have destroyed? Communism is not a religion. Yet there can be no doubt that for many people who open their souls to its influence it provides a consuming faith. It offers the staff of life to myriads who see the props and stays of their non-physical existence torn from under them by the ugliness, futility, and folly of much of the civilization about them. Unlike religion, Communism seeks not to reform the individual but rather to create a state of affairs in which it will be difficult and ultimately impossible for him to exploit his fellow, and unnecessary for him to lie, steal, rob, murder, and make wars. The single circumstance that the roads to wealth in Russia are few, perilous, and socially degrading must have a salutary effect on the youth. Service on behalf of the nation opens a wide and attractive door to the young man who plans his future, and though it does not bar ambition it does definitely preclude the setting up of money and luxuries as the sole end of life. This applies not alone to the Communist whose salary is limited to a low maximum but to millions of state employees. Better i raining or greater ability will bring him a higher wage; on the other hand, he cannot under present conditions give a serious thought to becoming rich by "going into business." The Nepman is a pariah and looked down upon. The pri- vate industrial entrepreneur is the detested capitalist sitting on a tiny volcanic island in the midst of a big red sea. If the struggle for life is bitter on account of the abi of these and similar possibilities, nevertheless there exists far less compulsion or temptation to sell one's soul to Mammon. "But many people do. What of bribery?" it will be said. Quite true; conditions in Russia are not per- fect; yet grafting has diminished. There is, furthermore, a more determined effort to stamp it out, and hence more talk about it. Numerous other instances of higher ethical standards come to mind. The original misfortune which the revo- lution inflicted upon those women whose profession there- tofore had been that of waiting for a husband is now appre- ciated by many as a blessing. It forced them to work, made them economically independent. It set them free for a love life and new type of family life which outside of Russia even those women who do provide for themselves cannot experience to the full because they are isolated units in a world which thinks and acts differently. I have spoken to the daughters of formerly wealthy fathers and the wives of wealthy men who, now that they are impoverished, have no regret for the sweet, lazy days of the past. They are

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 687 no longer harem women, but equal, producing members of a working community. Life is harder yet richer. The simple fact that a job as a street cleaner or a factory worker admits one to the aristocracy of a country has a moral, or if you will "religious," value which can scarcely be exaggerated. 1 have, for instance, seen many Jewish merchants who are forsaking their small tov become peasants in South Russia. Their great urj economic distress resulting from state participation in retail trade; nevertheless all are happy that this circum- stance is driving them away from a parasitic existence into a life that opens the door to citizenship, to equal civil rights, and — most important — to productive labor. The revolution has established a new social scale for Soviet Russia. The man who earns his daily bread by the sweat of his brow stands fust. The student youth is second, the intellectual third (he is rising), and the private capi- talist or Nepman last. Men and women do not wish to desert the ranks of labor. That they must content them- selves with little material wealth is compensated by the satisfaction of belonging to the ruling class, which is laying the foundations for a future with less injustice and inequality than the present. If it is unjust that one should live by the labor of one's fellows, then the Bolsheviks have removed much injustice. If the example of the pomp of royalty, the splendor of princes, the luxury of army officers, the leisure of landed gentry, and the prodigality of a half-grown bourgeoisie is demoralizing, then the Communists who swept these classes into the ashheap of history have performed a service to the country. In place of extravagance, frugality ; in place of ceremony, simplicity; in place of loose living, puritanism. There are exceptions, to be sure, but the mass and not the exceptions sets the standard for the nation. Even the temp- tations of the NEP, which at one time seemed to threaten the spiritual undoing of the Communists themselves, have been largely overcome. These are achievements which evade the statistician, escape the transient or unsympa- thetic foreign observer, and defy the newspaperman. Yet they are facts. One need only pry into a soul here and there to find traces of their existence. And then democracy. Democracy? But Soviet Russia is a dictatorship, it will be argued. In this non-political discussion I shall attempt neither to rebut nor to qualify the accusation except to remark in passing that the demo- cratic forms of some countries are no guaranty of demo- cratic content and that democracy may exist in a state whose leaders scoff at the bourgeois conception of the term. The reference here, however, is not to the legal relationship between citizen and government but rather to the human contacts which the present system permits and encourages. That word tovarish has a leveling and democratic effect. Sometimes its mere utterance establishes a bond of cor- diality. You do not say "Mr. President" to Kalinin, but "Comrade" and he may sit and crack sunflower seeds with the lowly peasant who has walked a thousand miles to Moscow to air his grievances before the chief executive. At meetings in the Moscow Big Theater a headkerchiefed mahishka (little mother) or a baste-shoed peasant with hay in his beard will come to the platform and explain what she or he and the folks back home think of Curzon or Lenin or taxes. In the former throne-room of the Krem- lin Palace, during sessions of the Central Executive Com- mittee— Russia's nearest approach to a parliament — hun- dreds of mujiks dressed in light blue polka-dotted blouses, breeches, and knee-high boots participate in important debates and bring to the capital impressions of popular sentiment along the lower reaches of the Volga, in frozen Yakutia, in tropical Turkestan, in Buriat Mongolia, and in the mountain fastness of Cis-Caucasia. Visit a museum on Sunday. Scores of workers, caps in hand, and many peasants from the urban periphery are being guided through well-stocked chambers to see treasures of whose existence they knew nothing a few years ago. Workers' reading- rooms, sport clubs, village library huts — there are tens of thousands of them. The blight of illiteracy to which "Holy Russia" gladly reconciled herself is rapidly being stamped out by its present atheist rulers, whose ambitious program is 100 per cent literacy on the tenth anniversary of the revolution. Knowledge of the three R's may not make Ivan a better man. But the methods of the Bolsheviks are opening his mind and soul. He now sees beyond his dark, ofttime depressing surroundings; his field of vision takes in a universe, where it was formerly confined to a par.,riV, the works and the words of great men are now brought to his door, or he is brought to them; superstitions by which the church maintained its dark hold on the masses are being dispelled. The humdrum of a miserably hard life is being varied and lit up by spiritual contact and sympathy with the coolie, the peon, and the British miner. Consider the financial assistance given the British miners by the Soviet proletariat. The Russians did not wait until they were made to weep over starving children. Nor can any selfish motive explain their splendid, spon- taneous generosity. The German workers, who stood to lose much by the defeat of the miners, could not be roused to put an embargo on shipments of coal to British ports or even to give alms. Neither Russia nor her workers will obtain any practical advantage or disadvantage from the outcome of the strike. The Russian people gave because they realize that the larger interests of labor do not stop at national frontiers. It was a manifestation of universal brotherhood — the theoretical ideal of all religions. The Bolsheviks have made it a fact, at least as far as the proletariat is concerned. One could clear away the earth from still more tender sprouts which are shooting up from the seeds planted in Russian soil by the Communists. Some would prove to be weeds. Many give promise of healthy fruit. The Bol- sheviks believe neither in the holiness of the individual nor in the immutability of human nature. They are con- vinced that ethics, morals, character, the spirit can be modified and improved by bringing about the necessary economic changes. Thus by means of revolutionary economic change they aim to achieve the human results that religion would bring about by other means. What Made These Women "Modem"? The fifth in the series of personal revelations by well-known women will appear next week. If you have ed the first four, mail this announcement and fifty cents in stamps. A psychoanalyst and a behaviorist will analyze for The Nation these anonymous articles in an attempt to discover the underlying causes of the modern ivoman's attitude toward men, marriage, children and jobs.

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6S8 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 France and Germany, Friends By IDA TREAT Paris, December 1 S Reichstag on Novem- in the political mill-pond, disturb- harmonies had swelled iry. To be .sure there had already he Quai d'Orsay. It is no iments with regard to the lain characteristically un- rupture with Briand mversations. rman Mini uggesting the sup- tnter-Allied Military Commission and the and and r as a preface for .used an explosion of astonished indig- French press. "Victorious France" irr tion. The Right— from the Liberie d the old scarecrow of German ag- hen Briand told the Cham- , rmany was both possible and im- i be no durable peace in Europe •man rapprochement," the majority of u unqualified approval. helped to save the Briand-Strese- mann - from disaster during the last days of di affair, Italian military activity Savoy frontier, and the disquieting statements of nial expansion have provided the Quai d'Orsay with considerable food for thought. The Italo- German allian 1 in the Italian press would by its alliance of two colony-seeking Powers h suprei n\r, the Mediterranean, and at pening German coal-fields to growing Italian industry, oppose a new and powerful competitor to French manufacturers. France, somewhat isolated on the ha : rea: on to look for friends. i » va Conference may do toward better- ing the political relations between Germany and France an ord already exists. During the past months French and German industry have concluded a series of im- nt alliances. The agreement signed last April, by the Kali-Syndikat and the Societe Commerciale des the world potash market for a ars between the two trusts, allowing a pro- duction-quota of 70 per cent to the German firms and 30 to man producers have a monopoly of sales at in Austria, and in E pe; French producers i] the West. A join on dictates prices and supervises fort ign sales. nber and Octob the conclusion of similar ments, not all of which are limited exclusively to French and German industries. The European Bone and Glue Trust includes fifteen countries; the Tube Trust unites France, Belgium, Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. The Aluminum Trust combines the foremost manufacturers of France, Germany, Switzerland, and E land; the Nail and Wire Trust groups Holland, Belgium, Germany, and France. The United States participates with France and Germany in the alliance of electric-lamp manu- facturers— an alliance which is shortly to be extended to general electrical production. Copper and textile agreements are already on the way. The Cartel de l'Acier, concluded September 30 by repre- sentatives of the steel industry of France, Germany, Bel- gium, Luxemburg, and the Saar, represents by far the most important alliance yet formed. Based on an annual produc- tion of from 25 to 30 million tons of steel, the cartel regu- lates the production of each member of the group (Germany, ; per cent; France, 111. IS; Belgium, L1.56; Luxemburg, 8. ."50, and the Saar, 5.70) ; allows for the importation, duty- free, of French steel into Germany — to be bought and sold by the German syndicate — and provides a system of li and compensations — respectively $4 and $2 per ton — for those who exceed or fail to attain the stipulated ratio of production. Before 1914 the French steel industry imported mucl oal supply from the Ruhr. The Versailles Treaty, by allotting to France the iron mines and steel plants of Lor- raine, increased the coal demand tremendously. The ensuing conflict, from 1919 to 1923, between German coal magna and the Cornite des Forges found its most violent expression in the occupation of the Ruhr by French troops. While the inflation period favored the development of the German steel industry and worked to the disadvantage of the Lorraine manufacturers, the stabilization of the mark as well as the fall of the franc enabled the latter to flood central and south- ern Germany with iron ore and half-finished products. After January, 1925, when the customs regulations, instituted by the Versailles Treaty and favoring French production, ex- pired, an attempt was made to eliminate French products from the German market by heavy protective tariffs. At this time the first serious pourparlers took place between the representatives of French and German steel industries. Whether the cartel is or is not, extended to include lish producers, the steel alliance forms a solid basis for Franco-German relations, and the conversations at Thoiry and Geneva may be regarded as a translation into the do- main of politics of the economic, policy of the hour. While diplomats converse and the captains of industry negotiate, the intellectuals of France and Germany are busy rediscovering each other. Especially is this true of France, always more chauvinistic in art and letters than her neigh- bor across the Rhine. The few Frenchmen who before the war labored despairingly to create a current of interest be- tween artists and thinkers of the two countries state today that, never before lias there been such enthusiasm for int ■!- lectual interpenetration. A few concrete examples. Gemier takes his project of an international theater to Berlin. Thomas Mann and Alfred Kerr speak to cordial and sympathetic audiences in Paris. The prudent Tristan-Bernard attends the Reinhardt jubilee and gives out timidly enthusiastic statements to the French is. German expressionists exhibit their paintings in the French capital. Paul Va' nerally considered as the of conservative Franc", receives a warm welcome on the other side of the frontier. Rilke and von Unruh have

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 689 been social lions of the Paris season. And Yvette Guilbert is to open a school of diction in Berlin. The recent Cinema Congress held in Paris was in reality a meeting of French and German producers. A proposition to give back the Legion of Honor to German scientists, artists, and nun of letters is formulated by Comcedia, and a French Minister, whose name is prudently withheld, states solemnly that the time has come to offer the decoration to other German intel- lectuals "for services rendered to science, literature, and humanity ; in other words, to the policy of pe; French popular sentiment also is undergoing a change. If one must speak in a foreign tongue, it is on the whole better to talk German than English in the streets and cafes of Paris today. A recent scene in the subway may serve as illustration. An Englishman and a German, both consider- ably inebriated, were disputing a vacant seat. The discus- sion was in French, with varying accents. The crowd took sides with the German. To be sure the latter showed an astonishing grasp of crowd psychology. "If it hadn't been for . . . the French," he announced to the gallery, "we would have wiped you off the earth back in 1914." The Briton had to get off at the next station to avoid being mobbed ! As for the middle class — "It begins to look as if we would have to fight the Ital- ians. Insufferable race with their toy Bonaparte!" The speaker, a middle-aged leather broker, threw down his news- paper in disgust. "And the English?" "Just as bad. 'Insupportablcs, tons !' They make me long for a second Joan of Arc! Do you know, the only people I can stand today. . . . 0 they destroyed the north of France, they killed over a million of us, and they committed atroci- ties— perhaps. But they at least know what it is to suffer. I tell you, the only people I can stand today are the Boches !" Geneva or no Geneva, Franco-German rapprochement i3 in the air. Bertha, the Sewing-Machine Girl By ANN WASHINGTON CRATON TWENTY years ago Bertha the Sewing-Machine Girl vied in popularity with Nellie the Beautiful Cloak Model. Who cares for the Berthas of 1926? Perhaps popu- lar interest may be revived because the Fox Film Corpo- ration is doing a stupendous movie, which will soon be released. Bertha's struggles in a dressmaking establish- ment will be portrayed by the charming Madge Bellamy. The research department of the Fox Films in order to provide a realistic background made an exhaustive search for a dressmaking establishment where old-fashioned sewing machines were still in use, operated by American — not foreign-born — girls. Bertha made her living in the sweatshop days before trade-union organization had abol- ished the most flagrant evils in the garment trades. The dress shops in the wholesale district were impossible to film; they were housed in model loft-buildings, with ade- quate lighting, and used the latest electric-motor machines. Finally the long-sought location was found among the exclusive establishments in the fashionable shops about Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, where theatrical costumes and custom dresses are made. Here were girls, American girls, the veiy type of the Bertha of 1906, toil- ing over old-fashioned, pedaled sewing machines, which probably were in use even before the days of Bertha. The dramatic organization campaign and strike recently conducted by the Ladies' Tailors, Custom Dressmakers, Theatrical Costume and Alteration Workers' Union. Local 38, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, centered attention on Fifty-seventh Street. The union's agreement with the Couturiers' Association, representing sixteen of the most exclusive houses, such as Madame Frances, Henri Bendel, Bergdorf Goodman, Tappe, Madame Thurn, Hickson, Farquharson and Wheelock, Stein and Blaine, expired Sep- tember 25. The Association shops and numerous inde- pendent shops employed some 1,000 organized men tailors and about 10,000 women dressmakers, of whom only 5 to 10 per cent were organized before the strike. The union tailors received a wage-scale of $55 for a forty-four-hou": week; the union dressmakers from $38 to $50 for the same number of hours; the 10,000 unorganized but highly skilled experienced dressmakers received an average wage of $22 for a forty-seven-hour week, in shops where the price of a dress was $275! In renewing the agreement, Local 38, making demands for the tailors, also made demands for the dressmakers for a forty-hour week, 5 to 10 per cent increases in wages, guaranty of forty-four weeks' work in a year, and limitation of overtime. The association was willing to concede most of the demands for the men but was not prepared even to discuss the demands for the women. Edwin Goodman, head of the Couturiers' Association, scoffed at them. "The dressmakers don't want an increase in wages, they don't want anything; the dressmakers are satisfied," he said. The custom-dress industry is largely a women's indus- try. The heads of many of the most exclusive houses are women, such as Madame Frances, Madame Thurn, and Lucille. The patrons and customers are the wealthiest women in America, who wear the most exquisite, the most expensive, and the most beautiful clothes in the world, Paris not excepted. The models in these houses are frequently young show-girls who find it advantageous to secure such employment in their off-seasons. Finally, the 10,000 dress- makers are women. In the rush season, when society and the theater are demanding their costly and beautiful gar- ments, the dressmakers work until late at night without extra pay for overtime. Women are difficult to organize, particularly in such an industry. The prevailing theory is that American women cannot be organized. "American girls don't want a union," insisted the employers at the conference table. The working unit in the dressmaking department includes various crafts. The fitter, v/ho cuts the dress, receives $50 to $100 weekly. The drapers, usually *evn in number, average $30 a week. Each draper has three or four dressmakers as helpers The finishers receive from $16 to $22. They handle the most delicate material-;, requir-

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690 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 ing intricate handwork and severe eye-strain, and produce gowns, wraps, and dresses that sell for hundreds of dollars. One highly skilled draper who makes $35 a week made by herself in less than a week an entire dress that sold for $1,01 Why have the custom dressmakers worked for such 3 and under such conditions in New York City, where arment workers have been so firmly intrenched for irt, they are timid, unaggressive, simple American Many have worked for live or : longer in one house. There is not a large nover. One woman who has worked for various for thirty years began at $7 weekly; receives £21 as a skilled draper. She lives in a town up the Hudson, more than an hour's trip on the train. At six o'clock she da 'he ferry and the train; there is the same rush hack to be at work at 8:30 in the morning. Too weary and dis d to mix with night, what opportunity had she to think tiism? Many of the women are Italians, beau- tiful needleworkers, but always difficult to organize — grand- moth- combined earnings go to make up the "family wa recently been idy influx of South American women, convent-trained, fine fabrics. Tiny speak Spanish and know nothi' can standards of hours and wages. Sine" the war, F hops of Paris, the dressmakers nave only recently been organized, ■i coming over, unfamiliar with American condi- tions and handicapped by lane.ua Analysis of pay envelopes proved that $850 to $000 annually \ mon for a dr nine wei an a\ r the slack time between seasons. Few had yearly f as much as $1,000. Not oik; had paid an income tax. Among the finishers $500 and $600 a year was common. I visited all of the beautiful establishments, seeking interviews with the heads of the houses; I mounted marble stairways to elaborate drawing-rooms, with period furniture and oriental rugs, where the elegant customers wait for fittings. Contrast the workrooms, crowded and . with the old machines. There were no proper rest- rooms. A light rattan touch hidden in a dark room under oats was the only provision required by law for a .sick or worn-out girl to rest for a few minutes. The toilets were inadequate and crowded. Local 38 made history in organizing women in less than six weeks. Its campaign, directed by a woman, Juliet Stuart Poyntz, established a record. Street, meetings were held of .Mrs. Vanderbilt's house, off Fifth Ave- nue, at noon and in the evening. Automobile with union banners proclaiming the union demands were in evidence on Fifth Avenue. Eager and enthusiastic dressmakers listened to their firsl trade-union speeches, and devoured the union leaflel remarkable union sentiment created. Then the Couturier iation wenl into action. Fifth Avenue became an armed camp. Police and dele-fives guarded every entrance. A truck, anything led exclusive and smart, stood in front of the entrance to Madame Frances's for several nights: between a line of police the dressmakers were marched into it and driven away to subway stations, safe from union literature. Active union j'irls were arre led daily; the first day of the strike thir y of us spenl eight hours in jail. On the eve of the strike Henri Bond< 1, emplo dressmakers, granted wage increases of from $2 to $5 weekly, reduced working hours from 47 to 44, and granted a full hour for lunch. The majority of the employers fol- lowed suit. The standards of the entire industry were raised even where actual union organization did not result. Many new shops were organized, and a strong sentiment for unionization and higher standards was established among the women workers in all of the leading houses. Wages started going up, the forty-four-hour week was gen- erally established for the unorganized dressmakers, while the tailors and organized dressmakers won the forty-hour week besides waive increases. The union now plans an intensive and continuous organization campaign among the dressmakers to consolidate the newly won gains. The poor little starved dressmakers of Paris won a strike not long ago and won better conditions for them- selves. The Mimis of the Paris dress shops received uni- versal support. The New York dressmakers of Fifty- seventh Street must receive the same; support because their successful organization will give a tremendous impetus to the movement to organize the millions of unorgani women workers throughout America. In the Driftway C1EORGE T. HUGHES of New Brunswick, New Jersey, J has expressed his conviction that if any improvement is possible in this land of the noble free it is through more and better pies. To this end Mr. Hughes organized the Watchung Community Pie Association, which has just held a championship competition. As fitting so important an occasion, three mayors and a former assemblyman were called in as judges. The Drifter does not know why he was not invited. Ah a pie-baker he makes no broad claims, but as a pie-taster he feels that he has no superior between Massachusetts and Mars. Failure to call in the Drifter led to vulgar bickering among the judges, and it was finally ary to summon a police chief to settle the contest. # * * * * THE trouble seems to have been that the judges got into a wrangle over the relative excellence of various kinds of pie instead of weighing the merits of the individual entries as samples of the pastry-makers' art. Each judge was handed five pies from which to make a preliminary lection. One picked a cheese pie, another a lemon r leringue, a third a pumpkin, and the fourth an apple. Thereafter the judging became a heated arKument over the claims of these four models of the pie-making craft. # # * # * THE Drifter wishes to register his profound contempt for choose pie — whatever it is. Never having sampled any- or ever heard of it before this contest — he has the true obscurantism of ignorance. If cheese pie is anything like cheese cake the Drifter hates it as a result of gloomy per- il encounters with that sad and soggy confection. If any reader thinks the Drifter is too hastily jumping at conclu- sions, he (or she) is invited to send in a cheese pie for analysis and report. Demon meringue, pumpkin, and apple pie, the Drifter admits, all have high claims to distinction, but is the queenly mince to lie ignored; or that splendid example of Soul hern chivalry, sweet-potato pie? For sweet- potato pie the Drifter is willing to forgive the South even the invention of the Ku Klux Klan. Then, too, th< re are

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 691 such sublime evidences of the superiority of man to the other mammals as gooseberry, blueberry, and cherry pie. An old friend of the Drifter's once remarked: "There may be something better than cherry pie, but I don't see why anybody should want it." I have passed my three score years and ten and mean to die in the faith of my fathers, loyal to New England rum, hell fire, and the devil. Charles Edward Stowe Santa Barbara, California, November 26 UNFORTUNATELY the New Jersey judge who held out for apple pie was not content to support his preference on its own merits, which are undeniably many. For in- stance, when ordered in a restaurant, apple pie is less certain to be bad than any other kind served by these institutions for spoiling food and degrading the glorious art of cooking. The New Jersey judge attempted to justify his preference for apple pie by appealing to quite extraneous considera- tions. He demanded: "Is a cheese pie a la mode as appetiz- ing as apple a la mode? Is lemon meringue a la mode as appetizing as apple a la mode?" * * * * * WHEN a judge resorts to that sort of argument one can only retaliate in kind. What, declaims the Drifter, pointing one index finger menacingly at the New Jersey judges and the other toward Hollywood — what would become of our great screen drama, of the mighty motion-picture in- dustry which lias permeated the earth, without the aid and abetment of the delectable and clinging contents of the cus- tard pie? The Drifter Correspondence After Oil To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: The author of When the Oil Gives Out in your issue of December 1 did not mention what many scientists consider the most hopeful source of motor fuel for the future: bitumi- nous ("soft") coal, of which there is comparatively an abun- dance. Friedrich Bevgius's process of hydrogenation of coal, which effects a liquefaction to petroleum, is now being commer- cially exploited in Germany. Franz Fischer's process, though still in the experimental stage, promises to be even more useful than that of Bergius. The samples of synthetic petroleum which were displayed at the recent International Conference on Bitu- minous Coal showed clearly the possibilities of the Fischer method. Pittsburgh, November 28 J. B. Shohan Hell To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: My attention was recently attracted to a headline, Abolishing Hell, over an article noting that dignitaries of the Church of England together with the "liberal" clergy in general had conspired against this ancient and useful institution. Imagine the indignant protest from profane swearers every- where who for centuries have depended on the pulpit for the enrichment of their vocabularies! It is a blow at all wit and humor which is dependent on contrasts; the more drastic the contrast, the more pungent the wit! I often heard my mother, Harriet Beecher Stowe, tell how witty the old Puritan ministers of her girlhood were as they assembled in her father's kitchen to drink good old New England rum, smoke strong tobacco, and crack jokes. There is nothing like it in the clergy of today, who are a hectic, dyspeptic lot, full of problems but barren of jokes, all run to seed over the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibition, and the tariff, but disbelieving in hell-fire, the devil, and the brimstone lake. Poor Old Britain! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: As a Britisher I cordially a.^rce with Judge Bausman in deprecating the stupid attacks which irresponsible English journalists have recently been making upon the debt settlement between Great Britain and the United States. But he has made some remarkable assertions in the course of his onslaught upon the European Powers. It is not true that the French "refused to settle on any basis at all." The terms they offered were very nearly twice as good as those offered by Italy and accepted by the United States Government. Nor is it true that the whole of the French debt was contracted after the war was through. Were that the case there would be no question for dispute, since France has never attempted to deny full liability for post-war debts. And as for the "incredible quantity of food and munitions" she is declared (on no particular evidence) to possess, I should be interested to hear just how she can "turn them into cash." Who will buy them? The United States? Now for my own country. (1) Judge Bausman paints a very rosy picture of the value of the British "spoils of war." "Mesopotamia alone," he says, "will reimburse Great Britain" (for what? For the whole cost of the war?). Again, "Tan- ganyika, enormously rich in minerals and tropical products, must be considered forever the property of the English." If Judge Bausman will pardon my saying so, this is mere rhetoric. Tanganyika's commercial value is negligible (its total trade is about one twenty-seventh of that of Porto Rico), and even if it were true that it is doomed to perpetual British control, its resources cannot be and are not monopolized by British traders. And to regard Mesopotamia as an asset is, I submit, ridiculous. Britain has already spent millions of pounds upon it (I have not the exact figures to hand), and here, too, there can be no question of discrimination in favor of British trade, since that is expressly forbidden by the mandate which gave the English control of it. The other members of the League of Nations can be trusted, in their own interests, to see to it that the terms of that mandate are adhered to! (2) In view of the fact that the Washington Conference put the American and British navies on a precisely equal basis, to say, as Judge Bausman does, that it left Britain mistress of the seas is a compliment to the superior efficiency of the British navy which (coming from such a quarter) I welcome but which in the interests of truth I must refuse to accept. (3) From the reference to rubber in the last paragraph of his letter it appears that Judge Bausman believes the Malay Peninsula to be a post-war acquisition to Britain — one of her "spoils of war." That is a good indication, I suggest, of the accuracy of the knowledge on which his assertions are based. Princeton, N. J., November 15 Lindley M. Fraser Look-a-Way, Dixie Land! To the Editor of The Nation: Sir: If any of your readers h..ve letters, documents, papers, or facts of any kind, whether hearsay, anecdote, or affidavit, about the late James B. Duke, tobacco magnate of Durham and New York, I should appreciate their communicating with me. I am writing a biographic study of the great mer- chant-manufacturer and facts about his early days in New York are especially obscure. Rodney Crowther Asheville, North Carolina, November 21^

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692 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 A Happy New To Nation Perhaps this is the first time you have read THE NATION. Perhaps, on the other hand, you have read it for sixty-one years. In either case, you will be interested in Henry T. Finck's description of its Editor, Oswald Garrison Villard, which appears in Mr. Finck's book, "My Adventures in the Golden Age of Music," just published by Funk & Wagnalls. "While holding different views, I could not help admiring his courage and audacity, as well as his rare journalistic ability, incisiveness, wit and vivacity. No one, it is safe to say, has ever yawned over one of his editorials, and the new Nation became, as a whole, 'i decidedly readable periodical." This from a man who for twenty-one years was closely associated with Mr. Villard on the New York Evening Post, and who looked askance at him when he sold the Post and embarked on his "journalistic steam yacht," as Mr. Finck dubs The Nation. But this same "journalistic steam yacht" is free to head any- where. Often it steers straight out into the murk behind the news and brings back many a surprise. It is manned by a staff of newspaper men and women and its news is good news in the sense that it is significant and sound. Wouldn't you like to take a voyage with Mr. Villard for one year, let's say, or two? ' ■*xrV.-aJBW" Next Week THE NATION'S HON FOR 1926 Noteworthy Americans at home and abroad in the fields of Politics, Business, Foreign Service, Economics, Literature, Science and Music, especially worthy of commendation by liberals and progressives. THE NATION 20 Vcsey Street, N. Y. f for one year □ $5 Send The Nation! „ ^ m„ I. for two years $8 Name Address Add 50 cents for Canada, $1 for foreign. 12-29-26 When writing to advertisers pleasi mention The Nation

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Books, Music, Plays Commentary On John x, 34. By S. FOSTER DAMON We are lost deities made manifest, Forced to a hateful fellowship of dreams. Caught in the selves by which we are obsessed, Each prays, unwakable; each one blasphemes. 0 many Christs, with eyes gray-aureoled, Caught in the whirlpool of fantastic pain, Reach out your hand!— reach through the sable cold, And touch the hand you will not find again. First Glance THE title of Herbert S. Gorman's new book, "A Victorian American: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" (Doran: $5), might mean much or little. It might mean, what any- one knows, that Longfellow lived in America at the same time that Victoria lived in England. Or it might mean that Longfellow had certain qualities — probably certain defects — common to most imaginative writers of the English lan- guage during the last three-quarters of the nineteenth cen- tury. In the second case a number of definitions would be called for; one would assume that Mr. Gorman had written his book in order to make clear just what, at this remove, the term Victorian does mean after all, and after that to show how Longfellow, being a true son of his time, shared its deficiencies. Mr. Gorman, indeed, promises all this and more in his excellent preface — the best part of the book. There we learn that Longfellow is "a representative figure of the dominant urge of his time," and that "it is necessary to understand him and his age if we are to understand our own and ferret out why we are what we are and from what curious urges we evolved." What are we, then? What was Longfellow? What was his urge, if any, and what is ours? After reading Mr. Gor- man's book and being entertained by its sympathetic narra- tion of this man's long, pathetic, and highly successful life, I do not know the answers to these questions. I am not say- ing that I believe there are any — simply that Mr. Gorman, who in his book on James Joyce showed himself a gifted critic, here seems not even to have tried to do the thing he tells you he is doing. So far as his critical theme was con- cerned he might as well have stopped on page 64, where, speaking of Longfellow's youthful writings, he says: "He entered literature with those weaknesses that were to be with him all through his life, weaknesses of dependence, weaknesses of didactic emphasis, weaknesses of prosiness, weaknesses of the creative instinct." A little later, when Longfellow has gone for the first time to that Europe which was to give him "background," Mr. Gorman reflects: "If Henry had been an authentic genius it would have been much better for him to have stayed in Maine minus those standards that are evolved by backgrounds and to have worked out his own destiny and developed an autochthonous achievement. But he is not an authentic genius." Well, is not that the whole story? Longfellow was not a genius; he "was never mentally brave"; he was a prosy poet. It would be interesting it" Mr. Gorman could prove that Longfellow was thus and so because lie was a Victorian American, or because he was born in Maine in 1807; or because he was a professor at Harvard; or because he lived in one house too long. But he does not try, and — what is more serious- -he does not try to explain Longfellow's fail- ings through an examination of the works themselves. No definition of the creative instinct is supplied; no suggestion is made as to why the author of the Psalm of Life suffered from didacticism while the authors of "De Rerum Natura," "Paradise Lost," and the "Divine Comedy" grew great through the practice of it. So, except for the fact that Mr. Gorman has very engagingly retold the life of his subject, we are where we were before. A little patient thinking would have helped — and it might have revealed a great deal. Mark Van Doren Democracies at War Soldiers and Statesmen: 191U-1918. By Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson. Charles Scribner' nmes. $12. \^7"HEN I first viewed those two large volumes I feared yet * " another of those bulky apologias, produced in dozens since the war ended, by soldiers and statesmen hoping to put them- selves right with history. A course of such post-war literature makes nauseating reading. Never before have so many evasions, so many contradictions, so many shufflings from responsibility been gathered together. Fortunately, Sir William's book is not of this kind, but an honest and straightforward account of the development of British strategy during the war. In a style as dry and unemotional as that of an official dispatch he describes the innumerable councils in which soldiers and statesmen, pro- fessionals and amateurs, wrangled over the plans which meant life and death to hundreds of thousands. Far too often, in his opinion, the amateurs won the debate and lost the battle. He concludes, therefore, that if a modern democracy is to wage war- successfully the respective functions of civilian ministers and military chiefs must be clearly defined. During the Boer War Lord Salisbury remarked: "I do not think that the British Constitution as at present worked is a good fighting machine." Democracy has of course some military advantages — the willing horse, equipped with blinkers, is better fighting material than the driven ox — but a democratic govern- ment is a hindrance to soldiers waging war and a still greater hindrance in the preparation for war. In 1902 it was Robert- son's business, as head of the Foreign Intelligence Department of the War Office, to scan the horizon for probable enemies. He picked Germany and in a memorandum to the government recom- mended: "That instead of regarding Germany as a possible ally we should recognize her as our most persistent, deliberate, and formidable rival." The Foreign Office conceived the same idea about the same time and, as the department of state least sub- ject to democratic control, began to involve Britain in an anti- German alliance. The soldiers who saw how events were shaping urged on the government the necessity of adequate preparation. Their position was entirely logical. But the government, though prepared to follow a secret policy likely to lead to war, was not courageous enough to propose to the electorate that Britain con- vert herself into a military power on the continental model. According to Lord Asquith, any government making such a proposal "would have committed political suicide." When the war came democracy was speedily thrown over- board. But sufficient of its trappings remained to embarrass the soldiers — the Cabinet system, for instance. For the general

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694 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 conduct of the war, for the coordination of the national effort in all its branches, the Cabinet was responsible. Robertson admitted this freely, but he thought that on questions of strategy isible professional head should be accepted. The troublesome question was: Where did policy end and strat n? In 191 came Chief of the Imperial General trol the operations of the British armies in all parts of the world. The correct strategy, in his jible force on the Western Front ire. Expeditions elsewhere he unlikely to have a decisive influence on the war. Defeat the enemy in France and he would be defeated everywhere. With all the very considerable pertinacity at his command he urged views again and again despite their ularity h |uarters. Xi . this policy was certainly not excit- quently did not appeal to Lloyd George. That led gentleman had probably never given a thought to military matters before the war. The limelight shone on other w lie turned his imaginative powers to questions soldiers, he thought, lacked vision. Their policy of hammering away at the Western Front produced no appan ts save heavy casualty lists, which were politically Surely there must be some way round — an easier, way. "Knock away Germany's props" and the rn Front would yield. To this end he planned new cam paijrns weekly; gigantic flanking movements through Asia Minor, the Balkans, the Italian Alps. At other times he urged •'ture of cities vhieh had dramatic if not military value Jerusalem, Bagdad, Constantinople. But at no time did he heed t if Robertson to form a comprehensive policy and stick to it. In this internal struggle between politicians and soldiers neither side won. The soldiers could not get a free hand; the dans could not undertake the responsibility of entirely rejecting military advice. And so there were delay, inefficiency, ives, while England somehow muddled through. Had the war continued an attempt might have been made to clear out the statesmen and set up a military dictatorship. Robertson hints at the possibility or desirability of such a drastic Yet surely it would have been a logical one; and if there is any lesson that democracy ought to have learned from the war it is that war and democratic institutions are incompatible. ers and Statesmen" clearly, though unintentionally, points ■ iral, and, because of that, pacifists will render Sir William tson their unexpected thanks. Kkitii Hutchison The Holy War Sex Expression in Literature. By V. F. Calverton. Boni and Liveright. $2..r,0. THE critical program set forth in this author's "The Newer Spirit" and in the present volume purports to be the "socio- logical criticism of literature." So far as it is a method and legitimate at all, it is limited. But Mr. Calverton is ambitious. He is not satisfied to trace out a simple parallelism between the structure of a society and the moral outlook of its litera- ture; he argues that the social structure encompasses and ex- hausts, by means of some obscure metaphysical efficiency, the entire content of a literature. Literature, the effect, can be- wholly explained in terms of society, the cause. Unless we are much mistaken, the prevalence of this type of vulgar thinking is a serious threat to the immediate future of literature. The proper limitation of Mr. Calverton's method would be simply to indicate a correlation between a society and its literature. He assumes instead a causal relation. The various refutations of this assumption are obvious. First, although Mr. Calverton justly points out that the rise of the middle class in the eighteenth century was attended by the rise of sentimental comedy, he yet fails to tell us why one of these dramatists should be better than another. If there is a perfect causal relation between society and letters, why are not all writers equally good? Granting that the moral tendency of Defoe's writings came from the middle class, why did he describe in "Captain Singleton" the African wilderness, which he had never seen, just as he did rather than in some other way? The middle class had nothing whatever to do with the artistic effectiveness of such passages in his writing. Since the Elizabethans "expressed" (whatever that may mean) the ideas of the feudal aristocracy, why were not Chapman and Shakespeare, assuming their equal exposure to those ideas, equally good poets? If Mr. Calverton could think as well as he can dig out correlations his books would rouse a certain legitimate interest. At worst they would sink into that class of "scholarly re- search" which turns the literature of the past into a para- sit ically infested corpse. Criticism need not be intellectually sound; it need only be novel. It may, of course, boldly espouse some cause. For it is not only in mistaking correlations for causal re- lations that Mr. Calverton exceeds the integrity of scientific exposition. He misnames his books. The present volume should be called "Sex Expression in Society," with the quaint sub- title "As Recorded in Literature, Combined with a Defense of Freedom in Love and Speech." Mr. Calverton does not care a straw for literature. He quite simply prefers a social order in which fornication may be mentioned as freely as sneezing or football. This is Mr. Calverton's affair; it is none of litera- ture's. But the chief inference one gets from this book is that the best writers are invariably engaged in a holy war on Puritanism; this is the meaning which, God help us, he at- taches to Joyce. As for this part of the "theory," it is suffi- cient to point out that Henry James was a better novelist than Floyd Dell. Mr. Calverton's method is too muddled to be valid and too shopworn to be new. He tosses complacently on the backwash of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Allen Tate The Democratic Ideal The Democratic Way f Life. By Thomas Vernor Smith. The University of Chicago Press. $1.75. rpHF democratic creed is based on a mystical faith in the * potentialities of the ordinary man. Belief in democracy is a form of popular religion. It assumes that no individual is outside the pale of salvation. Self-realization is possible for all. The anti-democratic belief, on the other hand, substitutes for the mystical belief in the ordinary man a mystical distrust. Nature is held to be oligarchical and "history a good aristocrat." Re- generation is possible only for the few. The vast masses are fated only to obey. This, in the last analysis, is the issue be- tween the Socialism of Sidney Webb and the Toryism of Lord Hugh Cecil. Both sides, it should be noted, are ultimately based upon mysticism, for the verifiable data underlying the issue are still meager. It is the mysticism of democracy that Mr. Smith offers. Democracy, he says, is not, as Bryce suggested, merely a form of government; it is a way of lif". The concentration of democratic theory on government is due to a realization that self-government is an essential means. The end, however, is not self-government but the good life for the bulk of the popula- tion. This wider meaning of democracy is best contained in the trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Fraternity implies the extension to all humanity of the sense of kinship felt in the family circle. This consciousness of the brotherhood of man is also the central source of religion and is, in fact, necessitated by our universal interdependence. Liberty, in turn, means to do as one pleases, but the democratic ideal requires that the individ-

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 695 ual should be pleased to do acts which are compatible with the interests of his fellows. Equality means equal opportunities for all for self-development, as all men must be considered potentially able to realize rational ends. This ideal postulates an approach to a greater economic equality. Mr. Smith also discusses the problems of industry and leadership. The good life for the masses, he says, is impossible without a radical alteration in the conditions surrounding their working lives. The workers must hence be given active partici- pation in the affairs of industry. This ideal also m that greater attention should be given to making the productive process less monotonous and more capable of enlisting the interest of the workers. The cooperative sharing of common experience, the participation of all in the invention of new departures, the fostering of creation rather than acquisition, which now in the main actually exist in the professions, should be extended to all types of work. Leadership in a democracy must be based not on prestige but on knowledge of facts. Authority will thus rest on tests and measurements and not on esoteric claims. The ideal of democracy is to make each citizen both a leader and a follower, a leader in the special field which he has mastered and a follower of others in other fields. The views that Mr. Smith offers are not novel; they are, in fact, the common possession of writers on social theory. Yet a vigorous summary of the theory of democracy is not irrelevant. In an age when democracy is so frequently questioned, it is pertinent to restate first principles. The extension by our author of the democratic creed to economic activity is especially commendable, for it is obvious that unless the principles of liberty and equality are given a wider signification than that given by the early philosophers of democracy, self-realization for the ordinary man will be impossible. In time of skepticism faith may be strengthened by a restatement of the creed, and this Mr. Smith's little volume has creditably achieved. Yet it may also be suggested that more pertinent than a resume of the democratic creed is the translation of that creed into institutions. Whether or not we accept the mysticism of democracy, the vast remoteness of the actual realization of democracy from its ideal purpose is unmistakable. If the ideal of democracy is capacity for sustained initiative on the part of the ordinary man, democracy is non-existent. The vast masses have neither the means nor the intelligence to realize their best selves. Politically what actually exists is not democ- racy in any real sense but the rule of oligarchy. It is thus the function of critical political philosophy not to elaborate the obvious but, among other things, to show concretely how to reconcile the demands of the "Great State" with the significance of the individual, how to equate mystical nationalism with the demands of an increasingly unified world, how to make self- government in industry compatible with product:ve efficiency, and how to give to the ordinary man the capacity of intelligent articulation so that he may recognize in others than Rudolph Valentino his ideal self. Only in the perspective of such a solution is it at all possible to visualize a realization of the noble ideal of democracy of "a society of free men and women, each at once ruling and being ruled." Lewis Rockow Marmaduke Pickthall The Valley of the Kings. By Marmaduke Pickthall. Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50. IN "Oriental Encounters" Marmaduke Pickthall told of his longing for escape from London and his dreams of the East at 18 years of age. Ultimately he did break away, to the scan- dal of all good Englishmen. At Jaffa he met J. E. Hanauer, whose "Folklore of the Holy Land" he was later to edit; and with his aid and that of a dragoman he learned Arabic and lived like a native. That is the background. Many men have done as much, and no.uing has come of it aside from miscegena- tion. But Pickthall brought with him a mind ready for under- standing— a mind already alien to England— and a style that responded to his mind. One of the results was "Said the Fisherman." After six years, during which Pickthall published only two novels of the Last, "The Valley of the Kings" appeared. If remained any who thought "Said" had been a tour <lc force, they were quickly undeceived. Its successor is a lighter hook, for most of the humor of "Said" was grim; but it has the same relentless fidelity to Eastern life ami manners and turn of thought. Even the intrusion of an Englishman as one of the chief characters only serves to strengthen that faith- fulness. We set' him as he is reflected in the eyes of young Iskender, blinded by worship, and gradually he assumes his proper shape through his own words and actions; but poor Iskender goes on worshiping, never fully realizing that his idol is smashed. Iskender lives in a small village of Syria, dreaming and painting while he is being prepared for the ministry by well- meaning Protestant missionaries. His mother's shrill, scolding voice, the cold eyes of the mission head, "Father of Ice," and the supervision of two ancient virgins do not offer him much inducement to continue on the path they point out to him. When he is dismissed from the mission for kissing the young Sitt Hilda while she is teaching him to use his paints, he at- taches himself to an English traveler who has encouraged him in his painting; and together they go on a wild, disastrous chase after a gold-strewn valley whose existence is in the mind of Iskender. The reader cannot fail to perceive PickthalPs criticism of Anglo-Saxons in the Orient, though this is never directly voiced. What a world it would be if nations like Great Britain and the United States were to send out men like Marmaduke Pickthall as emissaries to their conquered dependencies! Wilbur Neediiam The End of the Aztecs Cortes the Conqueror. By Henry Dwight Sedgwick. The Bobbs- Merrill Company. $5. JUDGED either as history or as literature, this biography of the greatest of the Spanish conquistadores is a distinguished piece of work. Mr. Sedgwick has achieved the rare and delight- ful combination of eminently capable historical research with an alert and fluent style. He has worked conscientiously from original sources, yet his writing has the swing and the unity that one hopes for, too often in vain, from the popular biographers. He defends Cortes against the charges traditionally brought against him of cruelty, corruption, lust, and trickery, and this not by attempting to whitewash him but by showing that, granted the aims of the Spaniards, such methods were inevitable and that Cortes's great genius consisted of his ability to use them in moderation and with telling effect. That Cortes was endowed with a gift for organization, with a dexterity in han- dling men, and with a tactical genius equal to that of Napoleon or Caesar is the sole conclusion to be drawn from the author's carefully documented study. Mr. Sedgwick not only succeeds in presenting Cortes for the first time as a human being and, as such, fascinating if not admirable, but he also gives us an unequaled knowledge and understanding of the atmosphere ci the Spanish conquest — of the miserly and superstitious incompetence of the Spanish councils, of the gay, reckless, undisciplined courage of the adventurers themselves, and of the tragic yet, one feels, pre- ordained fate of the native Aztecs, so dignified, so civilized, and so inexplicably childish. As to the latter one eyewitness quoted by Mr. Sedgwick reports: "There are jewelry shops as well arranged as in any market-place anywhere; the earthenware and crockery are as good as the best in Spain; there are shops

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696 The Nation [Vol. 123, No. 3208 coals, edible herbs, and herbs for drugs. There is a kind of barber-shop where there is shaving and heads are are baths." Soldiers who had been in Constanti- declared that they had narket-place with such a throng or with god. It is difficult to think calmly of the ch a people by the advance guard of our EVELAND Novels in Brief* Maxwell Bodenheim. Boni and Liveright. $2. and that ement, ; iewhat at a hi:' r, she ship — into i flor, and then, ah '- chief cone :. with isters. Several of her romances . and in I he is about to id. Mr. Bodenheim has a good ' merican speech, and he draws shopgirls, olitan loafers with lifelike vigor. like tli big wheel of -with Mr. Bodenheim igh and pedaling hard. , the Middle Bord< r. By Hamlin Garland. The 'iy. $2.: Hence which Border," this • ovel irtain sturdy narrative integrity ling and son,' nd it eat I her than Robert M. Mi and Company. $2. ■ .iter than ..! ilric and more rational. re t ) a Barrie-like logic and their thot ; in James Stephens, but i Mr. Nathan creates a world in which they are perfectly at home, and the reader is only too in it. One would like to have them as n Mr. Shrub, the p ''I his als with a sort of solemn joy as though they were ticket-, to somewhere." Barly is a fantastic little lunity, but never a dull one. /<', Stranger. By Stella Ben e Macmillan Com- pany. $'2.2.'). This novel is a game of tag between mysticism and but the reader is never invited to take part in it, and Mis Ben- son seems to resent his pr< spectator. It is a puzzling game to begin with, and nobody stops to explain the .11 that the persistent reader gets out of the story is a murky and erratic sense of fantasy, punctuated — but not illuminated — by thrusts at America. By Ada and Julian Street. Doubleday, Page and Com- pany. $2. One could be more enthusiastic about this story of the soil of the soil were in the form of eal estate. No doubt the growth of Chicago is significant as the reflection of an era of American expansion, but in "Tides" the theme is handled with documentary thoroughness rather than dramatic effectivi ave drawn a number of interesting characti one has to plow through so much sociology to follow them. The Nation's Poetry Prize 7VHE NATION offers an annual poetry prize of $100 for the b m submitted by an American poet in a content conducted by The Nation each year between Thanksgiving and New iTear's Day. This year in addition a second prize of $50 and a third prize of $25 will be offered. The rules for 1926 are: 1. Each manuscript submitted in the contest must reach the office of The Nation, 20 Vcsey Street, New York City, not earlier than Wednesday, December 1, and not later than Friday, Decem- ber 31, plainly marked on the outside of the envelope "For The Nation's Poetry Prize." 2. Manuscripts must be typewritten and must have the name of the author in full on each page. ■'). No manuscripts submitted in this contest will in any cir- cumstances be returned to the author. An acknowledgment of the receipt, of each manuscript, however, will he sent. 4. No more than three poems from the same author will be admitted to the contest. 5. No restriction is placed upon the subject or form of poems submitted, which may be in any meter or in free verse. It will he impossible, however, to consider poems which are more than 400 lines in length or which are translations or which are in any language other than English. Poems arranged in a defini may he counted as a single poem. (h The winning poems will be published in the Midwinter Literary Supplement of The Nation, to appear February !), 1!)27. 7. Besides the winning poems, 77ie Nation reserves the right t e at its usual rates any other poem submitted. The judges of the contest are the editors of The Nation. ould in no case be sent to them personally. Music A Few Happy Moments /"CONTRARY to general opinion even critics have their happy ^-^ moments when on duty. Some of these come when an artist fulfils their expectations, and others again when the eeds then:. Several years ago, for instance, I in the columns that Sophie Braslau held within her voice and herself all the ingredients that go to the making of the great artist. And recently she came very near the peak of realization. Where the- voice was once hampered in pro- duction it had now won its freedom and, with it, the brilliant height, the 'cello medium and depth, and the flexible, lustrous texture that make the pure alto the richest as it is the rarest of voices. Where, too, the singer herself used to be possessed by its emotional content she now controls its utterance with an inward poise that points the beauty of the sound as well meaning. Only occasionally do the old harshness and rations appear; and as they are only occasional, one can well lay them now to nerves rather than to habit. It was not only the best recital Miss Braslau has ever given, but one of the best, vocal recitals heard here in many moons. One may even go farther and say that it stamped Sophie Braslau as the greatest contralto of her gene-ration. Gitta Gradova is another artist who has justified my faith. Three years ago I acclaimed her in print as a great pianist. This year I heard a Philharmonic audience repeat this ac- clamation in applause. It was her first appearance in this city with orchestra, and she was happy in the choice of her offering — Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto. Its passionate lyricism seemed to have found a perfect medium in her art. I cannot indeed remember ever hearing this work played with such a singing fire, or the second movement with such exquisite sensi- tiveness. With it all, Miss Gradova has gi-own. Musical understanding has always been hers; but with it now has come the authority and grasp of a rich nature that has found itself.

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 697 Genius is an intangible substance that cannot be measured by years, as little Shura Cherkassky proves again. Ever since he was ten, he has been charming American audiences with his playing of the piano. At that tender age, enthusiasts in Baltimore, where he was then living, even compared him, because of his poetic fire, to the youthful Paderewski. Today at thirteen — or is it fourteen? — he is less poetic and more of a Josef Hofmann, with whom he is now studying. And meanwhile criticism rages around him because he is sharing that study with public playing. But after all it is notorious that critics do not usually come from the ranks of public performers. If they were they would realize that one learns as much again from the public as one does in the studio. Moreover, a break now would mean years of agony later to get back into the routine of public playing. And besides, a genius as mature as Shura's is difficult to gauge. Are there not those who tell us that Heifetz was as mature at twelve as he was at seventeen? Genius can be as elusive as it is intangible. There is, for instance, Nicolai Orloff — a young man who looks not unlike Charlie Chaplin and who is supposed to be the greatest pianist in Russia. This same incongruity invests his playing, which has the fire of the Slav and the restraint of the Anglo-Saxon, and while as unsentimental as a modernRussian marriage is poetic to the last not<\ A prodigious technic tempered by a delicious touch completes a musical personality that defies classification. To the small number of great violin talents must be added that of Frances Berkova, a Russian-California girl still in her teens, who made her New York debut a short time ago. It was the most successful of its kind of the season, and one richly deserved. Her broad, luscious tone and fiery temperament would alone arrest attention. But slow movements, the test of the musician, are her crowning achievements; and I am still haunted by the smooth beauty of her legato passages. She is that rare thing, a musical prodigy! Among the even smaller number of great 'cellists must now be classed Maurice Marechal. A rich tone, a fiery temperament, and a virtuoso technic, graced by refinement of phrasing and style, proclaimed him an artist of the first rank. Even his program was a delight. M. Salignac's French company of Opcra-Comique has given pleasure beyond all expectation. The first two operas presented, Lecoq's "Girofle-Girofia" and Audran's "La Mascotte," still hold their sparkle after fifty years, and the singers themselves live up to this quality. It is more than mere amusement that they give us. Their art belongs to a school of opera that is classic of its kind; and the traditions around it have sprung from that peculiar ability of the French to skate over the thin ice of vulgarity without breaking through. To ignore these traditions is to court disaster, as the American alternates of the French company quickly learned. Broadway methods, a; their failure proclaimed, have no place in the exquisite gaiety of Opera- Comique. But Opera-Comique apparently has a place on Broadway. Henrietta Straus Drama The Easiest Way THERE were those who maintained that Sydney Howard's "They Knew What They Wanted" was much overpraised and that its virtues were exclusively theatric. I was not among them, but a similar charge may be brought with a good deal more show of reason against his new and stirring melodramatic comedy, "Ned McCobb's Daughter" (John Golden Theater), which the Guild has just produced. Here is a play centering about a definite theme and marked by excellent characterization, but one which, nevertheless, steadily degenerates as it goes along because at every turn the author takes the easiest way and ends in sheer melodrama. Beginning with a first act which makes a considerable appeal to the head, he ends with a last one which affects the spine alone. Seized by a somewhat unfashionable admiration for the New England conscience and convinced that even a stubborn, unimaginative code of honor is better than none at all, he has wished to contrast the character of a shrewd daughter of Maine with that of a typical product of the polyglot slums of New York, where, according to his thesis at least, conditions leave no fundamental sense of decency in those who survive the rough- and-tumble life. In order to bring the two together he has invented a story in which the New England girl is married to a fugitive from justice, and for a time all ^oes well. The keen, crisp speech of Maine, contrasting with the uncouth guttural jargon of New York, serves as a sort of symbol of the two tra- ditions, and so, too, does the equally violent disparity between the prim decorum of the one character and the boisterous vul- garity of the other. Unfortunately, however, the mere machinery of the plot gradually usurps more and more the attention of the author, and its merely melodramatic interest gradually destroys all quieter values. Forced to choose between the difficult task of keeping up the tension by means of events which take their interest from their relevance to the theme and the easier one of relying upon conventionally melodramatic situations, he chooses the latter. Bootleggers descend upon the quiet household ; govern- ment agents burst in at appropriately inappropriate moments; plots and counterplots are formed; and by the time the end is in sight the spectator has lost all other concern in a nervous fear lest Virtue shall not be found to hold the trump card. To be sure, Virtue does hold it; but by the time it is played affairs have got into so complicated a state that one is not quite sure just why it beats all others, and one is compelled to leave the theater without any emotion more definite than that involved in a comfortable assurance that, anyway, it all turned out for the best. The honor of the simple country girl has been saved from the machinations of the city villain (the exigencies of melo- drama have simplified the two characters who started out so well into types little more complex than here indicated), and the bootleggers are compelled to go elsewhere to ply their nefarious trade. From the standpoint of the average theatergoer all this is doubtless no defect. The beginning of the play is not stereo- typed; it merely slides by slow stages into the agreeably con- ventional. But from the standpoint of the critical spectator this is not less than distressing, and though as plays go "Ned McCobb's Daughter" is both good and probably destined to con- siderable success, it will add more to its author's bank account than to his reputation as a serious American dramatist. On the whole, the production which the Guild has given it is more consistently good than the play. Alfred Lunt, as the bootlegger, gives one of the richest and most full-blooded per- formances of his career in a part somewhat different from those he is accustomed to play, and Claire Eames is almost equally good in a role which, fortunately, depends less than most of her recent ones upon the exploitation of certain mannerisms which seemed to me less perpetually delightful than they seemed to some others. On a somewhat different level the performance of Margalo Gillmore is also good. Miss Gillmore is a charming young lady who has always been pleasing in straight ingenue parts, but wno here undertakes character. In comparison with Mr. Lunt and Miss Eames she is deficient in technique, but she has obvious talent. At the present moment France is represented by two more or less official ambassadors to Broadway — Mme Cecile Sorel of the Comedie Francaise at the Cosmopolitan Theater and Mile Jenny Syril of the Opera Comique at the Jolson. As an actress Sorel is, of course, a museum piece — remarkably fine in her genre but part of a dead tradition and as out of place on the contemporary New York stage as a Louis Quinze bed in a co- operative apartment. Those who like modern Broadway operetta will find "The Desert Song" (Casino Theater) well and lustily sung. Its source is the recently popular tradition of manly music with lots of soldiers' choruses and other booming melodies. Joseph Wood Krutch

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international Relations Section Opposition in the Soviet Union rpHE question of the opposition within the Soviet Union 1 Communist Party was discussed at length at the recent party conference in Moscow. Stalin delivered a report on the relations between the party and the Opposition Bloc- Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Trotzky attempted to explain and justify the opposition position, at the same time declaring their loyalty to the party as a whole. Following are brief excerpts from the stenographic reports of the discussion as it was printed in Moscow newspapers during the week of ' iber 12. From Stalin's Report The basic question on which the party differs with the opposition bloc is the question whether the victory of socialism is possible in our country, or, which is the same, what is the character and what are the perspectives of our revolution' There are three qu involved: 1. Is the victory of socialism possible in our country in view of the fact that so far ours is the only country with a proletarian d ip? 2. If this victory sible, can it be considered a complete, a final victory? . ?■ If a victory of thjs kind cannot be considered as final what conditions are imperative if this victory is to become • • ■ The fact that the imperialist front gave wav in connection with the imperialist war in Russia shows that as capitalism develops now, the imperialist front can be broken' not only ma country with a highly developed industry but in a country where the proletariat, in its struggle against the imperialist power, has a strong ally such as the Russian peasantry. ... In 1921 when we introduced the new economic policy, Lenin repeated ly declared in his speeches and articles that, by intro- ducing the "Nep," we were not retreating from our program but proceeding under new conditions to lay the "socialist foun- dation of our economic development," "in union with the peasantry, "under the leadership of the working class " As if in reply to this, Comrade Trotzky, in January 1922 published the Introduction to his book "1905," in which he says' that socialism cannot be established in our country in union with the peasantry, since the life of our country will d(, along the lines of hostile conflicts between the working c as andtte peasantry, until the proletariat is victorious in the POssMitvTf "TV"0 P°intS °f ViGW °n the questions of ^e possibility of building up socialism in our country and the victory of the socialist elements of our economy over the car i- ueln T^ LCtiSm °fferS 3 P°SitiVe S0luti0" * ^ question Trotzkism, however, denies the possibility of socialism winning in our country through the inner forces of our r u t.on. If the first ,s the line of our party, the other line represents an approach to the views of the Social Democrats • • • We are in a position to . . . achieve a victorv "cTalfsm 0But«Pita!iStS "' ™ fa a ^^ ^o bJld up" socialism. But this does not mean that we are in a position he ZZ C°Untry °f the Prok'ta-- dictatorship aga ns" ?estorluo: fTow"' ^l"" T ^^ °f -Mention and th restoration following m its wake. . . We livo in „„h r er of members of the C C and the party newspaper on the following day stated that' the commumca ion of the Central Committee and our own declara! tion were "historical documents" Thi , . i 7. wh,h summed up a very serioua period 'ta ^ £ £"££ history was actuated not by any maneuvering but by our understanding of the situation in the party, by our reLZ what the rank and file of the party demanded of us. For «s it is a political document, an obligation which we have assumed party' and S w^T °f the Party' before the whole party, and before all the proletarian masses I take the resolution proposed by Comrade Rykov on the economic situation. I read there: "We must in the shortest possible time strive to overtake and then to surpass the Lve f-du^ia development in the leading capitalistic countries." I ask Is this correct? And I answer: Absolutely correct But why is ,t imperative? Because only by oveitakinT^d surpassing the level of development in the capitalist untries will we be able to prove the actual superiority of the social^ economy over the capitalist economy. . . . That means Sar you recognize this pace as imperative, just as we d" and h non-accomplishment of this task is fraught with som dang r the build M,1Vtary inte™tion is »°t the only obstacle to he building up of a complete socialist society; another counS m thlS.taSk °f keCPing UP With the level "f'capitaHst try wintheath" Pr0,eftaHan di^atorship is accomplished in a coun- try with a majority peasant population ... we have to face the conclusion that the lower ranks of the state authority 7?L f I'" G handS °f the fact0ry Proletariat but in the floor "D : IK>aSantS- tDistUrbance- Interruption from he floor. Do you propose to take the workers from the factories and send them into the village Soviets?"] Permit me to ask you, comrades: Is this a fact? If you have a hundred million

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Dec. 29, 1926] The Nation 699 peasant population and if you carry out a correct line of soviet democracy, then it is inevitable. A proper policy would consist not in denying the fact but in extending the leadership of the proletariat in those lower branches of the soviet authority which inevitably are being taken over by the peasantry. . . . We thought that the party was wrong in its estimation of the concrete class relations in our country in 192"). It seemed to us that a number of comrades and particularly the press were underestimating the processes which were taking place not within the socialist but within the capitalist sector of our economy. In order to carry out a correct taxation policy it is n sary that the party recognize two things. First, that the growth of private capitalist accumulation both in the cities and in the villages is a fact. Second, that the matter of the redistribution of the national income, that is moving accumu- lated wealth from the capitalist sector into the sector of state industry, is a question of class struggle. In his concluding remarks Kamenev said : I ask: Is it possible to confine our existing differences within the limits of our common work and our joint respon- sibility for the work of the party? We declare: It is both possible and necessary. You must be aware, comrades, that by adopting the resolution about our "Social Democratic devia- tion" you are making it more difficult. But we, on our part, are prepared for practical work on the bases of the decisions of the congresses, of the Central Committee, and of the con- ferences of the party, and to subject all our activities to the supreme principle of the unity of the party and the strength- ening of its dictatorship. . . . We consider that to defend our opinions is our duty as Communists, but that to submit to party discipline, to carry the responsibility for the common work of the party, is also a duty which we will fulfil. From the Speech by Trotzky The resolution accuses the opposition, including myself, of a Social-Democratic deviation. ... I must state that the questions of difference and our position in these questions give absolutely no basis for accusing us of a "Social-Democratic deviation." We have disagreed first of all on the question, What is the danger that menaces us at present? Is it the danger of falling behind in our state industries or the danger of growing too fast? The opposition, including myself, has maintained that the real danger before us is the danger of our state industries falling behind the development of our national economy as a whole. We have pointed out that in view of the existing policy in the matter of the distribution of the national income this dis- parity may increase. We have disagreed on the pace of industrialization and I was one of those who pointed out that the present pace is insufficient; this . . . lends particular importance to the process of class differentiation in the village. . . . We have striven for a more elastic taxation policy for the various strata of the villages, the lowering of taxes for the lower layers of the middle peasantry, increasing them for the richer upper strata of the middle peasantry, and a more energetic exertion of pressure upon the fists, particularly along the lines of their union with trade capital. We said that the growth of differentiation in the village, as long as industry is dragging behind, creates the necessity of double guaranties in the political field, i. e., under no circum- stances can we tolerate the widening of the voting rights for the fists, employers, and exploiters even of the small type. There were differences on the question of wages. We thought, and we still think, that at the present stage of the development of our industry, of our economy, at the level already achieved, the worker cannot first increase his productivity, and thus make possible an increase of wages, but that the system must be the reverse: an increase in wages, even a modest one, must precede the increase in the productivity. [Interruption from the floor: "•Where will the money come from?"] Whether this is right or wrong, there is nothing Social-Democratic in it. We argued, further, against the overestimation of the economic elements of stabilization [of capitalism in Europe] and against the underestimation of its political elements. If we should ask, let us say, in relation to England, in what ways :onomic stabilization is expressing itself at present, we should find that she is deteriorating, that her trade balance is unfavorable, that her foreign trade is diminishing, that her production is falling. Such is the economic "stabilization" of England. But what is it that sustains bourgeois England? It is not Baldwin, not even Thomas, but Purcell. The Purcell attitude is the foundation of the present "stabilization" in England. This is why we believe that, in the face of the working masses who carried out the general strike, for us to solidarize ourselves with Purcell directly or indirectly would be utterly wrong. Therefore we demanded the breaking up of the Anglo-Russian committee. From these differences, from the position we defended during these differences . . . it is impossible to construe a Social-Democratic deviation. In the latter part of his speech Trotzky considered the possibility of building and maintaining socialism in one country alone. . It is not only a question of intervention. . Intervention is war, and war is the continuation of politics through different means, and politics are generalized economics. Accordingly, the question concerns the economic relations of the Soviet Union with the capitalist countries. I shall ask you, comrades, and this is a fundamental point: What is going to happen to Europe while we are building our socialist society? You say: We will build up socialism in our country independently of what is happening in Europe. All right. How much time do we need for the building up of socialism? Lenin figured that in twenty years we would not be able to build up socialism, considering the backwardness of our peasant country. . . . Let us accept thirty to fifty years as a minimum. Now, I ask you, what is going to happen in Europe during this time? I cannot give a prognosis for our country without giving a prognosis for Europe as well. . If you think that in the course of thirty to fifty years the European proletariat will seize the power as a matter of course, then there is no discussion. ... Do you think that capitalism will find a new dynamic equilibrium, do you think that European capitalism is in a position to insure for itself a new period of growth, a duplication of the process which was in existence before the imperialist war? If we should consider this possible (and I believe that capitalism has no such chance) this would mean that capitalism . . . had not exhausted its historical mission, that it was not an imperialistic deteriorating capitalism but a growing capitalism, advancing economically and culturally. But this would signify that we [the Soviet Union] had arrived too early. . . . I maintain that there are no theoretical or political reasons to believe that it will be easier for us to build up socialism with the peasantry than for the European proletariat to seize the power. No, the chances are entirely on the side of the European proletariat. But if this is so, then I ask: Why are these two elements put in opposition to each other, why are they not united as "two conditions," as Lenin does? Why do we need a theoretical admission of the possibility of building up socialism in one country alone? ... I still think that the victory of socialism in our country can be insured only with victorious revolution of the European proletariat. The adoption of the proposed resolution, in our view, will be harmful. But as far as I can judge the attitude of the comrades of the so-called opposition, the adoption of the reso- lution will not move us from the line [expressed in the declara- tion] of October 16. Each of us, without minimizing >